Influencer outreach: how to contact creators, with email and DM templates

Influencer outreach is the work of contacting creators one by one to propose a collaboration: sending a product to try (gifting or product seeding), paying for a post, an affiliate or discount-code deal, or a longer ambassador arrangement. It sits between finding creators and running the campaign, and it is where most small programmes stall: the list is ready, but replies do not come.

It is not mass email. A creator gets many brand pitches, and a message that could have gone to anyone reads as spam. The useful mental model is a short business proposal to one person: why them, what you offer, what you ask, and how to say yes.

Before writing templates, it helps to know which channel you will be writing in. We recounted the bios and bio links of every account with 10,000–100,000 followers that 10 of our creator searches opened on October 21, 2026: 30 TikTok and 36 Instagram accounts, 60 of them from Brazilian fitness, beauty, fashion and pet searches and 6 from a US houseplant search. A contact email counts only if it is written in the bio; we did not open the links or the Instagram contact buttons, which the data does not include.

Only 7 accounts (11%) had an email in the bio and 4 more invited partnership requests by DM or said they do paid posts. 55 (83%) stated no route, so for most micro creators the first contact is a DM, or an email found behind their link page. 39 (59%) had a link in bio, 18 of them a link page such as Linktree, Stan or bio.site where business emails often sit. 7 (11%) already showed a brand's discount code in their bio, a sign they work with brands and will understand an affiliate offer.

Whatever the channel, a first message that gets answered usually fits on one phone screen and contains five things:

Template 1, gifting with no obligation (for product seeding). Subject: A [product] for you, no strings

"Hi [first name], I'm [name] from [brand], we make [one-line product description] ([link]). Your video about [specific topic] last week was the clearest explanation of [problem] I've seen. I'd love to send you a [product] to try, free and with no obligation to post. If you do share it, we'd just ask you to mention it was a gift. Could you send me a shipping address if you're interested? [Name], [brand]"

Template 2, paid post. Subject: Paid [TikTok/Reel] for [brand] in [month]?

"Hi [first name], I'm [name], [role] at [brand] ([link]). We sell [product] to [audience], and your [series or post] on [topic] is exactly how our customers talk about it. We'd like to pay for one [format] in [month]: you'd get the product in advance and full creative control, and the post would be labelled as an ad. Are you open to it? If so, what's your rate for one [format], and do you offer usage rights for ads? [Name]"

Template 3, affiliate or discount code. Subject: Your own [brand] code, [X]% commission

"Hi [first name], I saw you already share codes with your followers, so I'll keep it short: we'd like to give you a personal code with [X]% off for your audience and [Y]% commission on every sale, plus a free [product] to try first. Here's the product: [link]. Want me to set it up?"

Template 4, from an agency on behalf of a brand. Subject: [Brand] x [creator first name]: [campaign idea]

"Hi [first name], I'm [name] from [agency]; we run creator campaigns for [brand] ([link]). For their [launch or season] they're looking for [number] creators in [niche], and your post on [topic] fits the brief. The offer is [fee / product / commission] for [deliverable] by [date]. Could I send you the one-page brief?"

DMs from accounts a creator does not follow often land in a requests folder, so the first line has to work on its own in the preview. Keep it to three or four lines and do not paste a link in the first message.

Template 5, DM: "Hi [first name]! [Brand] here, we make [product]. Loved your [specific post], especially [detail]. Can we send you a [product] to try, free, no obligation to post? If yes, what's the best email for details?"

Asking for the best email moves the conversation to a channel where you can send the brief, the product page and the terms, and keeps a record of what was agreed.

Send one or two follow-ups, not more. A follow-up is a reply in the same thread that adds one thing: a different detail, a sample of the product in use, or a smaller ask. For example: "Hi [first name], just bumping this in case it got buried. Happy to send the [product] either way, no post needed." Leave several days between messages and stop after the second follow-up.

Track every creator in a simple sheet: handle, channel used, date of each message, offer, reply (yes, no, rates, no answer) and outcome. After 20–30 contacts you will have your own reply rate by channel and by offer, which is more useful than any industry average because it reflects your product, your niche and your writing. We do not quote a typical reply rate here because we have not measured one.

Disclosure is part of the deal, including for free products. The FTC tells creators to disclose any financial, employment, personal or family relationship with a brand, and says free or discounted products count. The disclosure has to be in the post itself, where it is hard to miss, in plain words such as "ad", "sponsored" or "thanks to [brand] for the free product"; vague terms such as "sp", "spon", "collab" or a stand-alone "thanks" are not enough, and a disclosure buried in a group of hashtags or only on the profile page is likely to be missed.

The brand is responsible too. The FTC's answers for advertisers say a company should tell the creators it sends free products to how to disclose the gift, ask them to tag the brand, check what they post, and act if posts are not disclosed. It also says the brand is responsible for false claims a creator makes about the product, so tell creators what they can and cannot claim.

Your emails have rules as well. The FTC says CAN-SPAM covers commercial email with no exception for business-to-business messages; for messages that promote your product it requires accurate sender details, a subject line that matches the content, a postal address, a way to opt out, and honouring opt-outs within 10 business days, with penalties of up to $53,088 per violating email. Gmail requires every sender to authenticate with SPF or DKIM and keep the spam rate reported in Postmaster Tools below 0.3%; senders of more than 5,000 messages a day also need DMARC and one-click unsubscribe. Personal, one-to-one outreach from a real address stays far below those volumes, which is one more reason not to blast templates.

Everything above can be done with the apps and a spreadsheet. The slow parts are building the shortlist, reading each creator's recent posts to write the personal line, and finding the contact route.

Nolyn's influencer search does those parts: it searches TikTok, Instagram and YouTube for your product, checks each candidate's recent posts and engagement, and returns a short list with the posts behind each pick, which is what your first line should quote. It does not find private emails or send messages for you: it reads public profiles, so it reports the contact route a creator publishes, and you send the message from your own account. Creator CRMs such as GRIN or Upfluence handle sending and tracking at scale on monthly plans; see our comparisons of their alternatives.