HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT CONTACT FOR A BRAND COLLABORATION
Find the Correct Email Address to get in Direct Contact with Public Relations for Any Brand
Reaching out to a brand for a collaboration is much easier than you’d probably expect. Though finding the correct person to get in touch with can sometimes be more difficult than the pitch itself. In the last few months I’ve figured out some of the best ways to locate the PR contacts, and I’m gonna teach you everything I know.
In this blog post I cover: where to go looking for brand contacts, how to utilize an email hunter tool, and what you’re going to need for your pitch.
If you want to collaborate with a brand, email is the most direct method to reach out to them (and is the method I use 99% of the time). You might come across some difficulties finding the right email if you don't know where to look, so let me give you some tips on how to try to find the correct email address for a brand collaboration.
FIRST THING’S FIRST — FIGURE OUT THE BEST WAY TO GET IN TOUCH.
SCOPE OUT THE BRAND’S CONTACT PAGE.
Visit the brand’s website and go to their Contact Us page.
Here, you will most likely find their Customer Service email, which might look something like “hello@___.com” or “info@____.com”. Before you send an email to their customer service email, try to look for their PR (Public Relations) email address first.
Identify keywords like pr, public relations, collaborations, or partnerships on their contact page to see if they’ve provided a designated email for you to contact. If there’s no luck, you’ll want to head over to Instagram.
CLICK THE EMAIL BUTTON ON INSTAGRAM.
Most modern brands have an Instagram presence, and they usually provide an email for sales & inquiries. When you see a brand you potentially want to reach out to, go to their Instagram profile and click the Email button to get quick access to an email address. This can potentially help you get that much closer to getting in contact with the right person at the brand.
SLIDE INTO THE BRAND’S INSTA DMS.
If you DM a brand, you should ask if the brand is looking to partner with influencers right now. Then you should ask for the right email to contact for collaboration opportunities. It’s important to stay professional, and keep it short & sweet.
This is exactly what I say when I DM a brand on Insta:
“I recently came across your store on instagram and fell in love!! I’m obsessed with your ____ and I was wondering whether you have any collaboration opportunities available? I'm in the process of creating content for my instagram feed, and I would love to feature your products there!
If you’re working with influencers at this time I would love to have the opportunity to talk further about this and possibly work with you in the future. Let me know if there’s a specific email/person I should contact about this!”
I always recommend waiting a day or two for them to see your message. The thing with Insta DMs is that the people who run brand accounts aren’t always responsible for influencer partnerships. In some cases, your message may not be seen, read, or responded to because you are contacting the wrong person. Although I have gotten a few collabs using this method, I would not rely on it for a majority of collaboration opportunities.
FINDING PR EMAILS THROUGH A SEARCH ENGINE.
When brands prefer to keep their PR email private, it can be hard to locate the right email. My personal favorite is Hunter.io for finding professional email addresses in seconds. (Not sponsored, I just love to use it myself!) It’s a search engine that offers a limited number of searches for free. You can typically find the the right PR email just by searching for the company you want to contact.
(Pro-Tip — I would spend about an hour or so gathering a list of PR emails so that you can send your final email pitch to a bunch of brands at once. Personally, I take time to compile 25-50 emails, saving each one as a draft in my collab email. Of course you will have to customize each one before sending it out, but this will definitely save you time in the long-run).
WHAT YOU’LL NEED FOR YOUR PITCH.
If you want to see exactly how I pitch to brands as a small content creator, check out this blog post on My Tried and True Email Pitch. It goes super in-depth about different ways you can format and word your pitch as well as propose content ideas to a brand.
There are certain expectations a brand has for influencer inquiries, and it’s important that you use these expectations as guidelines for your pitch.
EXPECTATIONS TYPICALLY INCLUDE:
The relevance of an influencer’s blog/social media to the brand or campaign
Audience size, reach, and demographics
Overall audience engagement
Post frequency and consistency
All of this information is essential for brands to determine whether or not you’d be a good fit for a partnership.
Compiling this information seamlessly in your email pitch can get a bit cluttered and overwhelming. Lucky for you, I’ve developed a free comprehensive guide on how to score influencer collabs, which gives you a step-by-step approach to getting brand partnerships while meeting these expectations!
If you haven’t heard about them already, media kits are really useful for portraying all of your account statistics and examples of past collabs. Essentially, it’s a document that acts as an influencer resume, and it’s common practice to include your media kit in your email pitch. Check out these fully customizable media kit templates that I’ve created and used myself!
YOU’VE TOTALLY GOT THIS.
Seriously, don’t let feelings of fear or rejection stop you from reaching out to brands. I pitched to at least 200 brands just to get 11 partnerships. And remember, even if you don’t nail a collaboration the first time around, it doesn’t mean you won’t get an opportunity to work with them in the future.
Follow my Instagram, Tiktok, and Pinterest to see how to I create compelling content for brands.
If you want my expertise when optimizing your profiles or growing your social media profiles, shoot me an email at rmalloyconsulting@gmail.com or go to this form to contact me.
