14 Best Blogger Outreach Tools & Software For 2023 (Top Picks)
Trying to build links and land guest posts but struggling to get results? Looking for an easier way to connect with key publishers and influencers in your industry?
You need a blogger outreach tool.
In this post, we’ll be comparing the best blogger outreach tools available. These innovative software solutions make it easy to plan and execute effective link-building campaigns, connect with influential bloggers in your niche, promote your content, and manage your existing relationships.
Read on and we’ll tell you everything you need to know about each of them.
Let’s get started!
The best blogger outreach tools – summary
TL;DR:
- BuzzStream – Best blogger outreach tool overall. Manage all aspects of your campaigns from research to sending emails and managing relationships. CRM and influencer research included.
- BuzzSumo – Best outreach tool for campaign intelligence & influencer research. This is the tool PR pros use.
- Link Hunter – Best outreach tool for beginners. Ideal for those getting started with SEO and link building. Prospect for link opportunities and send outreach emails.
- Semrush – All-in-one SEO tool that you can use for SEO analysis, competitive research, and sending outreach emails. One of their many features includes an outreach tool.
- Mailfloss – Best for validating lists of emails before starting outreach campaigns. This will help to maintain high deliverability.
- Snov.io – Best for finding email addresses.
#1 – BuzzStream
BuzzStream is an all-in-one digital PR toolkit and the world’s best outreach CRM. Its collection of link-building tools is second to none.
BuzzStream can help with every facet of your blogger outreach campaigns.
You can use the built-in automatic prospecting to build qualified lists in seconds, or research new opportunities as you browse the web. Find out a website’s authority, social metrics, and contact information at a glance and add new contacts to your database with just one click.
Then, send out highly-personalized emails to your list at scale and keep track of your conversations in BuzzStream’s powerful CRM.
Deep analytics make it easy to measure your campaign performance and track metrics like open rates, reply rates, etc.
And it doesn’t end there. There are tons of powerful features to help you with press list building, pitching, link building, influencer marketing, and content promotion. We don’t have time to cover everything BuzzStream can do here, but you can try it out to see for yourself everything it has to offer.
Pricing
BuzzStream offers several plans starting from $24/month. You can try it out for free with a 14-day trial.
#2 – BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is our favorite outreach tool for campaign intelligence and influencer research. It’s used by top marketing pros and the world’s biggest brands, including Expedia, Hubspot, and BuzzFeed.
BuzzSumo is actually a content marketing platform. You can use it to generate new ideas for content worthy of sharing. Just type a domain or keyword into the search bar to get started.
But for outreach managers, it’s BuzzSumo’s digital PR and influencer marketing tools that come in most useful.
The platform helps you identify the most influential influencers and journalists in your space and find the bloggers behind the biggest stories with cross-platform search capabilities.
You can filter blogs and influencers by follower counts and domain authority to help you sort the good prospects from the bad, and zero in on the ‘power-sharers’ who already share content like yours. Then, reach out to the right people in just a click.
BuzzSumo also provides alerts that automatically notify you when a journalist writes about your brand, or when influencers publish content, enabling you to react quickly and build stronger relationships.
Pricing
Paid plans start at $119/month. Save 20% with an annual subscription. You can try BuzzSumo with a 30-day free trial.
Read our BuzzSumo review.
#3 – LinkHunter
LinkHunter is the best blogger outreach tool for beginners. It makes the process of building lists fast and simple for those just getting started with SEO.
And it can be a great way for more experienced SEOs to save time launching outreach campaigns.
LinkHunter offers many of the same tools as BuzzStream, including powerful prospecting and emailing, but it’s much easier to use. The interface is simple and the whole outreach process is simplified into fewer steps in order to speed things up.
Everything happens in three steps. First, create your campaign and enter the topic your website is about to find 100s of blog prospects in seconds. View the SEO value of each website at a glance.
If you see a prospect you want to reach out to, you can do so in one click. LinkHunter will instantly find the best contact email and fill it in for you. You can then use built-in email templates to put together the bulk of your email content in another click, and personalize it with dynamic fields before you hit send.
LinkHunter will keep track of the progress of your campaigns by letting you know which prospects you’ve contacted, followed up with, had responses from, and acquired links from.
Pricing
LinkHunter starts from $49 /month. A free 7-day trial is available.
#4 – Semrush
Semrush is a super popular all-in-one SEO platform with a built-in outreach tool. Aside from outreach, you can also use it for SEO analysis, competitive research, keyword research, backlink monitoring, etc.
There’s a lot you can do with Semrush, but for outreach campaigns, it’s best to start with the Backlink Gap & Link Building tools.
The Backlink Gap tool can compare your site’s existing link profile to your competitors. You can then use filters to find the domains that are linking to your competitor’s website but aren’t yet linking to yours. These are great prospects to target in your link-building campaigns.
You can use the Link Building tool to discover new opportunities from a database of over 43 trillion backlinks and automate effective outreach campaigns in order to acquire backlinks.
Once you have a list of prospects, you can send outreach emails directly through the Semrush interface with easy Gmail integration, and use customizable templates to drive the best possible results.
You can also use the Link Building tool to gather contact information from your target domains automatically. And as you start connecting with prospects, it’ll keep tabs on your progress. Easy-to-understand charts tell you which backlinks are active, lost, broken, or rejected.
Pricing
You can get started with a limited free account. Paid plans start from $99.95/month when billed annually. There’s also a free trial available if you sign up for a monthly plan.
Read our Semrush review.
#5 – Mailfloss
Mailfloss is our favorite email verification tool. You can use it to validate your list of prospects before starting your outreach campaign in order to maximize deliverability.
When you’re running an outreach campaign, you’ll typically gather hundreds of email addresses during the prospecting phase. But when you collect email contact information for so many different bloggers and influencers, it’s inevitable that some invalid email addresses will end up on your list.
The problem with this is that when you send out emails to fake email addresses, it hurts your deliverability rate. And the lower your deliverability rate, the more you’re likely to be penalized by email service providers. This means more of your emails end up in your recipients’ spam folders in the future.
Mailfloss solves this problem by automatically verifying all the email addresses in your list and removing those that are invalid before they become an issue. It even fixes common email address typos automatically to maximize deliverability.
Pricing
Plans start at $17/month. A 7-day free trial is available.
#6 – Snov.io
Snov.io is a powerful sales CRM. Its built-in email finder makes it the best blogger outreach tool for finding email addresses.
All you have to do is type the domain into the Snov.io web app and click Find emails. Snov.io will then bring up a list of all the email addresses associated with that site.
To save time, you can upload a list of domains and use the bulk domain search feature to find all their emails at once. You can also find emails from social network profiles if you’re trying to connect with social media influencers.
Snov.io also offers a Chrome extension that makes it easy to find emails as you browse the web.
Pricing
Snov.io is a freemium tool with paid plans starting from $33/month.
#7 – Hunter
Hunter is another popular email finder that makes it easy to find contact information for your prospects in seconds.
You can use the Domain Search tool to find a list of all the people working for the company behind any website, alongside their names, job roles, and company email address. This makes it easier to find the right point of contact for your campaign.
There are 100+ million email addresses indexed in Hunter, so it’s pretty reliable and can usually find an email address for any site.
Verification features and confidence scores help you to keep your list clean of invalid addresses and improve deliverability.
Pricing
You can try Hunter for free with a limited number of searches and verifications. Paid plans start from $49/month.
#8 – SEO PowerSuite
SEO PowerSuite is a downloadable SEO software solution. It’s an all-in-one toolkit that can help with many areas of your SEO campaigns, with a built-in link-building tool. It’s a very affordable option for link prospecting and outreach thanks to its generous free plan and low-cost paid upgrades.
The Link Assistant is the best thing about SEO PowerSuite for outreach managers. It serves as the foundation for your link-building campaigns and can help you find thousands of backlink opportunities.
Use it to generate backlink prospect lists suited to your strategy at scale. You can choose your prospecting method based on 10 of the most popular link-building strategies. Whether you want to find guest posting opportunities, directories, etc., SEO PowerSuite will help you to find them.
Once you have your list, you can verify the email addresses on it in one click. Then, contact each of the prospects using the built-in outreach tools. Handy email templates help you to save time. Alternatively, you can create your own templates and emails from scratch.
You can also analyze your performance and track sents and replies.
Pricing
You can start by downloading SEO PowerSuite for free. When you’re ready to upgrade, paid licenses start from $299/year.
#9 – Brand24
Brand24 is a social media monitoring tool that can be used to find link-building opportunities no other outreach tool can find.
It ‘listens in’ to conversations on the web and whenever anyone mentions your brand, it’ll let you know automatically with alerts. That includes brand mentions in social media posts, blog posts, podcasts, or anywhere else online.
This comes in useful for link building and outreach as it helps you find prospects that are most likely to link to you. For example, if somebody mentions your brand in a blog post, you can send them an email asking them to add a link on that brand mention pointing to your homepage.
Pricing
You can try Brand24 out with a 14-day free trial. Plans start from $49/month.
Read our Brand24 review.
#10 – Mailshake
Mailshake is a sales engagement and automation software solution that can help with your outreach efforts.
You can use it to quickly find tons of new leads with prospecting at scale, connect with them via email and cold calls, track performance, and more.
The Lead Catcher is a cool feature that helps you prioritize your best prospects, and we really like the SHAKEspeare AI-powered email writer. It automatically writes email copy for you that’s proven to perform best based on tons of data.
Pricing
Plans start at $44/month with a 30-day guarantee.
#11 – Pitchbox
Pitchbox is a powerful influencer outreach and content marketing platform used by some of the biggest brands and publishers.
It’s a breeze to use and can help you find publishers, bloggers, and influencers in your niche in seconds.
Then, send personalized outreach emails with customizable templates, and automatically follow up with prospects that don’t reply the first time to boost response rates
White-label reporting and collaboration tools make it a good choice for marketing teams and agencies.
Pricing
Pitchbox offers custom pricing. Book a demo on their site to find out more.
#12 – Streak
Streak is a CRM (customer relationship management) solution for Gmail.
It’s built directly inside Gmail and extends its functionality to supercharge your outreach campaigns with pipelines, data management tools, collaboration tools, etc.
It’s so good that it was awarded the Google Technology Partner of the Year. It also integrates well with other G Suite tools (Drive, Calendar, Sheets, etc.)
Pricing
You can get started with a free plan. Paid plans start at $15/user/month.
#13 – Lemlist
Lemlist is a cold email software solution and outreach automation tool. It offers plenty of features to help you maximize the efficiency of your outreach campaigns.
You can use Lemlist to personalize emails at scale with custom intro lines, CTAs, and media. You can even automatically add personalized screenshots, videos, and dynamic landing pages to your emails. Automated follow-ups maximize reply rates without coming across as generic or pushy.
The built-in sales engagement platform helps you manage conversations across platforms and close more deals. You can cold call prospects with one click and share information about each prospect with your team.
Lemlist also helps you warm up prospects, maximize deliverability, and so much more.
Pricing
Plans start from $25/month. You can try it out with a 14-day free trial.
#14 – FollowUpThen
FollowUpThen is a simple but useful email reminder tool that can help make sure you never forget to follow up with your prospects.
The genius of FollowUpThen is how simple it is. There’s nothing to download or install—it’s just an email address.
All you have to do is add the FollowUpThen email address to your bcc field and specify when you want to be reminded in the address itself, and they’ll follow up then!
For example, want a reminder in 3 days? Just add 3days@followupthen.com to the bcc field and exactly 3 days later, you’ll receive a reminder. The original recipient won’t see any trace of it.
Pricing
FollowUpThen offers a limited free plan. Paid plans start at just $5/month and you can try it for free for 30 days.
Best blogger outreach tools FAQ
What is blogger outreach?
Blogger outreach is a marketing strategy that involves communicating with publishers in your industry in order to achieve your marketing goals.
These goals typically include landing new guest posts, building backlinks to improve SEO or driving website traffic. However, they may also include building valuable influencer partnerships, increasing brand awareness, and promoting products or services.
How do I do blogger outreach?
To begin a blogger outreach campaign, first you’ll need to research and compile a list of prospects (relevant, popular bloggers in your niche who you will benefit from connecting with), find their email addresses, and then contact them with a targeted, personalized email pitch.
There are two ways to go about this process: you can take the Sniper approach or the Shotgun approach.
The Sniper approach involves carefully selecting prospects and manually emailing them one by one, making sure to put lots of thought and effort into crafting each email in order to maximize your chances of a reply.
The Shotgun approach involves using email automation software in order to send out mass emails in bulk to all of your prospects. Typically, you’ll create a basic email template and then personalize it for each recipient with merge tags. This approach is less targeted and doesn’t usually deliver as good results as the Sniper approach, but it’s a lot quicker.
What is the best strategy for blogger outreach?
There are lots of strategies you can use for blogger outreach, but we’re big fans of the Skyscraper technique.
The idea behind the Skyscraper technique is to first find high-ranking content related to your niche that has hundreds (or thousands) of backlinks. Then, create an even better piece of content on the same topic.
After that, use SEO software like Semrush to find all the blogs and websites linking to the original piece of content, grab a contact email address for each of them with a tool like Hunter, and email all of them asking them to update their link and link out to your new-and-improved content instead.
You can use this method to quickly build dozens of new backlinks through blogger outreach and send your domain authority through the roof.
How to write a blogger outreach email?
We could write a whole post (or several) on how to write a blogger outreach email that delivers results. We don’t have time to cover everything here, but the most important tip is to personalize it as much as you can to the recipient.
Bloggers get tons of emails in their inboxes every week, and most of them are spam. If they see a non-personalized message that’s clearly been sent out in bulk to lots of different websites, they’re probably going to just delete it immediately.
On the other hand, if they see a personalized email that looks like someone’s put time and effort into crafting it, they’re more likely to reply. But remember: personalization doesn’t just mean using the recipient’s name in the subject line. You need to take time to connect with them and show them you have a genuine interest in the content they publish.
The next most important tip is to make sure you tell them what they get out of it. If you’re reaching out to bloggers to ask them to share or link to your content, they’re going to want to know what’s in it for them. Give them a reason to share it by telling them why it’ll provide value to their site/audience.
Most importantly? Never use a template you’ve found online. Most are badly written and overused to the point where they don’t convert. Write your email from scratch using my Framework Outreach process instead.
Should you follow up on your outreach emails?
In most cases, sending a follow-up email to give the recipient a gentle nudge to reply in case they forgot is worthwhile. It can help to keep you at the top of their inbox and maximize your reply rates.
However, there are some provisos to this. You should make sure your follow-up email doesn’t come across as pushy or rude — always be polite and friendly. And of course, if they’ve already told you they’re not interested, it’s not worth following up.
Most importantly — don’t get too clever. Be direct. And avoid sending too many followups, particularly in a short amount of time.
How to find prospects for blogger outreach?
There are lots of strategies you can use to find prospects for blogger outreach, like broken link building, competitor analysis, etc. Tools like BuzzSumo and Brand24 can help you find the most valuable prospects so I’d suggest starting with those.
An easy way to find prospects is to simply search for a keyword strongly related to your niche, open up some of the most popular blogs that pop up, and grab their contact details (Hunter can help with finding contact details).
It’s also worth considering the goals for your outreach campaign. For example, is link building a core focus, or do you have other goals? Knowing your campaign goals will help to inform which prospecting strategies will be best suited to your campaign.
How to find topics for guest post pitches?
Start by carefully researching your target blog to see what kind of content they already publish. If possible, find the most popular posts on their site (those with the most page views, social shares, etc.) and use these topics for inspiration.
You can use content and keyword research tools like BuzzSumo to find related topic ideas and start there. Just make sure to double-check that the blog you want to guest post on hasn’t already published a post on exactly the same topic before you send your pitch.
It’s also worth using SEO content writing tools such as Surfer SEO to optimize the articles you write. Even though you’re writing guest posts, they will attract more backlinks if they rank well in Google.
As a side note, if you’d like to track the rankings for your guest posts, be sure to check out our article on rank tracking tools. It includes some affordable options.
Choosing the best blogger outreach tools for your needs
That concludes our comprehensive guide to the best blogger outreach tools. As you can see, there are plenty of great software solutions out there to help with your outreach efforts. If you’re not sure which one is right for you, here’s what we’d recommend:
- BuzzStream is essential for anyone serious about outreach. It’s an end-to-end outreach platform that comes with all the link-building and digital TR tools you need in one place. Use it for campaign research, sending emails, customer relationship management, etc.
- BuzzSumo is the best outreach tool to gather campaign intelligence and find influencers in your niche.
- Link Hunter is the best choice for beginners. It’s much simpler than tools like BuzzStream with an intuitive UI, making it the perfect choice for anyone just getting started with link prospecting and sending outreach emails.
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