Ah, good ol’ emails: the preferred method of blogger communication. If you’re a blogger, it’s pretty necessary for you to know how to communicate professionally and effectively with other brands and bloggers. What you say in an email can make or break your brand. Here are a few tips and tricks I’ve learned along the way to help me draft emails with ease.
What’s In A Name?
The biggest pet peeve of mine is when someone spells my name wrong in a greeting. Hello, my website is my name. I don’t know how the heck some people manage to butcher my name. If I had a penny for every time someone called me “Alice” or “Alisha,” I would be rich. Do yourself a favor and just copy and paste someone’s name into the greeting. When I’m emailing a brand rep or blogger with a somewhat complicated name, I make sure to continue to copy and paste their name throughout the conversation. I don’t care if you have to email 40 bloggers/brands in one day. Take the extra 5 seconds to spell their name correctly. You have no idea how many “Dear Alice” emails I’ve sent straight to trash.
Be Personable
Most likely you’re initially emailing someone to start a collaboration, follow up or basically get something done. I get it. However, don’t be short in your greeting. I like to say “Thanks for reaching out!” or “I hope all is well!” before diving into whatever I need from a blogger/brand. Act like you care. I’m sure you care, but just be a good human being and don’t make an email all about yourself, k?
Get To The Point
While you don’t want to be short and skip a personalized greeting, be concise with what you’re saying. We all have emails piling up in our inboxes and often skim over any mail we receive. I was a PR major in school, and we learned how write press releases that contained all the information a reader would need while keeping it brief. Often times, there really is no need to send an email longer than 3 paragraphs. Re-read your email before hitting send and eliminate any unnecessary, repetitive paragraphs or fluff words that do nothing to help your case.
Tone, Tone, Tone
Always keep in mind when you’re drafting an email that you are a business. Plain and simple. While you don’t have to be as formal as the emails you receive at work, you need to have some degree of professionalism when you’re emailing brands/bloggers/etc. I always try to keep my initial email pretty professional. Once a brand or blogger replies to my email, I’ll match their tone in my reply emails. The only exception I have to this rule is when I’m negotiating any sort of contract with a brand/organization. In this case, I always try to keep things more on the formal side just in case any problems arise with our deal in the future and I end up having outside parties read our email correspondence.
Repeat after me: your blog is your brand. You might get some triflin’ emails. I’ve gotten the most ridiculous requests, mail from unpleasant PR reps and nasty hate mail from readers, but don’t ever, ever lose your cool while sending an email. If I ever am in a situation where I have to deal with something crappy via email, I sleep on it. I’ll type out a response, wait a day, and look it over one more time the next morning before hitting send. There’s no need to send off an email when you’re heated. Emails are forever. Don’t make yourself look bad!
Don’t Forward Brand Contact Info
This is a mistake I’ve totally made in the past. It might be tempting to ask your blogger friends for a contact email for a brand, but you should refrain from asking/don’t give out brand emails yourself. Some brands/PR reps get pretty irritated when other bloggers willingly distribute their email addresses. Instead of forwarding contact info, send over an email to your brand contact first introducing your blogger friend. If a brand chooses to work with them, fantastic! If not, you’ll still be able to maintain a good relationship with the brand.
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