The shape
Six lines. A number inside the first three.
The person reading your email is not a fan. They are somebody with a campaign to fill, a budget that is already allocated, and a full inbox. They are scanning for whether you are relevant and whether working with you will be easy. That is the entire test.
So the shape is: who you are and why this brand specifically, then a number that proves you are worth the reply, then what you are proposing, then what it costs, then one clear next step. Six lines is enough for all five.
The number is the part almost everybody leaves out. Not your follower count, which they can see. Your average views across your last ten posts, or your last comparable campaign result, or your audience split if it is unusually well matched to them. Something they cannot get by opening your profile.
Put your rate in the first email. This is the one that causes arguments and I will defend it. Withholding the number does not preserve your negotiating position, it just adds a round trip to a conversation that has not started yet, and it signals that you are working it out on the spot. Quote the top of your range. You can come down. You cannot go back up.
And make the next step small. Not a call. A yes or no on whether the format works, or a question about their timings. The bigger the ask, the longer it sits.
The six lines
Who you are, in one clause.
Why this brand, specifically. One sentence, and it has to be something only you would say.
The number that makes you worth the reply.
What you are proposing, in deliverables.
What it costs, and what it covers.
One small next step.
The shape
Six lines, and what goes in each.
What kills it
Three openers, and I deleted all three on sight.
I love your brand so much
Everybody writes this. It carries no information, it is not verifiable, and it reads identically whether you have used the product for five years or found them this morning.
If it is true, prove it instead of saying it. Name the product you actually own and what you use it for. One specific detail does more than a paragraph of enthusiasm.
I would love to collaborate
Collaborate is the word people use when they have not decided what they are proposing. It puts the work of designing the deal onto the person reading it, and they will not do it.
Propose something specific. Two Reels and three Stories over a fortnight. Then the reply can be yes, no, or a counter, all of which are progress.
Rates on request, or what is your budget?
Rates on request costs you an email and tells them you have not settled on one.
Asking their budget is worse, because it hands the number back to the person who already decided what it is. Almost every creator who does this ends up with a figure lower than they would have quoted.
Where to send it
The general inbox is where pitches go to sit.
An email to info at a brand is read by somebody whose job is not booking creators. At best it gets forwarded. Usually it does not, and you never find out which.
The person you want is whoever owns influencer, brand partnerships, or social for that brand in your region. That title varies and the region matters more than people expect. A US partnerships lead cannot book a European campaign and will not forward it either.
How to find that person, which platforms actually surface them, and what to do when the brand uses an agency instead of an in house team, is the whole of Getting On The Shortlist. It is 66 pages and it is the shortest thing I sell, deliberately.
One thing worth saying free. Send it once, then follow up once, seven working days later, on the same thread. One follow up. Two is persistence and three is a reason to block you, and I have watched creators talk themselves out of deals they had already won.
And if the answer is no, ask what would make it a yes next quarter. That question has got more creators booked than any pitch I have read, because it is the only one that keeps you in somebody’s file.
After you press send
What actually happens on the other end.
Your email lands in an inbox that opens on a Monday morning with a hundred others in it. It is scanned, not read. It is either relevant to something already on the plan or it is not, and that is decided in about four seconds.
If it is relevant, it gets kept. Not answered, kept. It sits in a file until a brief comes up that it fits, which might be next week or next quarter. This is the part creators find hardest to believe, and it is why silence is not the same as no.
The free guide on this site, What Happens After You Hit Send, is 34 pages on exactly this. Where it sits, who reads it, what makes it get forwarded, and when to follow up. It is free, there is no upsell in it, and it exists because this is the single thing creators most often get wrong.
The reason I wrote it rather than a pitch template is that a template does not survive contact with a real inbox. Understanding who is on the other end does.
One thing to change today
Put a starting figure by deliverable in your media kit, with one line underneath saying rates vary with usage and exclusivity.
That removes an entire round trip from every conversation you have, and it makes you look like somebody who has done this before.
What this is not
Not a promise of a reply. Most pitches do not get one, including good ones, including mine.
The point is to be in the file when the brief lands.
Where this comes from
Where this comes from.
This one is entirely mine. Six years running a talent agency, reading these emails from the side that opens them and writing thousands of them on behalf of creators.
There is no market data on this page because there is none worth quoting. Where I have used a figure anywhere else on this site, it is published and sourced. Here there is nothing to source, and I would rather say that than dress an opinion up as research.
- My own records Six years. Pitches written to brands on behalf of creators, across roughly three hundred brands. The work page has the campaigns and the fees on it.
- What Happens After You Hit Send 2026. The long version. 34 pages on what happens to your email once it arrives. Free.
- Getting On The Shortlist 2026. Where to look, who to ask for and how to find them. 66 pages.
What to do with it
Write the number, then write the email.
Get the band you are in from the rate bands, or run your own figures in the calculator. Neither asks for your email.
Then the free guide is what happens to the email once you have sent it, which is the half nobody teaches.
The list
What brands are actually paying.
Rate breakdowns, pitch teardowns, and when a brand comes to me looking for creators, that goes out here first. The free guide arrives the moment you sign up.
One email a week. Unsubscribe from any of them.