PART 3

Partner Outreach


Reaching out and closing several partners for a campaign can seem like a daunting task, but we’re here to help walk you through the process so that every barrier to entry is broken down for you.

First, when reaching out to potential partners with a cold email, you want to make absolutely certain of a few things:

1

The partner is not extremely large, and your brand is extremely small or new.

While there is a slim chance that the brand will work with you, it will really only depend upon what you have to offer (for example, if you have no audience but a new revolutionary product, they may be interested). Otherwise, start small and find partners that have a similar audience size to yours.

2

You have evidence that the partner has run, been a part of, or considered running sweepstakes or contests before. Cold outreach to a brand that has never run a promotion before may be a waste of your time.

Some brands feel sweepstakes or contests devalue their brand, so they will never run them.

3

The partner is not a direct or indirect competitor to your business. The last thing you want to waste your time with is contacting a brand who may view you as a competitor.

4

You have something valuable to bring to the table (for example, you will sponsor the prize, set up the promotion, secure multiple partners, promote to a large audience, etc.).

Now that you’ve followed the above points, it’s time to reach out to a potential partner.

As Lauren says:

“The context of your outreach really depends upon where you are in the process. Your outreach to your first potential partner may read much differently than your outreach to the third, when you’ve already closed two other partners.”

For example, your first outreach may look like this:

Hi there,

I’m with brand X, and I’m putting together an email acquisition campaign that I think your brand would be a really good fit for. I’ve seen that you’ve run similar campaigns in the past. Are sweepstakes still a part of your program? Please let me know if you’re interested, I would love to chat for a few minutes this week.

While your third outreach may look like this:

Hi there,

I’m with brand X, and I’m putting together an email acquisition campaign that I think your brand would be a really good fit for. We’re also working with brand Y and Z on this campaign, and we would like to include your brand as well. Please let me know if you’re interested, I would love to chat for a few minutes this week to share the details.


We’ve put together a variety of different email templates that you can use depending upon which stage of the process you are in.

Access our email templates.

Access Templates

We asked Lauren how she would approach a partner she came across that she had no previous connection to, but wanted to work with. She said:

“I'll usually shoot them an email and state my intention frankly—that I'm putting together an email acquisition sweepstakes, and I think they'd be good for it. I don't like to be vague because then it might read like a sales pitch.

Often, I get a response pretty quickly, even if it's just to say they don't do sweepstakes."

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Part 4: Organizing the Campaign

On to Part 4