If you’re looking to benefit from guest blogging to boost brand visibility, expand your reach, and drive more traffic and quality leads, search no further. In this article, we’ll go over the best tools to streamline your guest post outreach efforts and highlight their respective features and functionalities. You’ll also find valuable, proven tips to maximize the effect of your guest post pitch.
Did you know that back in 2014, Matt Cutts, the head of the Google WebSpam team at that time, announced the ultimate decline of guest blogging? As he claimed, it had “become too spammy.” Now, eight years later, however, guest posting is still live and kicking, and the vast majority of editors (93%) were planning to keep or even increase the publishing of guest content. A survey by Referral Rock indicates that half of the respondents send more than ten pitches a month, and six out of ten report writing between 1 and 5 guest posts monthly.
As beneficial as guest blogging is, it takes considerable time and effort to reach out, get accepted, and actually write the post. So, how can you optimize the process and make it easier and less time-consuming? Here’s where dedicated tools can be a game-changer and help you maximize the success of your blog outreach.
Let’s get started by discussing the fundamental question.
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What is guest blogging outreach?
Guest blogging is a content marketing strategy focused on growing your brand by writing and publishing on other websites, linking to your website, and increasing your SEO visibility. It involves conducting blog outreach as an initial, vital part of the process.
Blog outreach involves identifying and contacting editors of relevant, influential blogs with high domain authority and a large audience. It’s also an effective way of finding influencers and bloggers to advertise your products. The effectiveness of your outreach depends on multiple factors, including your research, the emails you send, the performance of your subject lines and email closings, the quality and timeliness of your follow-ups, and many more.
Your efforts can be largely supported by implementing guest post outreach software to help you find editors’ and bloggers’ contact details and pitch them accordingly.
Let’s take a look at some of the available, viable options on the market today.
10 Best Guest Post Outreach Tools
Here are our ten top pics of the most helpful, practical, and easy-to-use email outreach tools worth considering by anyone opting for guest blogging outreach. These tools facilitate every aspect of outreach – from finding the right contact person to reach to creating email templates and scheduling your emails to track your email effectiveness and open rates.
Dedicated tools also help automate the whole process of sending the guest blogging pitch and schedule automatic follow-up emails on a particular day after delivering the initial contact. What’s more, guest post outreach software helps you organize and store all important information, such as contact details, all emails, etc. It also lets you track the backlinks that you incorporate for unlimited time, so you can easily get valuable insight into the efficiency of your outreach.
Now that you have an overall idea of the advantages a guest blogging tool can bring let’s look at the capacities and features of each one individually.
#1 BuzzStream
If you need a public relations management tool, BuzzStream is a great option. It lets you keep your contacts organized and manage your campaigns without duplicating your outreach efforts by building detailed lists of bloggers based on the relationship stage, communication history, social reach, and influence metrics.
Some of the essential BuzzStream features
- Research and filters: BuzzStream helps you research relevant niches, websites, and influencers to promote your content and build links. BuzzStream Discovery enables you to find influencers and guest post opportunities by entering relevant keywords. You can find and connect with influential bloggers in your niche within a matter of seconds.
- Lead and contact management: The blogger outreach tool enables you to find and store contact information, including names, addresses, and social media accounts.
- Email composing and distribution: BuzzStream offers multiple email templates, integrates with your email software and allows you to bring all your email activities into one place. So you can compose your emails without leaving the platform.
- Campaign automation, management, and tracking: BuzzStream lets you manage your campaigns, automate email sending, and schedule follow-ups. Comprehensive reporting gives you valuable insights into your outreach campaign performance and effectiveness.
BuzzStream offers a 14-day free trial. The tool comes in four paid plans starting at $29 per month for the Starter plan allowing for adding up to one user ($24/additional) and 1,000 contacts.
The most expensive complete solution is priced at $999 per month and can be customized to the individual needs of your business. It provides for over fifteen users and over 300,000 contacts.
What is BuzzStream best for?
BuzzStream is a lead generation and outreach solution that is perfect for medium-sized outreaching teams and companies.
#2 BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a tool that allows you to find content with high engagement metrics and discover potential outreach opportunities. You can use it to do competitor research, find industry leaders and influencers, build relationships, and more.
Some of the essential BuzzSumo features
- Content creation, monitoring, and distribution: The blogger outreach tool concentrates on all content-related processes and allows you to create, update, and distribute content, maintaining brand consistency. The tool can also let you know what content is relevant and important for you and your client.
- Content research and competitor analysis: BuzzSumo’s guest posting software comes with an advanced search engine and helps you easily find relevant publishers for your guest posts. It’ll show you the best websites for each topic so you can choose where to pitch based on their traffic levels and authority. You can also see who’s posted about your chosen topic, so there’s no need to spend hours on Google trying to find relevant writers.
- Content research on the go: The tool comes with a free Chrome Extension feature, so you can get instant updates on content performance and interactions like shares and comments.
- Influencer search, discovery, and tracking: The guest blogger platform lets you find influencers across social and influencer networks. You can also track the activity of prominent influencers.
- Contact management: BuzzSumo keeps your contact details organized and lets you find the information you need fast and easily.
BuzzSumo has a free plan that allows you to perform searches per month. The paid plans start at $99 per month or $79 per month if paid on a yearly basis ($948 per year), which is best for small businesses and freelancers on a limited budget. The plan includes unlimited searches and access to limited features.
The most expensive plan costs $299 per month or $239 monthly if paid on a yearly basis ($2,868 per year), allowing you access to all of the BuzzSumo features, which is best for agencies and marketing teams.
What is BuzzSumo best for?
BuzzSumo is a perfect tool to analyze competitors’ content and discover the best influencers and bloggers. It’s a solution that is particularly useful for content marketers, one-man-army marketing specialists, and small businesses.
#3 NinjaOutreach
NinjaOutreach is an influencer marketing and blogger outreach platform that helps you optimize your influencer marketing and lead generation by providing features like email list segmentation, outreach automation, and follow-up scheduling.
Some of the essential NinjaOutreach features
- Outreach campaign management: This guest blogging outreach tool lets you schedule your email outreach campaigns, including up to two automated follow-ups.
- An easy-to-use influencer CRM: With NinjaOutreach, you can use keywords to find millions of influencers in your niche. The platform offers lead management and can automatically find emails and other data.
- Social media search: NinjaOutreach streamlines your social media outreach activities by letting you find Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter influencers and easily connect with them. You can base your search on a keyword and/or location.
- Detailed reporting: The tool comes with a reporting feature to enable you to track whether your recipients have opened your emails and clicked through, which allows you to adjust your follow-ups accordingly and maximize their efficiency.
This is among the most costly guest blogging outreach tools on the market. The price starts at $389 per month (or $155 monthly when billed annually) for the Flex plan, which supports a single user, 500 influencers contacted per month, and sending up to 1,000 emails per month.
The 7-day free trial NinjaOutreach offers can help you decide if the tool is the perfect match for your needs.
What is NinjaOutreach best for?
NinjaOutreach is among the best tools for influencer outreach that is perfect for small businesses and digital marketers looking to collaborate with influencers and bloggers and boost their presence online.
#4 Snov.io
Snov.io is specifically designed to streamline contact management and cold outreach. It helps find more relevant leads, monitors their progress, verifies contacts, and automates your outreach activities.
Some of the essential Snov.io features
- Email finder: You can find emails by company, domain, or name. Snov.io also lets you apply Boolean search and filters like location, skills, or job title.
- Email drip campaigns: The tool lets you create personalized campaigns and automatic follow-ups.
- Email verifier: Snov.io enables you to verify all email addresses in your list individually or in bulk and eliminate outdated, invalid, and duplicate email addresses.
- Automatic email warm-up: This feature helps avoid spam boxes and lets you land in your lead’s inbox, thus increasing deliverability and open rate.
- Extensive integration options: The guest post outreach platform easily integrates with Chrome and Gmail, so you can search for emails for any website on the go.
Snov.io comes with five paid plans starting at $33 per month for the S plan when billed annually. With this plan, users get 1,000 credits and up to 5,000 contacts. The most expensive plan, XXL, costs $615 per month when billed annually and includes 100,000 credits and 100,000 unique recipients.
To get a hands-on idea of Snov.io’s functionalities, you can opt for its free, XS, plan that comes with 150 credits monthly and 100 unique recipients.
What is Snov.io best for?
Snov.io is a great all-in-one outreach platform that works best for finding emails and keeping your contact list clean and updated. It’s a versatile solution suitable for both outreach teams and individuals.
#5 Pitchbox
Pitchbox is an effective tool to streamline your guest blogging outreach and link building. It enables you to discover influencers, bloggers, and publishers relevant to your niche fast and effortlessly. This is an all-in-one solution that big publishers, agencies, and brands opt for.
Some of the essential Pitchbox features
- Outreach campaigns: The tool enables you to automate, scale, personalize, and track your campaigns.
- Email templates and automation: Pitchbox streamlines every aspect of your email outreach, including initial outreach and two automatic follow-ups. You can save time by using the smart templates available in the app. The tool helps you make sure that your messages get into your prospects’ inboxes at the right time by letting you adjust sending out your messages by the time zone, days of the week, and time of the day.
- Outreach pipeline: With Pitchbox, you gain excellent real-time visibility into your outreach and the opportunities you need to address promptly. You can also segment your leads by various criteria, such as SEO metrics, age, relationship stage, etc, which will allow you to apply the right approach to each individual group.
- Reporting: You can see all important metrics along with the history of your links and outreach activities. With the extensive reporting functions, you can track your campaign performance and effectiveness.
Pitchbox pricing
No specific pricing is publicly announced on the vendor’s website, so to get a quote in line with your needs, you need to contact them and state your particular requirements.
What is Pitchbox best for?
Pitchbox is a great solution to streamline link building and influencer outreach and works perfectly for brands, in-house marketing teams, and SEO agencies.
#6 Respona
Respona is a dedicated link-building and blogger outreach platform specifically designed for B2B SaaS and agencies. It offers all the necessary tools to conduct email campaigns.
Some of the essential Respona features
- A dedicated search engine: Respona’s search engine enables you to pinpoint the best opportunities from various sources like podcasts, news posts, and blog articles.
- Email finder: The platform makes finding your lead’s contact information a breeze, eliminating the need to use other tools.
- Outreach campaigns: Respona features an intuitive interface that lets you create your campaigns fast and easily. You can monitor their performance and track the status of your leads.
- Automated pitching process and email sequences: With this blogger outreach tool, you can craft your email templates. It enables you to set up and customize email drip sequences and take advantage of automatic follow-ups.
- Integration options: Respona easily integrates with a great variety of other SEO, contact finder, and email tools, so you can have all functionalities in a single platform.
Respona offers a Starter plan at $99 per month for 1 email account and 5,000 email credits or $79 per month for 1 email account and 6,000 email credits if billed yearly. In addition, there is an unlimited custom plan that comes with extensive customization depending on the number of email accounts and credits you need.
What is Respona best for?
Respona is a link-building outreach platform specifically designed to help B2B SaaS and agencies run personalized outreach campaigns and boost organic traffic from Google.
#7 Lemlist
Lemlist is an outreach automation tool that is effective for setting up cold email campaigns. With its features, it can help you boost the efficiency of your campaigns.
Some of the essential Lemlist features
- Email follow-ups and sequences: With Lemlist, you can take advantage of over 100 email sequence templates, edit them, add additional steps, and schedule desired delays between each email.
- Email personalization: The all-in-one outbound platform lets you send uniquely personalized follow-up emails.
- Campaign management and automation: Lemlist allows you to run outreach campaigns on autopilot and schedule your follow-ups.
- Extensive integration options: Lemlist readily integrates with all your favorite tools and workflows – from your email provider to CRM, to your growth and task management tools.
- Real-time insights and reporting: At any time, you’re able to see at what stage a specific prospect is and what email they’ll receive next.
Plans start from $29 per month for email warm-up and $59 per month for email outreach. The vendor offers a 14-day free trial, so you can make sure the tool fits your needs before selecting a paid plan.
What is Lemlist best for?
Lemlist is great for cold email outreach. This is a simple tool suitable for small businesses and agencies. It makes a perfect individual choice when it comes to running email campaigns.
#8 Mailshake
This is an outreach platform particularly suitable for cold email and link-building campaigns. It comes with email automation and comprehensive reporting.
Some of the essential Mailshake features
- Email outreach automation: With Mailshake, you can use email templates and send automated, trigger-based follow-up emails. It’s easy to trigger emails when recipients interact with your email content, book a call, or submit a form.
- Lead Catcher: Centralize communication with your leads in one place and easily keep track of their status, marking them as “Won,” “Lost” and “Ignored.”
- Mail merge option: You can easily upload your email list to Mailshake and send personalized emails to an entire group of contacts at the same time.
- Email copy analyzer: Mailshake comes with an email analyzer tool that helps avoid being caught by spam filters, increasing deliverability and readability.
- AI email writer: Every Mailshake account comes with free access to SHAKEspeare AI email writer, so you can forget about writer’s block.
The platform comes with two plan options – Email Outreach at $58 per month per user billed annually and Sales Engagement at $83 per month per user billed annually, providing access to all features. You don’t have the option for a free trial, but the vendor offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.
What is Mailshake best for?
Mailshake is best for sending personalized cold emails and managing prospect engagement via phone and social media. It suits individuals and small B2B companies with up to 15 employees.
#9 FollowUpThen
FollowUpThen is an easy-to-use email outreach tool that helps improve your follow-up efficiency and lets you send reminders.
Some of the essential FollowUpThen features
- Private reminders: The tool allows you to schedule sending future email and SMS reminders to yourself about any task you have to deal with.
- Email reminders: You can forward emails from your inbox to the moment you will actually need them. They will reappear in your inbox with a reminder.
- Follow-Up management: If your recipient hasn’t responded to your email outreach for a given period, the tool can deliver follow-up reminders to you via email.
FollowUpThen offers a free forever plan for a single user and up to 50 follow-ups. Higher plans are priced at $4 per month for unlimited follow-ups plus skills (Base plan), and $4 per user per month with team productivity features added to the functionalities of the Base plan.
What is FollowUpThen best for?
FollowUpThen is perfect for individuals who need to send a significant number of emails. It gives better control over your inbox and ensures delivery of one-time and recurring reminders to yourself.
#10 Crystal Knows
Crystal Knows is a personality assessment application that can help master your outreach campaigns by providing vital details about the general behaviors of influencers.
Some of the essential Crystal Knows features
- Proven personality framework: The tool enables you to discover your prospects’ personality traits so you can adjust your guest blogging outreach strategy and drive more engagement.
- Multiple input: Crystal Knows analyzes data from various sources – from your prospects’ LinkedIn profiles to the history of your interactions.
- Actionable insights: The platform provides you with a list of do’s and don’ts to help you avoid behaviors undesirable for the influencers and editors that you target.
- Real-time assistance: Crystal Writing Assistant lets you effectively adapt the style and tone of your communication to your recipient’s preferences.
Crystal Knows pricing
The pricing depends on the features users opt for and is provided upon contacting the vendor.
What is Crystal Knows best for?
Crystal Knows is a great tool to help individuals understand their prospects’ personalities and adjust guest blogging outreach accordingly, thus ensuring the effectiveness of communication.
Tips to do blog outreach effectively
Doing your guest blog outreach effectively will enable you to take the most out of your campaigns. Here are some tips to make your outreach successful and effective.
- Do your research and identify the guest blogging opportunities that best match your interests and niche.
- Discover the right person to contact – contacting the person who has the authority to approve your guest post request is essential for conducting a successful outreach.
- Personalize your campaigns by using your recipient’s name, referring to their blog, and saying that you’re impressed by it.
- Establish a relationship with your prospect.
- Come up with ideas that are valuable for your recipient.
- Share at least two actual ideas for a post based on your prospect’s interests and field.
- Take a step further by offering high-quality guest posts on a regular basis.
- Take advantage of your existing network of editors, bloggers, and influencers.
- Make sure to send a pitch that grabs your recipient’s attention, evokes curiosity, and drives responses.
- Carefully schedule your pitch and follow-ups, as timing is another vital parameter that can make or break the deal.
Now that we’ve discussed the best guest post outreach software and the most essential tips to conduct a successful outreach, it’s time to take the next step.
Select your guest blogging outreach tool and fire your outreach campaign
There are plenty of guest blogging outreach solutions on the market. We’ve shared our top picks so you can choose the one that will work for you. Think of your requirements and constraints. Which aspect of the outreach activities do you need help with? What functionalities are important for you? What budget can you allocate to a guest post outreach platform? What are your current systems, and how does the tool integrate with them?
Answering these questions will guide you to narrowing the range of options and ultimately selecting the right solution. Once you’ve identified it, simply contact the vendor and opt for the plan that best suits you. With the tips above in mind, find the most attractive guest blogging opportunity and put your email outreach software into action.