Emailing Like A Professional
Secure a Partnership Series
Hello everyone!
Welcome back to our Secure a Partnership series, where I discuss tips and tricks for presenting professionally online and increasing your chances of scoring sponsorships and partnership opportunities. The information in this series is by recruiters for creators, so make sure to share this with someone who could benefit from it!
Last time we talked about how to prime your social media account to get noticed by recruiters or brands and to make it easy for them to get in contact with you. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend you go get caught up before continuing, because today we’ll be taking things a step further and discussing emails.
Why It’s Important
When it comes to content creators and business partnerships, I’m going to be honest. Many of us haven’t been taught email etiquette. Some of us may have picked up on good habits here or there, and others may be fortunate enough to come from a business background and were taught a thing or two, but a large amount of content creators out there aren’t coming from a business or highly professional environment where email and professional behaviors are actively taught and reinforced. For me personally, I was just going with what I picked up along the way until I took a business and professional writing class in college, and my emailing style has changed drastically since.
There’s a growing demographic of individuals who are pursuing or want to pursue becoming an influencer or content creator of some kind, with a good chunk of them being younger or amateurs doing so on a part-time basis. According to a HigherVisibility study that surveyed 1,000 individuals aged 16–25 in the US: “over 1 in 4 Gen Z surveyed plan to become social media influencers, with 16% even claiming that they would pay to become one.” Additionally, according to SignalFire, of the ~50 million content creators monetizing their content in some capacity, 46.7 million of them are considered to be “amaterur” content creators that are only monetizing part-time. That’s over 93%!
The creator economy is such a diverse space with contributors of all kinds, but it would be silly to believe that everyone who’s monetizing or trying to monetize content is a perfect professional. So let’s go over some important do’s and don’ts to make your emails more professional.
The Signature
Let’s start with one of the most important aspects of an email, the signature. They are highly customizable, and you can tell a lot about a person by how they sign their emails. Make sure you’re leaving a good impression with yours.
A signature’s purpose is to provide important information to anyone you correspond with and to present well at the end of an email. It’s up to you to decide how much information you want to include in your signature, but keep in mind that what goes into it should be what you’d like the person you’re emailing to know about you.
For example, are you giving out your full name, a nickname, or just your social media handle? Do you want them to have multiple ways of getting in contact with you? Which accounts do you consider your primary ones? Recruiters, business contacts, etc. are going to be finding you in different ways, at different times, and from different platforms or pieces of content, so you can’t go into every email exchange assuming they know everything about you. Having this information incorporated into your emails can prime them with what they need to maintain healthy and respectful communication.
One option for creating a signature is to play it simple and keep it text-based. This could be something as simple as just your name, but you can also include information such as your job title/a relevant position, a company you represent, preferred contact information such as reiterating your email address or including a phone number, or hyperlinks that lead to prominent social media accounts or your website.
Sincerely,
John Smith
Account Manager
My Company’s Name
Email: johnsmith25@gmail.com
Phone: 123.867.5309
Website | Instagram | YouTube
Another option is to incorporate an image or graphic into your signature. This could be by replacing the text (or a portion of the text) with an image, or by including a company logo, profile picture, photo of yourself, or other branding asset into the mix. This can liven up the signature a bit, match your brand or aesthetic, and make the info presented catch the eye better. I would suggest using a design software such as Canva to create this kind of asset for your signature, as they have plenty of email signature specific templates that you could customize, or you can create one of your own from scratch.
Regards,
📧 : alfishplays@gmail.com
YouTube | Twitch | Twitter | Instagram
This signature, for example, uses an image that’s 350px by 200px and has text above and below the image, with an additional image icon underneath the graphic.
Signatures can be created and assigned quite easily across all emailing suites, so whether you use large scale email providers such as Gmail or Outlook, or a service provider based email like Comcast or Yahoo, you shouldn’t have an issue creating an email signature like the ones discussed. Providers like Gmail also have the option to have multiple signatures be used for different occasions, so you could have a picture-based signature attached to my first email, but replies set to a more text-heavy signature since the attention grabbing aesthetics aren’t as necessary as a conversation continues. It’s up to you!
Avoid Mobile Emailing
When it comes to sending emails from your phone, we’ve all seen the dreaded “sent from my phone” signature. These kinds of emails usually come in when someone is away from their computer but wants to respond to an email promptly, but there are some people who exclusively respond to emails from their phone. In case I wasn’t obvious in the previous section, signatures tell the recipient a lot about the sender. Mobile emailing — specifically mobile emailing that is blatant about it coming from a phone — is seen as unprofessional and at times disrespectful. I don’t plan on trying to discuss why that’s the case today, as that could be its own long and nuanced discussion, but it’s important to understand that mobile emails are largely seen in that light.
While many mobile email apps offer the option for a mobile specific email signature to be included, there are still limitations as to what is able to be included in those signatures and it doesn’t carry over a custom signature that may have been set on the desktop site. This is at least the experience with Gmail, which is what I primarily use for emailing nowadays. If you have to email from your phone, make sure that you either have your mobile signature created in advance or create a professional text-based signature while writing the email. The last thing you want is for your signature to undermine the professionalism of the interaction.
Separate Your Thoughts
Moving away from signatures, let’s talk about the body of the email. Emails aren’t like essays or assignments for school where you have to have everything contained in long paragraphs. Each separate thought should be in its own section of the email. What do I mean by this? Let’s go through an example to show you what this looks like in practice.
Scenario:
You’re in talks with someone who reached out about a sponsored post, and you want to clarify how you will be paid, when you will be paid, and what type of content they are asking you to create for them.
In this scenario, you have three topics that need to be discussed, but two of them are connected as they are both about receiving payment from the company. Take a look at these two examples, and think about which one is more professional.
Example Email 1:
Hey David,
Thank you for the quick response! I would just like to clarify a few details with you on this potential partnership. In regard to the payment, do you have a proposed amount that will be sent for the content? Also, is there an established timeline on when I would be receiving it? I would also like to know some more details on what content will be expected from my side for this partnership. Do you have examples from other creators or a deck prepared that articulates what is expected? I am happy to meet and discuss more if needed to determine if this partnership is right for me.
Regards,
Al Fischer
Example Email 2:
Hey David,
Thank you for the quick response! I would just like to clarify a few details with you on this potential partnership.
In regard to the payment, do you have a proposed amount that will be sent for the content? Also, is there an established timeline for when I would be receiving it?
I would also like to know some more details on what content will be expected from my side for this partnership. Do you have examples from other creators or a deck prepared that articulates what is expected?
I am happy to meet and discuss more if needed to determine if this partnership is right for me.
Regards,
📧 : alfishplays@gmail.com
YouTube | Twitch | Twitter | Instagram
In these examples, the content of the email is the exact same: the same sentences in the same order, followed by a signature.
What changes from the first example to the second is that the thoughts were separated into their own sections within the body, and the signature was replaced with one that is more professional and shows effort being put into it. This allows for the second email to be easier on the eyes, easier to identify exactly what is being discussed, and it comes off showing that you put time and effort into your response. People don’t like to read walls of text, and separating each section appropriately ensures that your emails do not come across that way.
Reply To All
The final tip that I have for you guys is to always reply all to an email if you can. There might be times where you’re only emailing one person back and forth, but if you get an email about a partnership or sponsorship, and the recruiter CC’s one or more people on that email, it’s best to hit reply all in your response. In my experience, the others that are CC’d on the email are members of that recruiter’s team, whether it be a manager, fellow recruiter, or what have you, and they’re CC’d to be kept in the loop on the conversation in case the recruiter is out sick or something of that nature.
You aren’t expected to address them in your emails, but I tend to lean towards keeping everyone involved and reply to all when continuing the conversation.
Recap
So let’s do a quick overview of everything we talked about today:
- Create a unique signature
- Avoid emailing from a mobile device
- Separate your thoughts within the body of an email
- Reply to all whenever possible
Keep these tips in mind the next time you’re writing an email, especially if it involves a sponsor or partnership. Others will take note of your professionalism, and as long as you maintain that professionalism you could be earning brownie points with whoever you’re talking to and you never know what praise from that individual could lead to.
If you made it this far, I want to thank you for sticking through. My hope for this series is to help guide others so they can set themselves up for success. If you found any of this info helpful, make sure to let me know, as I’d love to know that my videos are having a positive effect on others.
With that being said, I hope you all have a great rest of your day, night, evening, whatever your time zone says it is, and I’ll see y’all later.
