influencer-outreach

Influencer Outreach

Draft the first-touch pitch and follow-up plan a partnership manager uses to propose a collaboration to one individually vetted influencer or creator, then stop at the first positive reply.

No named industry-standard framework exists for creator pitching. Published guidance is a scatter of single-outlet formulations, none branded or adopted cross-vendor:

• one vendor's soft-CTA vs. specific-ask split
• one commerce guide's four-question first-message checklist
• one consultant's unnamed six-step process

Never present any of them as a standard.

Interview

Ask before drafting anything. One question per message; offer multiple-choice answers when possible. Skip any question the user already answered.

• Is this a B2C brand collab or a B2B creator program? (Product sold to consumers vs. to businesses - drives message framing and deliverable types.)
• What does the brand make, and what is the one-line reason this creator's audience would care?
• Who is the creator, on which platform(s), and what evidence says they fit? (Specific posts, audience data, a discovery brief - fit evidence is required input, not something to invent here.)
• What compensation model is on offer, with the actual number? (Flat fee $X / commission % + attribution window + payout schedule / gifted product only / hybrid.) This skill communicates the offer; it never designs or adjusts it.
• What campaign shape do you have in mind - rough deliverables and timing? (Stays a one-line sketch in message one.)
• What contact does the creator actually list: business email, DM only, or a manager/agent?
• What is the brand voice? (Formal, peer-casual, playful - or point to an example message.)
• Who signs, from which address or account?
• Which CTA can you actually honor: reply-for-details, product sample on reply, a short call, or an application link? (Anything you cannot honor this week is deleted from the menu, not ranked low.)
• By when does a reply have to land - is there a launch or campaign date this pitch must beat? (A hard date promotes the near-zero-effort angles, the reply-for-details CTA, and the single-follow-up cadence; no date lets an hour of grounding and the longer cadence pay off.)
• One-off win, or a relationship you intend to compound? (Compounding promotes the manager route and the long-tail cadence; one-off promotes the creator's own listed contact and a hard stop at three messages.)
• What is your effort ceiling per pitch - hours for grounding, product you can ship, calendar you can offer? (An hour of grounding buys the content-specific angle; no product deletes the sample CTA; no calendar deletes the call CTA.)

Every ordering this skill gives is a default, not a law: it shifts with context and with who executes it. Re-rank it against what you already know about this user before proposing anything, then say which answer moved which option:

• an existing relationship with this creator or their manager
• a brand the creator already recognizes
• audience data already in hand
• no product to gift at all

Workflow

1. Run the Interview; collect every answer before writing a word.
2. Ground the personalization: if you can browse the web, load the creator's two or three most recent posts and confirm the fit evidence yourself; otherwise ask the user for the specific post, series, or audience trait the pitch will cite. Never fabricate familiarity.
3. Confirm the recipient against references/channel-and-manager.md. The creator's published business contact decides it; where more than one is published, the default order is listed manager > listed business email > DM. Going around a listed manager is a failure mode, not a shortcut.
4. Enter brainstorming mode for the personalization angle: propose 2-3 candidate angles with trade-offs and a recommendation, phrased in the manager's own vocabulary (angle, hook, fit, deliverable, CTA). Draw them from the ranked angle menu in references/pitch-anatomy.md - default order already-recommending > recent launch > specific content > their-product-we-use > format fit > asserted overlap - and delete any angle that is not true of this creator instead of offering it low.
5. Ask brainstorming questions one at a time. Write no message until the manager explicitly picks an angle.
6. Draft the first touch per references/pitch-anatomy.md, fitted to the confirmed recipient. Pick the one CTA from that file's ranked menu - default order reply for details > sample on reply > short call > application link - and drop any the brand cannot honor. Compensation transparency follows the model:
   • commission offers front-load exact mechanics
   • flat-fee offers name the model without dumping a rate card
7. Draft the follow-up plan per references/follow-up-cadence.md: default order two follow-ups > one follow-up > long tail, then close the file.
8. Run your preferred humanizer skill over the pitch and every follow-up. Never ship raw first-draft model output as final - AI-tell phrasing is exactly the mass-template smell that gets a pitch deleted on sight.
9. Self-check against the Quality gate below; redraft and re-run the humanizer until every item passes.
10. Present the package section by section - angle, first touch, follow-up plan, stop rule - and validate each with the user before finalizing.
11. Hand off the full artifact (next section). On a positive reply, this skill's job is done: carry the stated compensation facts into negotiation unchanged.
12. If your harness has persistent memory, memorize the approved angle, brand voice, compensation facts, and the outcome once known - later pitches for the same brand then skip straight past most of the interview.

Invocation and expected output

Typical invocations:

• "Pitch @plantsbypriya for our ceramic planter launch - she's vetted, 48k on Instagram, offer is gifted product plus 15% commission."
• "Write the first-touch email to the DevOps newsletter writer from our shortlist - $2,000 sponsored deep-dive, she lists a partnerships email."

Deliver one structured artifact:

INFLUENCER PITCH PACKAGE - <creator>, <date>
Chosen angle   : approved personalization angle + why it beat the alternatives
First touch    : subject (email only) + message body, fitted to the confirmed channel
Follow-up plan : table - touch / day / channel / angle / one-line summary
Stop rule      : positive reply -> stop and hand off; silence after final touch -> close the file
Handoff notes  : compensation facts as stated, deliverables mentioned, CTA promised - for the negotiation stage

B2B and B2C

• B2B
  • Speak to a business need the creator's audience has, not just a product benefit - the one consistently documented B2B-specific rule.
  • Deliverables skew to webinars, white papers, articles, and podcast reads.
  • Gifting is documented B2B practice, but shaped differently than in B2C: extended platform access, a conference pass, a beta invite, or event hosting, rather than a physical product. Zapier's creator-partner retreat is a real named example, and a 2025 industry report ranks in-person gifted events as the second most effective B2B creator content type after social posts. Where none of those forms fit, default to a fee or a commission.
  • Expect longer, multi-stakeholder buying cycles to shape what "conversion" means in the pitch.
• B2C
  • Deliverables skew to posts, videos, and stories.
  • Gifting and commission offers are common and well documented.
• Honest limit: the pitch-anatomy and cadence guidance here is published unsegmented by business model, which weakly suggests practitioners treat it as universal. Apply it to both, knowing that universality is an inference, not a documented rule.

Quality gate

The gate splits by message type: a follow-up is capped at one or two sentences with nothing from the first touch restated (see the cadence reference), so it cannot carry the compensation terms or the full email structure.

Scoring a follow-up against the first-touch list would make the gate unpassable and the loop below never terminate. Iterate, redraft, and re-run the humanizer until nothing fails.

First touch - all nine items, 9/9.

1. Opens on one verifiable, creator-specific fact (a named post, series, or audience trait) framed as audience fit, not flattery.
2. The swap test: replacing the creator's name with another creator's would force a rewrite. If the message survives the swap, it is a template.
3. Compensation model and the real number are present and match the interview exactly.
   • Commission pitches state rate, attribution window, and payout schedule.
   • Flat-fee pitches name the model without a rate card.
   • Gifted-only pitches say so plainly and never imply payment.
4. Exactly one ask, low-friction, matching a CTA the manager confirmed they can honor.
5. Fitted to the confirmed channel: full structure for email, 2-4 sentences and no links for a DM, addressed to the manager when one is listed.
6. None of the documented negative signals: generic salutation, emoji-bait subject, fabricated familiarity, feature dump, rate-card dump, aggressive negotiation language, long campaign proposal.
7. B2B pitches state the business need; B2C pitches state the audience-purchase fit.
8. No disclosure language, contract terms, or exclusivity demands - documented practitioner workflows place all of these after agreement, never in the cold pitch.
9. Passes the humanizer and reads human when spoken aloud.

Every follow-up - items 4, 6, 8 and 9 above, plus these three, 7/7.

10. One or two sentences. Nothing from the first touch restated.
11. Carries one new small angle - a proof point held back from message one, an easier version of the ask, or a genuine timing hook. Never "just checking in", "bumping this", or "did you see my email?".
12. Low pressure: no guilt-tripping, no invented deadline, nothing that reads as chasing. Silence is busy, not rejection.

Items 1, 2, 3, 5 and 7 are first-touch content by construction and are not scored on follow-ups. Item 11 does the work item 2 does on the first touch: a follow-up that could be sent to any creator unchanged fails it.

KPIs

• No trustworthy reply-rate benchmark exists for creator outreach. The only survey on the topic explicitly declines to publish one. Never quote any of the circulating figures as fact or as a target - each traces to broken citations or a single-source self-report:
  • an "8.5% reply rate"
  • a "99% ignored" claim for generic salutations
  • one practitioner's self-reported "90% response rate"
• Benchmark against your own log instead: track every pitch in a flat table (creator, channel, angle, sent date, follow-ups used, outcome, days-to-reply). After a dozen pitches, your own reply rate per angle and per channel is the benchmark that matters.
• Core KPIs:
  • reply rate (any response)
  • positive-reply rate (open to talking)
  • days to first reply
  • which angles produced pitches that survived negotiation, recorded after the downstream stage closes
• If your harness has persistent memory, keep the log there across sessions; otherwise hand the table to the user to maintain.

Common failure modes

Failure	Fix
Template smell - personalization swappable to any creator	Rerun the angle brainstorm; cite one verifiable specific; apply the swap test
Compensation question buried or omitted	State model + real number per the anatomy rules; vagueness reads as a lowball
Copying a paid-collab template for a commission offer	Commission flips the risk onto the creator - front-load rate, window, payout, per-sale estimate
Pitching the wrong channel	Re-run the recipient gate in step 3 before anything else - the published contact decides, the ranking only breaks ties
Ignoring or going around a listed manager	Pitch the manager with full personalization; go direct only when the creator has asked for it
Fabricated familiarity ("longtime fan of your work")	One verifiable specific, or say honestly how you found them
Rate card or full campaign proposal in message one	One-line deliverable sketch; details belong after the reply
Disclosure, contract, or exclusivity terms in the pitch	Post-agreement topics; route disclosure to the compliance skill
Negotiating in the pitch thread after a positive reply	Stop - the handoff notes carry the facts into the negotiation stage

Reference

• See references/examples.md before writing copy - a positive B2C and B2B example with follow-up plan, and a line-by-line annotated negative example.
• See mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@influencer-discovery-brief for choosing and vetting which creator to pitch - this skill assumes that work is done.
• See mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@influencer-negotiation-playbook for everything after the creator replies with interest.
• See mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@influencer-campaign-brief for the creative brief once the deal is signed.
• See mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@affiliate-recruitment-outreach for recruiting affiliates across a prospect list rather than pitching one vetted creator.
• See mbfinotti/partnerships-skills@affiliate-disclosure-compliance for the disclosure obligations that attach once a material connection exists.