The most important thing in cold outreach is that your recipients CANNOT feel being spammed.

How?

The trick is to make your script not look like a script.

We need to personalize every single link building outreach email we send.

The solution is automation using semi-personalized outreach and answer templates.

This allows you to send hundreds of emails per day where others struggle to send dozens if they’re lucky.

This is basically the same as doing an old school mail merge in that we’re taking a data source (the Referring URL pages and email addresses ) and combining them with an email template.

Increasing Response Rates

The key to getting responses is to make yourself attractive to high level bloggers.

Be energetic. Desperation repels bloggers. Confidence attracts them.

If the person you’re reaching out is the right one, the probability of being marked as SPAM will be lower and response is more likely.

Outreach email is not about you, but about the recipient. They’re the ones you’re trying to engage, after all. Target people’s ego.

Using the first name of the recipient eg. “Hey John,” seems to yield higher than average results.

Always include a Call to Action. What do you want your prospect to do as a result of your email? Don’t assume recipients will figure this part out for themselves. You’ll make life easier for both of you if you state clearly what you’d like to happen next.

Use “because” , i. e. give a reason why.

Using the word “because” and giving a (compelling) reason results in significantly more compliance. This was true even when the reason was not very compelling (“because I have to make copies").

In your outreach, use the word "because" and try to come up with at least a slightly compelling reason.

Here is an example:

​[Guide] Increase _________ with smart devices‏-----Hi,I’m getting in touch to see if [company] would be interested in featuring our guide on how [people who read my site] can use smart devices in their [thing that interests them] to save money and so increase their profits?For example [people who read my site] could use [one of the gadgets] so they’re immediately alerted of [problem it solves]. By reducing this risk [people who read my site] could save the cost of repairing damage caused by [problem it solves] which can be very expensive.You can preview the guide here: [link to their guide]I look forward to hearing from you.Many thanks,Jenny

“Save the cost of repairing” and “which can be very expensive” are examples of “because”. 

Negotiation

You’d be amazed at how many blog owners vastly overestimate the value of their site and ask for money.

This is where learning how to negotiate for links can pay off.

For the replies that ask for a payment, you should change the conversation, steering it away from money and instead talk about “…collaboration” or “…adding value for their audience”.

You should never pay for links or link placement, because with a little perseverance, you can often get the link for free.

Or, offer them a link exchange or a guest post to publish on their blog.

We use “canned responses” to save time – these take seconds to send instead of minutes.

You see, 80% of the replies you get from link prospects fall into a handful of categories such as:

• Paid links
• Link exchanges
• Guest post pitch

And each of those “reply categories” is ideal for a canned response because there’s a limited number of ways we can say “No, thanks” or “Yes, please”.

Our canned response for sites that flat-out demand paid link requests is typically along the lines of, “Sorry, but we never pay for links. Thanks for getting back to us, and have a great day.”

You can still take a few seconds to add a personal touch to each canned response.

Anything that makes you look and sound more like a real person will usually have a positive impact on your response rate.

Follow Up

You should send 3 emails to each prospect before you write them off.

The reason for this is because 48% of links come from follow-up emails.

Take Advantage Of Sharers

Tip: Tons of people will share good guides on social media but not link. There are two ways to approach this:

• Thank them and ask them again if they'd like an intro and maybe a custom graphic to share it on their blog
• Give the social share some interaction from your team and if applicable ​your client's staff.

Social has led to a long forgotten guide (in the form of a cheap infographic) continuing to get links as it's useful. One blogger even printed it out, pinned it to their wall, took a photo, mentioned it in one of their guides, and linked to it.

Social has also led to outreachers halfway through a campaign starting to get replies like "oh I saw that on social and loved it...". You can guess how the campaign started to pick up steam there, and how the responses improved.

A lot of your targets follow each other on social which when you're doing things at scale gives you a great shot for overlap. Facebook, for example, shows posts with more engagement more, so by engaging with the shares you ensure more of their followers see it.

Conclusion

Outreach link building is definitely a challenge and you may not feel up to it.

Pick an inexpensive tool/method from the above, get started slow and you will get the hang of it.