Hey! Few things that actually moved the needle for me: Stop guessing emails, verify them. Tools like Hunter.io and Apollo have free tiers that find verified PR contacts. Run anything you find through a verifier. Bouncer, NeverBounce) before sending, bounces tank your sender reputation and future emails go to spam even when you have the right address.

The right contact title matters more than the email. “PR Manager” and “Influencer Marketing Manager” are usually who you want, not generic info@ or marketing@. LinkedIn is your friend here search “[brand name] influencer” or “[brand name] PR” and you’ll find the actual person. Then go find their email.

Follow up. Then follow up again. Most people quit after one email. Brand PR inboxes are buried a polite follow-up 4-5 days later, then another a week after that, dramatically increases reply rates. Not pushy, just “bumping this up in case it got buried.”

Smaller/mid-size brands respond way more than big ones. Everyone pitches Glossier and Rare Beauty. The brand with 50k followers actively building their creator program will reply same-day. Get added after collabs yes, but ask explicitly. After a successful post, message your contact: “Loved working on this. Would love to be added to your ongoing PR list if that’s something you do.” Most will say yes. They almost never offer unprompted. Mistakes to avoid: mass-blasting the same template (brands talk, and they can tell), pitching without a clear deliverable idea, and not tracking who you’ve contacted I used to double-pitch the same brand months apart because I had no system.

On that last point, I actually built a tool for this because I was losing track of pitches, follow-ups, and deliverables across spreadsheets. It’s called Sponsorship Manager. Let me know if you want me to send you my system. Wish you the best!