Unsurprisingly, the ecommerce niche is one of the most contested business spaces in the world. To make a mark on this vast landscape, full of competition, new entrants need to have one or more secret weapons.
One method that can pay dividends, and in a short time, is collaborating with influential bloggers.
One of the most standout content formats, even in 2025, has been blogging. It has persisted through decades and forms the backbone of many marketing campaigns today.
The only difference between then and now is that blogging has become more specialized. Popular bloggers have a lot of power when directing a brand's narrative.
We look deeper into how you can make your customized blogger outreach program attract the best bloggers!
To kick things off, we need to come up with a list of the top bloggers in your niche. This step can be simple or complicated, depending on your industry.
For more mainstream niches, you already know who the bigger bloggers are. You only need to hit them up on their socials and strike a deal.
However, you need to use professional tools for the more niche industry. Check out tools like BuzzSumo, BuzzStream, and NinjaOutreach, which can be the core of any blogger outreach process.
These can give you great results based on keywords, follower count, update frequency, and more. Before you decide on a blogger, read their blogs and verify if their content style aligns with your brand values.
If, after the first step, all you have is a small list with a few names, we think you might need to repeat it! The reason is simple - the more probable bloggers you have in there, the better the chances of you striking a deal with them.
Once you have at least 30 names on your list, it's time to sort them into a database.
To do this, use something you're familiar with, like Excel or Google Sheets.
Use details like contact information, blog metrics, and responses. It's a good idea here to brainstorm what should be included with your team to get as detailed a picture as possible.
Take the time to prepare this sheet, as it will be used by all the members of your marketing team to track information.
Once you've got the sheet ready, it's time to get to business! Hitting up bloggers with cold emails or DMs without interacting with them before will get ignored. Have your team focus on creating a relationship with the blogger.
Regularly engage with them on the posts and look to create value with the comments section.
Don't just post for posting's sake! They will see through this, and you'll lose your chance to collaborate with them. Connecting with them on their socials is a good step forward. Make it a point to regularly engage with them there as well.
Take care that you don't go overboard with comments and smother them! The interactions should be authentic and relevant to the posted content.
Now that you've built a rapport with them, it's time to take your relationship with them to the next level. This usually takes the form of an outreach pitch.
A pitch can be an email, DM, or even a phone call. But more often than not, a phone call may seem rude unless you have consent from the other party. For a majority of cases, messages or emails are great.
Remember, crafting your outreach pitch is not always about your company. Sure, you need to look out for what you're getting but highlight what they're getting from the engagement.
Keep the pitch clear and concise, and don't use overly flowery language. Always, always proofread before you send it out!
Often, brands make the mistake of thinking that bloggers are simply people who do their bidding. Don't be that brand! When engaging with a popular blogger, understand that they have their audience and need to offer something of value to them as well.
The rule of thumb with outreach is to offer something of genuine value before you ask for favors.
Sending them early access to your products, complimentary show tickets, or even a discount code they can share with their followers are all great ideas.
From a monetary perspective, affiliate commissions are another great way to incentivize them to promote your brand. Ensure that you feature them on your platforms for more credibility.
Following up with bloggers is one of the trickier parts of the process. Here, you want a perfect balancing act between being firm about what you want and not being pushy and overbearing.
Sending them polite reminders keeps you at the top of their mind. Ensure you don't send generic, AI-written messages - this is a red flag!
Space the follow-up appropriately, and ensure you don't bombard them with messages. Once they agree to work with you, you have more freedom to direct the engagement.
Exercise restraint with your communication and remain professional through all your interactions. Always ensure that you focus on the value you offer with all your messages.
The goal of every blogger outreach program is to ensure that you cultivate a long-term relationship with them. If for nothing other than that, you've spent all this time and energy to make it happen!
Ensure you keep your communication lines open with them; you must seem approachable.
Every relationship thrives with give and take. From your end, ensure that you engage with their content regularly.
Celebrate their achievements and interact with their followers. Again, the engagement should be authentic and without any ulterior motives. You don't want to come across as someone who's after them for their online status!
Blog influencers are a huge untapped resource that you can leverage to benefit your business. The key point to remember here is that bigger is not always better.
While it is true that mega influencers might boast millions of followers, the level of engagement might be low. Contrast that to niche-specific micro or macro influencers, and the numbers increase.
As a business, you need to tap into their demographics. The most effective ways to do this are through influencer-generated content and collaborations with them.
Helping them coordinate contests is another great way to ensure more people know about your brand. Before starting, ensure that the blogger influencer aligns with your interests and values.
A vital aspect of blogger outreach that many brands miss out on is measuring the success of their campaign.
As a business, it pays to understand and highlight your goals. It can help set the right KPIs for your outreach campaign.
Have a process in place that can track KPIs related to your campaign. The most common KPIs for blogger outreach are response, acceptance, blog reach, and conversion rates.
Understanding how these impact your blogger outreach program is the first step towards optimization. They can highlight factors like blogger interest, suitability, and quality of leads.
Understanding metrics can help you make smarter decisions regarding how to approach bloggers.
Regardless of how experienced businesses are in their industry, they still make glaring errors when reaching out to bloggers.
Companies should ensure their outreach team is right on the money when crafting pitches.
There should be no room for generic copy-paste content in a high-level outreach program, at least with bloggers. Your team must read up on blogger guidelines before they approach them.
These guidelines can dictate if a blogger outreach program is successful or not. Something that most companies do, and should be avoided at all costs, is being too salesy.
Throwing in marketing-speak can only cheapen your outreach pitch. Be concise with your pitches, and strive to be authentic.
With the advent of technology, marketers can relax and let the tools handle most of the repetitive tasks!
These tools can handle various outreach tasks, including managing blogger contacts, sending emails, and tracking important metrics. Some of the more popular tools for automation are BuzzStream, Mailshake, and Pitchbox.
However, you'd be wrong if you thought you could just leave it to the tools and put your feet on your desk!
You must create follow-up sequences for automated emails, audit metrics, and validate blogger databases. The overall performance of the outreach program also needs to be monitored.
When you want to make a splash in the virtual world, nothing beats an event in the real world! People are social creatures keener to make lasting connections in person rather than online.
Organizing meetups should be high on your list of priorities as a business. Since you're bringing in a lot of bloggers together, this can provide your team with great opportunities to network with them.
Conducting product showcases and reveals is another great way to generate buzz for your brand. Make the event as special as possible with exclusive perks and memorabilia for attendees. As always, ensure your ears are open for feedback to improve your next one.
Loyalty programs are the one aspect of outreach most businesses fail to capitalize on, yet they are one of the more productive ones. Rewarding consistent collaboration with your brand makes a huge difference in business credibility.
More bloggers would want to work with your business, and it will make your brand stand out from the competition.
Here, taking an all-or-nothing approach can be detrimental in the long run. The best alternative would be to offer a tiered approach based on key metrics like engagement or traffic generated.
This could give the bloggers an incentive to push harder for your brand. Recognize your top bloggers and give them exclusive perks to encourage more participation in your outreach program.
The common factor across all outreach programs is that there's always room to improve! Resting easy on something that works well is never a good idea.
Ecommerce is as competitive as it is, but there's always a competitor on the horizon looking to take your place. You can change your outreach process in many ways to make it more effective.
Test out outreach strategies and platforms.
Do more bloggers respond to emails or social media DMs?
Does sending out outreach emails at a specific time yield more results?
What niches should you expand into for your next blogger outreach?
These pertinent questions can lead you to improve your outreach process.
Have you heard of the expression keep your friends close and enemies closer?
While enemies is a strong word, and we don't condone hostility, the essence of the message is still true! Analyzing your competitors, especially if they've been around for longer than you have, is a great way to build up your initial outreach program.
Identify the bloggers they work with and approach them with your best pitches. Have your team study their approach to outreach and try to replicate them as best as you can.
Learn from their failures and make sure you have systems in place that can avoid these pitfalls. The key point to remember here is to not outright copy them.
When running an outreach program, you're probably busy with several aspects, like organizing content and coordinating with bloggers. But always ensure you have an eye on your campaign performance figures.
Monitor related KPIs like email open, response rates, acceptance rates, and so on. It is also a good idea to track social mentions and shares of content related to your brand.
Ensure you have a unique referral code for each blogger and track their traffic to your website or targeted page. Leverage UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameters for effective tracking.
Ultimately, if your campaign is not performing as it should, it wastes time and effort.
Once you've finalized the framework and the process and it's working reasonably well, it's time to scale and automate it.
Scaling your outreach gives you more bloggers to work with and, depending on your accrued reputation, might even be better for your business. In this regard, a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool can be indispensable.
Some examples of powerful CRM tools are HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zoho CRM.
Automation is an important factor when you're considering scaling your process. Repetitive tasks in the pipeline, like choosing the initial list of bloggers, sending follow-ups, and tracking responses, must be automated.
This leaves your team free to handle core activities of the outreach process, like optimization and relationship-building activities.
● Define your business goals and objectives for the team.
● Identify your target audience and the brand message you want to send.
● Research the type of bloggers that will carry your message.
● Create a complete database of bloggers with details that your team can use.
● Engage with bloggers and build genuine relationships with them.
● Create personalized outreach pitches that are concise and clear.
● Follow up with bloggers, but do so politely.
● Host events and facilitate in-person networking.
● Ensure that you have a loyalty program to reward consistent participation.
● Leverage tools for repetitive tasks to focus on more impactful activities.