Email Teardown #2: The Most Common (Bad)
Posted: Tue Dec 24, 2024 5:38 am
Email Teardown #2: The Most Common (Bad) Blogger Outreach Email Template
This outreach email is a great example of the “average” level of effort that goes into outreach by most people.
While it isn’t terrible from a pure content perspective, it fails big time in trying to capture my interest. Though to the sender’s credit, this outreach email doesn’t have any glaring spelling or grammatical errors—it’s just not enticing enough for me to take action on.
Bad Outreach Email Example Teardown
In case the screenshot (above) is difficult to read, here’s the text of that email:
Subject: Guest post on ryrob.com
Hi there,
First of all, I would like to say that I enjoyed browsing ryrob.com. The content provided is genuine and engaging to read.
My name is [name] and I work for a company that employs a number of talented and experienced copywriters that deliver content on a wide variety of subjects.
I was wondering if you would be willing to accept an article that matches editorial style and topics of ryrob.com. Since an article would contain a contextually integrated link to our partner’s website we would be willing to reward you for publishing it.
Would you be interested?
Sincerely,
[Name]
While this isn’t anywhere near as bad as the previous example, it still leaves a lot to be albania phone number material (and most importantly—it wasn’t effective at getting me to take action on it).
Believe it or not, this email actually makes many of the same mistakes as our first one, including:
No meaningful personalization. Although there’s a small degree of personalization (with my blog URL in the subject line and the body of the email), there’s no indication that the sender has actually ever looked at my site. Plus, I happen to know there are tons of automation tools that can insert a website’s name into the body of an outreach email that’s done at scale—so from the very start I’m already skeptical here because it doesn’t address me by name.
The first sentence reads as a very generic template. “The content provided is genuine and engaging to read…” is a very vague compliment that could be used for almost any blog, suggesting again that this is part of a larger, automated outreach campaign.
It’s not clear who’d be writing the post or where I’d be linking. They mention, “a link to our partner’s website,” in the email which could be something that’s totally unrelated to my blog niche (or worse, a site that’s spammy and could damage my blog’s reputation).
Instead of promising a “FREE” post, this email makes an offer of payment. “We would be willing to reward you for publishing it”. While this may at first seem an attractive offer, seasoned bloggers will know that guest posters offering money won’t normally have high-quality content (which creates more work for me). On top of that, selling a “contextually integrated link” could land your site in hot water with search engines, unless you either Nofollow the link or mark it as sponsored—and it’s unlikely your would-be guest poster will accept those terms.
This outreach email is a great example of the “average” level of effort that goes into outreach by most people.
While it isn’t terrible from a pure content perspective, it fails big time in trying to capture my interest. Though to the sender’s credit, this outreach email doesn’t have any glaring spelling or grammatical errors—it’s just not enticing enough for me to take action on.
Bad Outreach Email Example Teardown
In case the screenshot (above) is difficult to read, here’s the text of that email:
Subject: Guest post on ryrob.com
Hi there,
First of all, I would like to say that I enjoyed browsing ryrob.com. The content provided is genuine and engaging to read.
My name is [name] and I work for a company that employs a number of talented and experienced copywriters that deliver content on a wide variety of subjects.
I was wondering if you would be willing to accept an article that matches editorial style and topics of ryrob.com. Since an article would contain a contextually integrated link to our partner’s website we would be willing to reward you for publishing it.
Would you be interested?
Sincerely,
[Name]
While this isn’t anywhere near as bad as the previous example, it still leaves a lot to be albania phone number material (and most importantly—it wasn’t effective at getting me to take action on it).
Believe it or not, this email actually makes many of the same mistakes as our first one, including:
No meaningful personalization. Although there’s a small degree of personalization (with my blog URL in the subject line and the body of the email), there’s no indication that the sender has actually ever looked at my site. Plus, I happen to know there are tons of automation tools that can insert a website’s name into the body of an outreach email that’s done at scale—so from the very start I’m already skeptical here because it doesn’t address me by name.
The first sentence reads as a very generic template. “The content provided is genuine and engaging to read…” is a very vague compliment that could be used for almost any blog, suggesting again that this is part of a larger, automated outreach campaign.
It’s not clear who’d be writing the post or where I’d be linking. They mention, “a link to our partner’s website,” in the email which could be something that’s totally unrelated to my blog niche (or worse, a site that’s spammy and could damage my blog’s reputation).
Instead of promising a “FREE” post, this email makes an offer of payment. “We would be willing to reward you for publishing it”. While this may at first seem an attractive offer, seasoned bloggers will know that guest posters offering money won’t normally have high-quality content (which creates more work for me). On top of that, selling a “contextually integrated link” could land your site in hot water with search engines, unless you either Nofollow the link or mark it as sponsored—and it’s unlikely your would-be guest poster will accept those terms.