3 Ways to Drastically Improve Outreach for "Big Content" [Case Study]

During my time as a content guy for a few wonderful software startups, it's been made apparent to me that "big content" is definitely worth it.

Despite the hassles and headaches that come with creating and promoting this sort of content, the return can be huge and can set you ahead of the pack as a thought leader in your industry who isn't afraid of "going big" (not to mention all of the great links).

There's one aspect I regularly see people rant about, and that's when it comes time to do email outreach. Nobody likes being annoying and seeing messages like this (via Marcus Sheridan):

Since that's the case, finding ways to optimize email outreach and maximize the amount of "Yes" responses is crucial in not only getting your big content to succeed, but also for keeping your integrity and annoyances to a minimum.

Like most of the SEOmoz audience, I'm a nerd when it comes to data; it's only surpassed by how much I love my psychological research. I knew that when it came time to do email outreach for Help Scout's first piece of "big" graphical content (an infographic, surprise!), I had to keep track of my outreach efforts and analyze the data carefully, so that I might improve the next time around.

Below I'd like to present my findings, stated concisely in three simple lessons learned on optimizing email outreach for big content (with some nifty graphics, woo hoo!).

Let's get started...

1.) Brevity Wins in Email Outreach

I'll be honest: I was pumped to start emailing folks about our infographic. I thought our designer Jared did a great job, and I obviously had a bias for the content since I put it together.

I unfortunately ran into problems right away though: I was spending hours on posts for my connections, only to have them scrapped.

As an example, I'm good pals with Leo Widrich from the BufferApp, so I spent about an hour creating a post that featured our new infographic for him to re-publish at his leisure. I know his audience well so I thought the finished product was a real winner.

Unfortunately for me (still love ya Leo ;)), he decided to republish his own post featuring the infographic, which was still awesome and a huge favor, but could have been done without me spending an hour of my time.

I found that instead of this being a fluke, it was actually the norm... surprisingly enough, I was having a much better response rate if I just sent the infographic and some great incentive to publish it (more on that later), rather than when I spent the time to write out a full post to use.

So of course I had to start tracking my results!

Full guest post vs. just the infographic

(About ~30 emails pertained to this split)

As you can see, my response rate (I calculated a "response" as a feature or share, for clarification) was much higher when I just sent over the infographic, and as an added bonus, I was spending much less time crafting individual posts to be published.

I have a few reasons why I believe this to be the case...

1. Short message = low commitment (it's easy to browse over the infographic to see if it's a fit, it's harder to go through an entire post)
2. Author credit (writing a post in my voice may have seemed too self-promotional, many bloggers would rather evaluate it themselves)
3. Allowance of an easier option (when submitting a guest post, your mindset is usually "yes/no", but when sending over an infographic, I found more people considered "yes/no/share", as in they might share our post if they didn't accept my guest post)

Important to consider when doing outreach for a big content piece: full-on guest blogging may not be the most optimal strategy.

I had anticipated the opposite effect when I began, but the results were clear: a focus on brevity and flexibility paid off far more consistently than approaching people with a fully complete post for their site.

2.) Remember the 3 P's of Great Outreach

When it comes to smart outreach, I'm a big believer in the 3 P's of Great Outreach, taking the time to make sure your message is:

1. Personalized
2. Positioned
3. Persuasive

I would argue that #3 can be the hardest to accomplish if it's a cold outreach scenario, as the best outreach is done with an extended and very engaged network.

The best way I've found to circumvent this problem when doing cold outreach is to reference a past piece of content that did well, and email your new pitch to the specific journalist/publisher who posted it.

I've used this to go around the abysmal "submit forms" (where your message will get buried) to get myself links from Lifehacker and the like, and it also worked extremely well with this infographic.

The process is quite simple...

• Find a past piece of content that is similar to what you are promoting, make sure that it performed somewhat well in comparison to other articles.

The key here is that this referenced piece needs to have some ties to you, whether it's covering the same topic, covering the competition, or covering some angle within your industry, having this similarity to a formerly successful piece of content is critical.

• Next, emphasize to the publisher at the target site why your piece will perform just as well (if not better) than the reference piece. Stress content strengths (I was quick to point out it was an infographic) and identify why the content will stand out to their audience and drive a ton of traffic.

In some instances, this is easy: it was no sweat to convince places like Customers That Stick to re-publish our graphic, because we already blog about the same topics (customer engagement).

When it comes to promoting content on related sites, the important thing to do here is to point out your content's "affinity" to what their site offers. We were able land on numerous social media blogs by pointing out the important role that social media (especially Twitter) plays in customer service, and emphasizing how this different spin would be popular with their readers.

As for less "tech savvy" industries, one of your best bets is to just play the game: as Jon Cooper pointed out, the techie community is the one that links, so tying them in somehow may seem like blatant pandering, but if your industry doesn't link, it may be your only option.

That's been a whole lot of words with zero pretty charts, so let's get to the results! Here were the response rates (remember that a "response" means it got posted or shared) of using a past reference vs. no reference:

No reference vs. referencing a previous piece of content

(About ~70 emails pertained to this split)

As you can see, when I was able to cite a past success and frame our infographic in the context of, "This will do just as well, if not better", I had much higher response rates from prospective webmasters.

3.) Network Before You Need It

This is certainly the toughest tactic to implement quickly (in fact, it can't be done overnight), but it is far and away the most effective.

Outside of joining the startup world with Help Scout, I've run a bunch of sites on my own. One of these is in the "psychology + persuasion" space, and as such, I've come into contact with huge chunk of the online marketing and social media crowd.

I wanted to know if this previous contact had any significant effect on response rates for my infographic outreach.

To make things more interesting, I excluded closer connections, or people I've chatted with regularly (such as Leo, mentioned above). Does minimal previous contact play a significant role in prospects saying yes?

Here are my results (emails to those with minimal previous contact vs. no contact):

No contact vs. minimal previous contact

(About ~40 emails pertained to this split)

As you can see, any previous past connection gave me a HUGE boost in response rates, and it's not hard to see why: familiarity goes a long way, and even just breaking the ice is a big step to creating a connection with someone that can pay off at a later date.

A humble networking tip: Reach out to one new contact every other day, WITHOUT anything in mind (no requests).

In your industry, related to your industry, even outside your industry: a friendly icebreaker email cannot go wrong if you're just interested in finding out more about them.

Having these contacts may not turn into anything, but doing genuine outreach not only allows you to get in touch with interesting people, in the long run it can help you avoid disastrous "bin-bound" marketing where your entire outreach campaign relies on people that have never heard of you.

Concluding

There was certainly one major confounding variable to the study: I only compared individual email traits, and didn't account for emails that may have included 2 or more strategies (ie, using both a short email and a past reference at once).

Even with this being the case, I still feel the results can shed some light on doing better email outreach.

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments on this case study.

Thanks for reading! :)

About the Author: Gregory Ciotti is the content strategist for Help Scout, the invisible help desk software that makes email support a breeze for you and your customers. Get more from Greg on the Help Scout blog.