12 Useful Email Outreach Tips for Small Businesses Link Building Strategy

Last Updated: 

March 15, 2024

A significant part of a link-building strategy would be the email outreach part that you do to let websites know that you’re interested in collaborating with them. It may be hard to reach out to small businesses that aren’t as recognisable, but with these steps, it should be easier for you to succeed with your email outreach approach. Check these tips out.

Key Takeaways on  Useful Email Outreach Tips for Small Businesses Link Building Strategy

  1. Personalise Your Emails: Avoid generic messaging and hyper-personalise your emails to establish a positive relationship with potential collaborators.
  2. Be Clear and Concise: Ensure that your email is clear and concise when reaching out to websites for link-building, providing all necessary information.
  3. Provide Value: Stand out by offering something of genuine worth to recipients, demonstrating your understanding of their needs and offering solutions.
  4. Personalise Your Value Proposition: Tailor your value proposition based on research about the target website or individual, addressing their specific interests and pain points.
  5. Research Your Targets: Prioritise research before pitching to prospects to ensure personalised and valuable email outreach.
  6. Build Relationships: Foster relationships with target prospects to facilitate easier link-building opportunities in the future.
  7. Follow Up: Send follow-up emails to increase the chances of your pitch being seen and considered amidst a sea of emails.
  8. Avoid Spammy Tactics: Steer clear of template-like emails and add a personal touch to appear more authentic and professional.
  9. Test Your Outreach Approach: A/B test different factors in your email outreach to improve its effectiveness.
  10. Monitor Results: Track open rates and responses to evaluate the success of your link-building campaigns.
  11. Be Patient and Persistent: Follow up with prospects, but avoid being too impatient or annoying in your approach.
  12. Respect Opt-Out Requests: Include opt-out requests to respect recipients' preferences and maintain your email metrics' accuracy.
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1. Personalise Your Emails

When emailing prospects for your link-building campaign, personalising the emails from the get-go is always a good idea.

Starting with a “To Whom It May Concern” or generic messaging can deter people and webmasters from wanting to work with you. Also, when you hyper-personalise your emails, you can prevent getting sent to the spam folder.

Taking the time to personalise your emails can make all the difference in getting a positive relationship with the website you want to get links from and to.

2. Be Clear and Concise

Remember that you’ve probably already researched that website when you email someone for link-building purposes. However, the same doesn’t apply to them regarding their understanding of you.

They don’t know you or your business. Therefore, ensure that your email is as clear and concise as possible when submitting the possibility of a link-building with them.

They usually have pitch guidelines on their website if they’re accepting guest posting opportunities. Since that’s the case, it’s a good idea to consider these before you email anyone for link-building.

3. Provide Value

In a world where inboxes receive promotional emails non-stop, it’s crucial to stand out and offer something of genuine worth to your recipients. You do that by communicating your value in the email as soon as possible.

Avoid generic templates or mass-sent emails that lack personalisation. Instead, please demonstrate that you have taken the time to understand their specific needs and offer solutions or insights that can genuinely benefit them.

The best way to show value for your email outreach for link building is by having an excellent content pitch for your guest posts. Doing your research through their blog to ensure that you’re not repeating the same article will be a huge help to this, as well as their blog guidelines.

4. Personalise Your Value Proposition

We mentioned the need for personalisation and one of the parts of your email outreach where you can show that is your value proposition.

You can start by researching and understanding the target website or individual you are contacting. Please take note of their specific interests, needs, and pain points related to your industry or niche.

This information should help you address their concerns and demonstrate how collaborating with your small business through link building can benefit them.

Of course, you still need to make your email short and sweet.

5. Research Your Targets

You can’t personalise your emails, pitch your content, or provide value without doing the prior research needed before that.

You must research first if you plan on pitching to a few prospects. Otherwise, you might find your emails ignored, and it doesn’t even get the chance to have someone read them.

6. Build Relationships

According to GOBIGGR link building services PH - “building relationships to your target prospects is helpful since you will likely be doing link building for a long time”.

When the webmaster or the prospect is already familiar with you, the pitching process with the website will be a lot easier next time you want to build links with them once again.

7. Follow Up

People open to guest posts or link-building likely get a ton of emails all the time. Most of them are spam. That’s why you need to make sure that you send an email follow-up regarding your pitch.

Sometimes, it isn’t your content pitch that’s the problem. It’s just that your prospect’s inbox is filled to the brim with pitches that they can’t sift through yours immediately after you send one.

8. Avoid Spammy Tactics

Emails that are clear templates are a no-go.

Even if you manually typed those, it will make you seem unprofessional, and if you mass-send those, you’re ending up in someone’s Spam folder.

Just be clear and take the time to add some personality to your email outreach efforts. That way, you seem more authentic, and email providers don’t flag your emails as spam. Also, don't hesitate to use the SPF checker to improve email security and avoid your messages being marked as spam.

9. Test Your Outreach Approach

A/B testing is essential to know whether your email outreach for link-building campaigns works. Test different factors.

How are the email subjects? Consider fixing the email content.

Once you take the time to test your outreach approach, your email campaigns will be more effective and have higher chances of getting responses.

10. Monitor Results

Link building for small businesses to large ones is always helpful in improving SEO. However, you can only assume it’s a success with monitoring results in the first place.

Check your open rates.

Figure out how many responses did your emails get. How many agreed to work with you and didn’t want to?

Based on the answers, you can determine whether you need to change your outreach approach significantly.

11. Be Patient and Persistent

Again, remember to follow up, but don’t follow up too soon.

As mentioned earlier, your prospects might get proposals and pitches left, right, and center. Be patient but still persistent until you get a clear yes or no from them.

Take three days to one week before following up and not the same day. The important part is that you follow up soon enough that they remember you but not too soon that you’re annoying.

12. Respect Opt-Out Requests

If your link-building outreach approach involves email subscribers or newsletters to prospects, include opt-out requests.

It would be best if you preferred that someone stop receiving your emails since it’s skewing your metrics. You’d rather that they unsubscribe rather than mark you as spam.

Conclusion

These tips should give you the proper arsenal for a higher success rate for your link-building strategy as a small business. Next time you’re building your email campaign, make sure that you keep these email tips in mind so that you can have a successful run and get more links your way.

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