How to contact influencers so they reply?

To contact influencers, find the creators your buyers follow, then email or use their site before a cold DM. Follow up and send product with no strings.

Dennis Ksendzov

Founder · November 10, 2026 · 2 min read

Hand-drawn sketch of Contacting influencers: Find buyers' creators to Email first to Follow up

Start with the people who buy your product. Find the creators they follow, then reach them through their website or support contact, which can work better than an Instagram DM. Reach out more than once, and look for people you both know. (Alex Hormozi)

30 of people that we send product to will post for free without us even asking
eCommerce Podcast

Should I email or DM influencers?

Email first, then DM, and keep the first ask small.

Social Snowball sends email first through tools like Instantly or Smartlead, then follows with DMs. (Social Snowball)

First, keep it short. Like really short. Just send a brief introduction followed by explaining what you want. Your goal is to start the conversation. You can discuss everything else later on.

Magic Spoon, 2020: Magic Spoon's co-founder personally DM'd micro-influencers with around 30,000 Instagram followers to seed free product, with no pressure to post. (Gabby Lewis, 2020, at 16:50)

Once the message works, the next question is how many to send.

How many influencers should I reach out to?

Plan for most to say no, and send enough to cover it.

We used to run both a talent agency and an influencer agency. The old way, we reached out to 1,000, got 50 responses and got 3 influencers. As a talent agency we had a roster of 71, and few of them fit any one brand.

Kinship contacts 500 influencers a month per brand. About 20 percent, or 100, say yes, and 30 percent of those post for free with two to three assets each. (eCommerce Podcast)

For a consumer brand, Yash Chavan says 200 to 300 small Instagram influencers is enough. (Yash Chavan - SARAL & SATHI)

Volume helps, but warm paths get answers faster.

Should I contact an influencer or their manager?

Go through people who already know them: managers, friends and past partners.

A talent manager can put a brand in front of a whole roster with one email.

His second choice is LinkedIn, as they allow you to add a short note to the connection request. There is a 300 character limit and the preview doesn’t display the full message. So, make sure your inte

One cookie dough brand on Startup to Storefront asked every influencer it had ever worked with to post about the new product. (Startup to Storefront)

Teami Blends keeps seven people full time just to source creators, contact them, manage deliverables and schedule posts. (Teami Blends)

That is a lot of hours before a single post goes live.

More on this:

What makes an athlete partnership work? La Sportiva's athlete manager and Anton Krupicka

Can someone do influencer outreach for me?

If your team has no time to chase creators, you can set things up so they come to you.

Get creators coming to you, and asking for less money.

If you have some of the steps in place, we audit what's missing in each and how to take it further.