11 Tips On How To Email A Brand For Collaboration

Do not index

As your YouTube channel grows, you may wonder how to get sponsored on YouTube. Landing sponsorships is a lot like getting good grades in school. There’s a lot of pressure to perform. Before you can get to the good stuff — like the money and cool free products — you need to prove yourself and get the attention of brands. This means creating an excellent pitch and emailing it to the right people. But how do you get the right people to respond? This guide will help you understand how to email a brand for collaboration to help you get sponsored on YouTube.

Aha Creator's brand partnership deals can help you reach your sponsorship goals faster. With Aha Creator, you can get matched with brands that align with your content and audience. This means you can pitch sponsorships for your upcoming projects to the right people and enhance your chances of going viral.

Best Communication Methods For Brand Collaborations

How To Email A Brand For Collaboration

The Art of Reaching Out: How to Email a Brand for Collaboration

Email Brands Directly

Reaching out to brands directly via email is one of the most effective methods for contacting a brand for a collaboration. This approach is professional, and it allows you to express yourself thoroughly. You can even attach a media kit to your email to give the brand more information about your work and audience. Many influencers have landed lucrative sponsorship deals by emailing brands directly. The tricky part about contacting a brand this way is finding the correct email address. Here are four methods to find the correct email address for a brand collaboration.

Contact Us Page

Visit the brand’s website and find their Contact Us page. Here, you will most likely see their Customer Service email, which might look like “hello@___.com” or “info@____.com”. Before you send an email to their customer service email, try looking for their PR (Public Relations) email address first. Because the influencer industry has established itself in the past years, some brands make it easy for you to find their PR email. After all, brands receive so many collaboration inquiries daily and can’t afford to mix those emails into general customer service emails. Look for keywords such as pr, public relations, collaborations, or partnerships on their contact page.

Email Button on Instagram

If you’re already on Instagram and there’s a brand I want to reach out to, click the Email button on their Instagram profile to get quick access to an email. This can help you get closer to contacting the right person at the brand.

LinkedIn is another excellent place to locate a specific email address. My process is typing in the brand name + keywords such as pr, public relations, collaborations, influencer, influencer manager, and influencer partnerships. Say you don’t pay for all of LinkedIn’s features, and the emails are blocked. Try the following workaround. If you can find the first and last name of the brands’ PR contact, try getting creative and sending emails in the format of:

firstname@brand.com, firstnamelastname@brand.com, firstinitiallastname@brand.com, and so on.

Ask a Fellow Creator

If you have built strong online and offline relationships with creators in your industry, do not underestimate the potential of that and people’s willingness to help you. Ask a fellow influencer for an email. My tip? Offer something in return to show that you’re willing and able to support them. That being said, fair warning: many influencers dislike sharing contacts, especially if you haven’t established a connection or friendship with them beforehand.

One reason might be that they worked extremely hard to get that email or connection in the first place. Another is that some influencers don’t feel comfortable sharing their contact or say they need permission to share first out of respect for the PR rep. Others find that it’s not fair to have someone ask for that information, especially if, previously, there was no connection established. Lastly, you might directly compete with the influencer I’m requesting the email from. After all, this is a business.

Emailing brands directly on Instagram can also pave the way for contacting brands. However, there are some things you need to keep in mind first. The people who run brand accounts aren’t always responsible for influencer partnerships. Your message might not be seen, read, or responded to because you aren’t contacting the right contact for the right thing. If you experience this issue, try another method or follow up and ask for the right contact for your inquiry.

Another thing to note is that when you reach out via DM, the brand’s first impression of you is your message and how your Instagram looks. Consider whether DM or email might be more in your favor regarding how I pitch myself, especially if I want to send a media kit along with my pitch. Also, if I want to reach out via DM, I will have a higher success rate if I reach out to smaller brands. Smaller brands tend to have a faster response time, can read more messages, and overall have a more minor team, so that means fewer people you have to work through to get to the right contact.

Influencer Marketing Automation

Platforms That Pay Content Creators

Social Media Influencer Partnerships

How Much Do Digital Creators Make

Influencer Brand Partnerships

5 Niches Commonly Used by Influencers

Influencer Engagement

How Do Brand Deals Work

How to Reach Out to Brands as an Influencer

11 Tips On How To Email A Brand For Collaboration

How To Email A Brand For Collaboration

1. Use Aha Creator

Aha Creator simplifies the process of connecting YouTube creators with brands and sponsors. We provide a done-for-you partnership service for brands to help them find the right creators. For content creators, we handle the heavy lifting of brand deal negotiations, ensuring you get fair value for your influence. Our matching system helps pair creators with relevant brands, maximizing the potential for successful collaborations. Join our waitlist today, and we'll work to connect you with partnership opportunities that align with your content and values.

2. Identify the Brands You Want to Target

You already have a few brands in mind that operate in your niche. If you don’t, research online or ask others in your field for recommendations. Next, use the earlier criteria to decide which businesses or influencers to partner with. Once you have drawn up a list, research each person or organization and find out how they already partner with others. Try to identify the business objectives they’re trying to fulfill. Also, look for the public relations (PR) contact at the business and note their contact details. You’ll likely need to send your collaboration email to this person.

3. Come Up With a Collaboration Idea

Think of a unique idea to help both partners achieve the goals you identified in the first step. For example, say you’re an influencer, and the company you approach wants to sell more products. Other content creators may have been producing videos that explain how to use their products. You could take a different approach and offer a comparison video with a competitor’s products.

4. Write a Subject Line That Grabs Their Attention

The average person receives 121 emails per day. Unsurprisingly, some are missed or deleted because the recipient doesn’t think they are essential. How do people decide whether to open, ignore, or delete an email? The subject line. Your subject line needs to explain why you contacted the company and compel them to open the email and discover more.

Avoid using subject lines like: “Partnership request” or “Let’s collaborate.” These aren’t very compelling and may get your email ignored. Instead, write something like: “Proposal: Partner with us and access 40,000 YouTube subscribers.” or “I’ve generated 3,000 leads for [company x]. I can do the same for you.” These subject lines are specific and enticing to the recipient, making your email stand out in their inboxes.

5. Introduce Yourself and Your Business

Now that you’ve grabbed their attention, it’s time to craft your email. People have short attention spans, so they will move on to something else if your message is too long or difficult to read. Get straight to the point and keep it brief, but give them enough information that they’ll want to engage with you. Include who you are and where you are based. What type of content do you produce? Who your audience is. What demographics do you serve?

6. Briefly Explain Why They Should Partner With You

You need to tell them how working with you will benefit them. This could include Leveraging your established brand awareness, accessing your broad audience, piggybacking on your strong sales, or combining complementary expertise.

7. Present Your Collaboration Idea

Now, the most essential part is your idea. Use this part of your email to explain what I will do, on what platform, and how it will support the business’s sales and marketing strategy. You should also give them examples if you have done something similar before. This helps support your proposal.

8. Include Proof of Past Success

It’s essential to prove that you have achieved success for other partners in the past. For example, if you are a YouTube influencer, you might take screenshots from your comments section. These would show people that they bought products based on my advice. I might also have an email from an audience member saying something similar. Another way to prove this might be affiliate analytics. Most affiliate programs usually come with software that tracks how many people click your links and go on to make a purchase. You can use this data to prove your success to potential partners.

9. Attach or Include a Link to Your Media Kit

As you need to keep my collaboration email short, I might only quote one statistic proving my success and then provide a link to my media kit. Here, I can showcase more detailed figures and reasons brands should partner with me. The recipient will appreciate that I have kept my proposal short and allowed them to find out more should they want to.

10. Add a Clear Call to Action (CTA)

You must include a call to action (CTA) toward the end of your email. This is to tell the recipient exactly what you want them to do. Without this information, they won’t know what to do next. Try to be specific in your CTA. For example, you might say: “Can I call you at 14:00 this Thursday to discuss this further?” This makes it easy for the recipient to take action as they can confirm that the time suits them or propose another time. Don’t say, "I hope to hear from you soon.” This is vague, so it is up to them when they get back to you. If they are swamped, they may never get back to me.

11. Ensure That You Follow Up

If you don’t hear back, send a polite reminder and reiterate your call to action. Don’t send more than one reminder—if they still don’t get back to you after this, they are probably not interested in your proposal.

How To Find Suitable Brands for Collaboration

How To Email A Brand For Collaboration

1. Identify Brands That Are Already Engaging With You

Whether you’re a business or a content creator, some brands are probably already engaging with you. So why not start there? Go through your followers, comments, and likes, and if you see any businesses engaging with your content, reach out to them. They may be just the right brand you’ve been looking for.

2. Join An Influencer Marketplace

If you haven’t done this already, you should. Many influencer marketing platforms allow brands and content creators to find each other and collaborate. To get started, here is a list of some of the most popular influencer platforms: Aspire IQ, Influence.co, Brandbacker, Famebit, Collabstr, Tapinfluence .

Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok aren’t just places where people post images and videos. They’re also places where you can find brands to work with. Using specific keywords in the hashtag search, you can do some deep digging and find other brands to contact. For example, if you’re a travel company, you may want to look up the hashtag #digitalnomad or #lovetravelling to see if you can find content creators or brands to connect with.

4. Check Your Competitors

You’re not the only one looking to collaborate with other brands. Whether you’re a business or content creator, your competitors probably have already worked with some brands. Check out your competitors’ social profiles to see who they work with. Look for sponsored photos and videos with specific products and tagged profiles. You’ll find brands that will be more than willing to work with you. Then, reach out to these brands with a pitch (which you’ll learn about in a second).

5. Pitch To Brands Directly

You’re probably already a fan of some brands, and if that’s the case, you can always reach out directly to them. Whether you’re a content creator or a business, connecting with brands you a) support and b) already have a history of collaborating with other businesses increases your chances of working with them. Email them once you have a list of brands you’d like to collaborate with. In your pitch, you want to answer Who you are, What you do, and Any achievements that may help you or your business stand out. Then, you’ll want to Explain why you're a good fit for the brand. Add any data that they may find helpful (engagement rates, prior work, follower count)

You may not think this is critical to brand collaboration, but it is. Posting consistently on social media is crucial. Why? For a few reasons, Instagram's algorithm loves new content. The more you post, the more you see Instagram loves engagement. The more you engage with other accounts, the better Collaborators want to see you're active on social media. This doesn’t mean you need to go wild and post every two minutes, but you should at least post a minimum of twice a week. Naturally, the more you post when your followers are most active, the more likely your posts will receive the most engagement (likes, comments, and shares).

Aha Creator streamlines brand partnerships for YouTube creators and businesses alike. We offer a done-for-you partnership service for brands to connect with the right creators. For content creators, we handle the heavy lifting of brand deal negotiations, ensuring you get fair value for your influence. Our matching system helps pair creators with relevant brands, maximizing the potential for successful collaborations. Sign up for our waitlist today, and we'll work to connect you with partnership opportunities that align with your content and values.

How To Win More Deals With Brands

How To Email A Brand For Collaboration

Streamline Brand Partnerships with Aha Creator

Aha Creator simplifies brand partnerships for YouTube creators and businesses alike. We offer a done-for-you partnership service to connect the right creators with brands. For content creators, we handle the heavy lifting of brand deal negotiations, ensuring you get fair value for your influence. Our matching system helps pair creators with relevant brands, maximizing the potential for successful collaborations. Sign up for our waitlist today, and we will work to connect you with partnership opportunities that align with your content and values.

Don’t Wait for Brands to Come to You

Don’t sit around waiting for brands to come to you. Creators might expect brands to reach out and flood their inboxes—and this does happen. But you don’t need to wait. A go-to strategy for many creators is to approach the products and services they love using, which allows them to promote them enthusiastically and honestly. This is especially true if you’re in a niche space. Depending on the value of that audience, you may not even need a huge audience to be valuable to brand partners.

Make Sure The Content Fits

The best brand deals will make sense to your audience, and creators looking for sustainable growth should be judicious about what kind of deals they take. Unrelated products or services might interest some of your viewers, like a cookware sponsorship on a travel channel. Still, these poorly targeted deals will likely pay less, clash with your content, and provide little value to your viewers. Sponsorships that pair well with your content allow for better, more customized deals that pay better and can complement your content.

Don’t Roll Over To Creative Demands

The people buying sponsorships from creators are likely not creators themselves and don’t understand your audience as well as you do. These buyers sometimes make creative requests that directly conflict with a suitable viewer experience or your creator's integrity. Advertisers may sometimes ask that you functionally blur the line between your editorial content and the ad. In some niches, audiences are used to this.

In others, viewers will revolt. Other times, advertisers might ask for frequent mentions of a product that seems forced and unnatural. Your reputation and brand are at stake. Never be afraid to push back on deals that force you into making worse content, even if you may lose it.

Gather Your Data On Rates

That’s the advice of creator Katie Steckly, who advises creators to “start charging something” and experiment to determine the best rates. There may be resources that suggest certain costs of brand deals, but those may vary widely depending on your niche, audience, and the kind of integration. It won’t hurt to look at those resources, but they’re not the ultimate source of truth.

“You’re really worth what someone says yes to,” says Colin Rosenblum on his podcast Creator Support. However, Roberto warns against a short-sighted approach to pricing brand deals. “Too many creators price based on valuing their views or trying to use a CPM model, since that is what they are used to being paid via platform revenue sharing,” he said. “They don’t consider things like opportunity cost, production cost, licensing, the value of their time in meetings and revisions with the brands.”

Consider An Agency Or Manager

Creator agencies and talent managers represent a roster of creators and pitch those creators to sponsors and ad agencies. Working with one has pros and cons.

The biggest con

They’ll take a cut of the deal.

The biggest pro

It will be someone else's job to pitch your content all day and develop relationships with sponsors, leaving you to make the content you love. “This is one of the reasons why I love having a management team so much because they do all the negotiating, they come to me with what a brand is willing to pay,” creator Cathrin Manning says about her brand deals.

“My advice to those looking to work with agencies is to do your research and to remember that standard industry practice is for the agency to take 20% of what they bring to the table,” Roberto says, “But they are not entitled to what you earn on your own.” Agencies and managers can also orchestrate more significant deals with multiple creators, giving them more leverage at the negotiating table.

Don’t Ignore The Fine Print

Every creator (or manager) should review and negotiate many secondary items in a brand contract.

One of those is usage.

Can a sponsor take your branded video and run it as paid advertising on their channels? Can they broadcast portions of it on TV? You might be ok with all these scenarios, but if the sponsor requests it, it’s valuable, and you may want to negotiate extra fees. Another issue is exclusivity. Some brands will try to limit your ability to work with their direct competitors. This is perfectly reasonable for long-term deals if the compensation reflects the ask. However, creators should be on the lookout for exclusivity clauses and try to negotiate for more money when appropriate.

Negotiate Package Deals

Many creator-sponsor relationships crumble because of one bad experience. Videos flop, the algorithm is fickle, and it’s hard to promise any advertiser a certain amount of views on a single video. Creator Support co-host Samir Chaudry suggests doing deals in 3 to protect against the variability in video performance. These package deals let the advertiser benefit from the aggregate performance of several videos—maybe there’s a flop, but maybe there’s a huge hit to balance it out. Package deals and longer-term relationships also allow you to determine what works best for the audience and sponsor.