The cold DMs that actually convert ambassadors
Once you've identified the best potential ambassadors, here's how to smoothly slide into their DMs đ
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In the past, weâve written about how to find ambassadors, the process of finding ambassadors, effectively leveraging ambassadors, and the different mindsets to take when doing all of this.
Today, weâll discuss something a bit more tacticalâhow do you actually write the DMs that will go out to these potential ambassadors? How long should they be? What should you say? How aggressive should you be?
Do you build a relationship first or do you go straight for the kill? Do you define terms from the very beginning or do you play it out?
So many questions. Letâs start answering â¨
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Introduce yourself
To followers
Your followers already know your brandâso you shouldnât forget to acknowledge that.
It still doesnât hurt to mention again your values and what you stand forâto reinforce them or otherwise let people know about them if they didnât already.
To non-followers
These folks donât know your brandâso you need to be mindful of that. Put yourself in their shoes and think of all the questions they might have in their mind, and make sure to address them.
This includes who you are, what you do, why you do it, why they should care.
Followers of related accounts
For these guys, you can mention that since theyâre interested in [x] brand, you thought that it would be relevant for them for you to reach out.
This is to make sure that you donât come off as a complete stranger.
State your objective
Not all messages are created equally. The best messages know what theyâre chasing after, what theyâre looking forâwhether itâs a relationship, a response, simple appreciation, or something specific.
They then subtly communicate this idea to the person receiving and reading the message, without sounding (or being) too pressuring.
Product seeding
This is when youâre reaching out to someone and offering them a product, for free, with the sole objective of building a genuine relationship.
Youâre pretty much just giving away a free product and seeing what happens. And this is a fantastic strategy when done with the right people.
In this situation, itâs in your best interest to be patient and hold off asking for anything in your first message, and leaving it until much later in the relationship.
You should use phrases like âNo strings attachedâ, or âTry it and let us know what you thinkââyou get the idea.

Cody Wittick wrote an incredibly amazing thread about this, and Iâve linked a relevant Tweet from this thread above. You should read the entire thread if youâre interested!
Product seeding warrants an entirely different post about it, and weâll definitely publish something on this topic at a point in the future.
Collaboration proposal
In this situation, youâre proposing a collaboration right off the batâitâs a classic approach: low-risk in the short term, but unclear long-term relationship potential.
The vast majority of collaborations are going to be one-off, and itâs very much possible that the ambassador/influencer kinda forgets about you after the collab is done and dusted.
When youâre writing a DM for this objective, you want to be clear about what you wantâa collaboration.
You donât have to state the terms of the collab in the first messageâbut you definitely want to give the message that youâre looking for something in return.
Use phrases like âWeâd like to do a collaborationâ or âWeâd like a make a partnershipââyou get the idea.
This is so that itâs very clear to them from the beginning that youâre expecting something in return.
Starting a conversation
Sometimes you donât want anythingâyou just want to start a conversation and see where things go.
Alessandra from Bombinate said this about her ambassador outreach:
How do you find and choose these ambassadors to work for you? How do you determine a good fit or not?
It might surprise you, but we donât look at the numbers first. That actually comes as the very last validation point.
First of all, we want to see people that share our valuesâwhat kind of house do they have? How do they shop? What kind of brands do they wear? We first check this.
Then we start having a conversation with them. We interact, comment on their feeds, exchange a few DMs, we see if we have a good feeling going. And only after that, we check their community to see whether itâs engaged, and then we ask them to be a part of our community and invite them to share content with us.
I think in this situation, you should still always be providing some kind of value in your messageâwhat would make them even open it and consider it?
Write a genuine compliment on their feed, ask them a question about something you think they might love answering aboutâgenerally try and build a relationship like you would with a friend.
In every case, make sure that your message is genuine, and looks like itâs coming from an actual person, not a bot.
End the message with your first name and title at the companyâor even if itâs just âMayank from Ubuâ.
Write the copy
Your copy is everything. This is what will make or break your ambassador outreach.
Aside from obvious things like making sure that your grammar and formatting is free of errors, letâs look at some other things to consider when writing your outreach DM copy.
Length
Ideally, short and sweet is the best approach, while still including everything you want to includeâyour introduction, your objective, and your call to action.
Something around 150-200 words is the ideal length, shorter the better.
Structure
You should always be structuring your message.
No one likes reading a wall of text. Split up your message into 3-4 different parts:
Introduction/who you are
Speak a little bit about your brand and what you stand for.
Why youâre reaching out to them specifically
Here you want to add elements of their profile that stood out to you, and how it links to the first part about the things that you stand for.
Read the article on segmenting!
What you want them to do
Always make sure your message has a call-to-action.
Make it clear to the other person how to respond to the message.
Outro/thanks
Voice messages?
Something I learnt recently when chatting with a brand that we work with at Ubu was how they like to send voice messages to select influencers to really show that itâs not an automated message and that they specially took out the time to reach out to them.
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Following up
Sometimes people donât reply immediatelyâand thatâs fine.
Messages get stuck in the Instagram âRequestsâ folderâin this situation, a follow up message doesnât necessarily work because theyâre still not gonna see it if they forget to check the folder.
In this case, write them a comment on their postâpay a genuine compliment and then mention that youâve written them a DM!
Other times, people simply forget to respondâyou can see this if theyâve left you on âseenâ. In this case, send a quick follow upâand donât just say âfollowing up on thisâ!
Add some valueâmaybe mention a recent post or story theyâve made, or add in some additional information that would strengthen your message further, and entice them to respond to you!
Wrapping up
What are your thoughts? What have you learnt in your experience reaching out to influencers? Reach out to me by replying to this email and let me know â¨