Do you have Apple Pay? If you do, you’re not alone. The payment solution is on 10% of all devices—that’s 1.4 billion users in total.
Apple Pay is the result of a partnership between Apple and Mastercard. But neither company could have achieved this impressive reach without the other.
It’s a perfect example of how brands can achieve more by collaborating.
Joining forces with other companies is a great way to promote your products or create mutually beneficial partnerships.
All partnerships have to start somewhere—and in many cases, this involves emailing brands you want to collaborate with and proposing some sort of mutually beneficial idea.
But writing that initial collaboration email can be hard, especially if the recipient has never heard of you.
This article explains how to write a collaboration email so you can start building partnerships with brands, publications, and influencers in your industry.
What Is a Collaboration Email?
A collaboration email is when you contact a company or individual in your industry and propose some sort of mutually beneficial partnership.
Examples of what this partnership could involve, include:
- Creating a product or service together
- Running an advertising or publicity campaign together
- Promoting products
- Attending or presenting at an event
- Joining an affiliate program
The person you contact may not have heard of you and is likely to receive a lot of similar requests.
It’s important that your email stands out and clearly communicates why they should work with you. You need to write an email that:
- Is compelling: It makes them want to read it
- Introduces you: So they know who you are and why you’re a good person to work with.
- Sells your idea: Make them feel excited about partnering with you.
- Tells them what they’ll get out of it: Will it increase traffic to their website? Get them lots of free news coverage? Sell more of their products?
- Is succinct: Busy people won’t read long emails, so you need to communicate all of the above in just a few short sentences.
Later in the article, we’ll explain how to do this step-by-step. But for now, let’s have a look at what makes a good brand collaboration.
What Makes a Good Brand Collaboration?
Who should you collaborate with? It depends on what you want to achieve and what type of business you run.
Usually, it’s a good idea to reach out to either:
- Businesses that offer complementary products to yours.
- People or businesses with the same audience as you.
A perfect example of the latter is a celebrity endorsement. Desperate Housewives actor Eva Longoria appeared in L’Oreal’s Because You’re Worth It campaign because L’Oreal knew many of its target customers watched the show.
It’s also a good idea to consider how a partnership can extend your reach. A good example of this is YouTube influencers. They are often much better at marketing on social media platforms than large brands are—so partnering with them can help brands connect with their audience and sell more products.
Partnerships to avoid
Partnerships to avoid include ones:
- With direct competitors.
- Where there is some sort of culture clash.
A good example is the Got Milk campaign which aimed to get more people to drink milk. The campaign featured rapper Chris Brown and was supposed to be family friendly.
But the campaign needed to be suspended when Brown was arrested for assaulting his then girlfriend, singer Rhianna.
3 Examples of Collaborations
Here are some examples of collaborations to give you an idea of what you might propose.
1. The publicity stunt: GoPro and Red Bull
Compact camera company GoPro teamed up with Red Bull on Stratos, Felix Baumgartner’s record-breaking skydive from space.
Red Bull is well known for sponsoring extreme events and GoPro’s technology is often used to capture footage from the competitor’s perspective. In this case, Baumgartner wore several GoPros during his descent.
Baumgartner set three world records. This means the event made headlines around the world and is still talked about now. As a result, both brands continue to get exposure from the event.
2. The giveaway
Fast food restaurants are famous for partnering with other brands for their kids’ meals. In this example, McDonald’s has partnered with Nintendo to give away some of its new Pokemon playing cards for free with each Happy Meal.
This is a win-win partnership between two brands that are both popular with kids.
Because the cards are collectible, kids are likely to keep going back to McDonald’s to get more cards. And Nintendo gets its product advertised in the world’s most popular fast food chain. Plus, some kids are likely to continue collecting and swapping out the cards once the promotion is over.
3. Get influencers to test products
This is less high-profile than our previous examples, but an equally common practice. Social media influencers often establish very close relationships with their audiences.
In this case, influencer Gina B has been sent products from fashion brand Shein. Shein targets young women who love the latest fashions—this perfectly describes Gina B’s audience.
If Gina says she likes some of the products, then they are likely to buy them. The benefit for her is that she gets free products to review. But also, in the notes underneath the video, she has links to all featured products.
If someone clicks on one of these links, then she will get paid a commission by Shein. This is known as affiliate marketing and it is a great way for brands to incentivize influencers to showcase their products.
How to Write the Perfect Collaboration Email
So, now that you’ve got an idea of what’s possible, it’s time to find some companies to partner with and start writing to them.
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do this.
1. Identify brands to target
You should already have an idea of which brands, publications, and influencers operate in your industry. If you don’t, then do some research online or ask others in your field for recommendations.
Use the criteria mentioned earlier to decide which ones would be suitable to partner with.
Once you have drawn up a list, research each person/organization and find out how they already partner with others. Try to identify the business objectives they’re trying to fulfill.
Also, look for the PR contact at the business and make a note of their email—this is the person you’ll need to send your collaboration email to.
2. Come up with an idea
Think of an original idea that will help each company achieve the goals you identified in part one.
For example, say you’re an influencer and the company you approach wants to sell more products. Other content creators have been producing videos that explain how to use their products.
You could take a different approach and offer to do a comparison video with a competitor’s products.
3. Write a subject line that grabs their attention
The average person receives 121 emails per day. So it’s no surprise that some of them are missed or deleted because the recipient doesn’t think they are important.
How do people decide whether to open, ignore, or delete an email? The subject line.
Your subject line needs to explain why you are contacting the company and compel them to open the email and discover more.
So don’t just write “partnership request” or “let’s collaborate”.
Instead, write something like:
“Proposal: Partner with us and access 40,000 YouTube subscribers”
“I’ve generated 3,000 leads for [company x]. I can do the same for you”
4. Introduce yourself and your business
Now that you’ve grabbed their attention, it’s time to create your message.
People have short attention spans, so if your message is too long or difficult to read, they will move on to something else.
Get straight to the point and keep it succinct, but give them enough information that they’ll want to engage with you.
Include:
- Who you are
- Where you are based
- What type of content you produce
- Who your audience is
- What demographics you serve
5. Briefly explain why they should partner with you
You need to tell them how working with you will benefit them. This could include:
- Leveraging your strong brand awareness
- Accessing your broad audience
- Piggybacking on your strong sales
- Combining complementary expertise
6. Tell them your idea
Now the most important bit—your idea. Tell them what you will do, on what platform, and how it will support their sales and marketing strategy.
You should also give them examples if you have done something similar before.
7. Proof
It’s also important to prove that you have achieved success for other partners in the past.
For example, if you are a YouTube influencer, you might take screenshots from your comments section. These would show people saying that they have bought products based on your advice. You might also have an email from an audience member saying something similar.
Another way to prove this might be affiliate analytics. Most affiliate programs usually come with software that tracks how many people click your links and go on to make a purchase. You can use this data to prove your success to potential partners.
8. Attach or include a link to your media kit
Because you need to keep it short, you might only quote one stat and then provide a link to your media kit. Here, you can provide more detailed statistics and reasons to partner with you.
The recipient will not only appreciate that you have kept it short, but also that you have given them the opportunity to find out more should they want to.
9. Add a clear call to action
Make sure you tell the recipient exactly what you want them to do and try to be specific.
For example, you might say:
“Can I call you at 14:00 this Thursday to discuss this further?”
Don’t say:
“I hope to hear from you soon”.
This is vague and leaves it up to them when they get back to you—which could be never, if they are very busy.
10. Follow up
As discussed above, people are busy. Don’t be surprised if you don’t get a response. It could be that the person read your email, but then simply forgot to respond or had to speak to someone else, first.
Send a polite reminder and reiterate your call to action. Don’t send more than one reminder—if they still don’t get back to you after this, they are probably not interested.
Business collaboration email template
Below we’ve written an example of a collaboration email that shows how using the instructions above might look like in practice.
You can use this as a template for your own partnership outreach.
In this situation, the company wants to sell more software by partnering with marketing consultants who will recommend their tools.
Hi Jennifer,
My name is Rich, I’m brand manager at Aztecco. We provide CRM software to start-ups in Europe and the USA.
Our blog gets a whopping 1.3 million monthly visitors and we’d love to partner and share some of your marketing expertise with our readers.
In exchange for the increased profile, we’d like you to offer our CRM software to all of your new consultancy clients.
We did something similar with Marketify last year. They generated 2x leads and saw their website traffic increase 20%. You can read the articles they published here.
I’ve sent you a meeting request on Zoom for next Wednesday at 10am so we can discuss this further. If you’re interested then please accept the meeting or propose an alternative time.
Kind Regards
Rich
Top Tips for a Great Collaboration Email
Here are some tips to help make your collaboration email even more effective.
Create a partnership page
Similar to your media pack, it can be useful to present case studies of each successful partnership you form and list them on a single page.
This allows you to build a portfolio of successful partnerships and you can then use this page to sell yourself in the future.
Hyper-personalize your message
You can make your email stand out by adding hyper-personalized elements.
You can use software like Hyperise to add the recipient’s name, their personal details. or a call to action to an eye-catching image, GIF, or video.
Here’s an example:
Using images like this in your request makes it more likely you’ll grab their attention. In fact, the response rate to messages with images like these is usually double compared to those that don’t have them.
This means you’re more likely to form partnerships. And even if you don’t, the recipient will be sure to remember you and may contact you for future collaborations.
Be fair
Remember that collaborations should be mutually beneficial. Both parties need to provide and gain equal value. Make sure that what you’re offering is fair for you and your partner.
It’s also important to consider it within context. A small company has more to gain from a larger, more well-known brand, and may have to offer their collaboration partner additional value.
Equally, if you are a large company and approach a smaller organization, remember they might be limited in the amount of resources they can put toward the partnership.
Have questions prepared
If your business collaboration emails are successful, then it’s not the end yet. You still need to have the first meeting and sell your idea.
Go to the meeting armed with questions and try to understand what they want to get out of your collaboration. Ask questions like:
- What challenges are your company currently facing?
- What’s your brand and marketing strategy?
- How does the platform we use fit into this?
- What are your targets for this year?
- How do you normally work with other companies/influencers/publications?
- Have you ever done anything like this before?
Final Thoughts
In this article, we’ve explained what a brand collaboration is and provided some examples. We’ve also explained how to write a collaboration email and given you some tips to make it even better—including how personalizing these emails with Hyperise will get them noticed.
You should now know everything you need to write a persuasive business collaboration email.
If you’d like to try Hyperise for yourself, then sign up for a free trial today.