Influencer outreach can be one of the most manual tasks in your influencer marketing strategy. Finding creators’ emails via their social profiles, sending personalized messages, tracking responses in a spreadsheet, and setting follow-up reminders is possible — but doing all of it manually is exhausting.
This is especially true as you start to scale and want to reach out to hundreds of creators in a few weeks. Influencer outreach tools make the process easier. It automates the admin stuff (like hunting for emails or sending a follow-up email) so you can focus on the crucial tasks (like improving your response rates).
This article lists the ten best influencer outreach tools in the market.
10 of our favorite influencer outreach tools
Some tools on this list are full-fledged influencer marketing software — helping you run your campaigns from beginning to end. Other tools are best for a particular outreach task and can be combined with other tools to accomplish the same results.
1. Modash
Best for sending personalized emails for better response rates
Modash is your one-stop software for running creator campaigns. The database has over 250M creators (every influencer with over 1,000 followers is listed), influencer emails are available right next to their profile, and a dynamic inbox acts a second brain so you don’t have to remember every little detail yourself. If you want to personalize your outreach emails, Modash is perfectly suited for you.
Free trial: available for 14 days
Pricing: paid plans begin at $299/month (paid monthly) or $199/month (paid annually)
Features:
- Unlock the email of any influencer with over 1K followers on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube
- Analyze an influencer’s performance before you reach out to them
- Email creators directly with a Gmail integration
- Manage emails, relationships and campaigns from your Modash inbox.
Modash is an all-encompassing influencer marketing tool. You can find creators, analyze their profiles, unlock their emails, and reach out to them from Modash directly. But you also have the option to export contact information to use in other outreach tools.
Unlike regular inboxes, the Modash inbox shows creator profiles right next to your new message making it easy to add unique details to your outreach emails. It also brings in all the social profiles connected to an email address, so you may discover that an influencer has a bigger audience on TikTok.
You can also send email directly from the built-in CRM, adjust status labels, and take notes. It’s like the second brain you’ve always wanted.
The only downside is that Modash doesn’t currently let you save templates. But because you can analyze influencer profiles beforehand, you already know you aren’t wasting time reaching out to the wrong creators. Plus, the email experience is so intuitive, you can copy-paste your templates easily.
2. Affable.ai
Best for managing your existing influencers
Affable.ai is an end-to-end influencer marketing software to help you do everything from finding influencers to tracking their performance. They have an in-built solution to reach out to influencers, but their database is limited in size.
Free trial: available on request.
Pricing: 3 plans, pricing not available publicly.
Features:
- Option to set up email sequences
- Fetches influencers’ contact details
- Acts as a central hub for all communications
- Customizable email templates and auto-replies
Affable.ai goes beyond creator outreach and enables you to manage every aspect of your influencer marketing campaigns. Specifically for influencer outreach, it acts as your single source of truth to manage influencer relationships. You can hunt for a creator’s email, set up your own email templates, and create email sequences for automating communication.
While it has all the basic features you’d look for in an influencer outreach tool, it lacks in database quantity. Currently, it has over 6M creators — which might sound like a ton, but as soon as you begin to apply filters, the list narrows down immensely.
The numbers shrink even further if you’re looking for niche creators (like finding Amazon influencers). It doesn’t help that there are also some complaints about the database’s accuracy of influencer metrics. Affable.ai is good for outreach as long as you find the creators within its database or manually add influencers you’ve found externally.
3. BuzzStream
Best for having a dedicated outreach tool
BuzzStream is an outreach management tool for link building, PR efforts, and influencer promotion. Since it’s a tool specifically made for outreach, it’s best for scaling your efforts. But you’d need a host of other tools for influencer discovery, management, and performance tracking.
Free trial: available for 14 days.
Pricing: plans begin at $24/month for one user and 1K contacts.
Features:
- Create customizable email templates
- Set different “Relationship Stages” for various creators
- Track open and response rates to gauge influencer interest
- Run email sequences to follow-up with influencers automatically
- Have a whole history of influencer communication and notes from your team in one place
BuzzStream is the software for scaling your outreach efforts. You can do all the basic tasks — like creating email templates and tracking response rates. But BuzzStream goes a step further and organizes all creator communication within its CRM, so you never miss a beat.
There are options to add internal notes for your team, filters for avoiding sending a repetitive email, seeing conversation history, and running advanced email sequences. It’s best when you’ve scaled your influencer marketing program and are reaching out to hundreds and thousands of creators.
The downside is BuzzStream is solely for efficient influencer outreach. You’ll have to use another set of tools to find influencers, track their performance, and create reports. It'd be hard to justify the cost of BuzzStream for a small business, but a large enterprise with a dedicated wing for outreach might find it useful. Or maybe the price is bearable if your marketing team also uses BuzzStream for your PR and link building efforts.
A similar tool you can try is Pitchbox. It’s also a link building, PR, and influencer outreach tool — but it’s even superior if you want to reach out to blogger influencers specifically.
4. HypeAuditor
Best for using a simple (but basic) outreach software
HypeAuditor is an all-in-one solution for influencer marketing. It has the ability to help you find, contact, and vet influencer profiles. But its tools in terms of influencer outreach are pretty basic, and the price seems too high for the features you get — especially for small businesses.
Free trial: Not available. A limited free plan is available — but it doesn’t have the outreach feature.
Pricing: plans start at $219/month for one person and a 250 influencers CRM capacity.
Features:
- Relevant email templates for common creator conversations
- Personalize messages by using first name, last name, and profile link
- Ability to create email sequences to automate following-up with influencers
HypeAuditor is a hit-and-miss when it comes to influencer outreach tools. It checks all the essential boxes — like customizable email templates, basic personalization, and email sequences. But beyond that, it’s limited in what it can do. You can’t track email open & response rates and the tool is also restrictive regarding how many influencer emails you can unlock — only 200 per month in its Lite plan.
It has other capabilities you’ll undoubtedly use — like analyzing influencer profiles, finding new creators, and campaign management. But despite that, the influencer database is still pretty limited at 80.9M creators (Modash has 250M+ for comparison). The tipping point is the price. The more features you want, the more you’ll have to pay. The cost quickly becomes unsustainable as you scale your efforts.
💡 Like the tool, but not a fan of the price? Here are 12 HypeAuditor alternatives.
5. FollowUp Then
Best for following up with influencers automatically without breaking the bank
FollowUp Then is the simplest and most affordable way to automate following-up with influencers for your outreach efforts. It’s best to use if you can’t afford to purchase a dedicated influencer marketing or outreach tool but still want to automate some aspects of your cold emailing efforts.
Free trial: no free trial, but there’s a free plan available for sending 50 follow-up emails.
Pricing: starts at $4/month per user for unlimited follow-ups.
Features:
- Follows up automatically at your desired date
- Private and group reminders to follow up based on your preference
- Super easy to start, stop, modify, and share your follow-up sequences
The process is simple: type the date before the “@” sign in your email’s cc or bcc to automatically trigger a follow-up at your desired date. For example, if you’re sending an email on Tuesday and want to send a follow-up next week, all you have to do is type “7days@followupthen.com” to send a follow-up automatically.
The cost of the tool’s simplicity is the lack of features. It’s great if you’re looking for a way to automate your influencer outreach follow-ups, but the tool cannot do anything else. If you want something similar but with additional features, Right Inbox might be worth a try. The following-up process isn’t as simple, but you can also create email templates, run email sequences, track open rates, and add private notes. The price for all these features is $14.95/month.
6. Upfluence
Best for integrating ChatGPT in your outreach efforts
Upfluence is a popular influencer marketing tool that does everything from influencer discovery to performance tracking. As an influencer outreach tool, it has all the essential features with a cherry on top: a native ChatGPT integration to help you modify your email messages.
Free trial: yes
Pricing: not publicly available
Features:
- Native ChatGPT integration
- Customizable pre-designed email templates
- Consolidate all creator communication in one place
- A CRM to track responses, follow-ups, and negotiations
Upfluence is a popular all-in-one influencer marketing platform with professional services — meaning you can use it to source influencers, track their performance, and also get help from their experts. The catch? It’s pricey, and the influencer database is limited to 4 million.
This alone significantly limits the number of influencer emails you can get via Upfluence. If you look at Upfluence's outreach feature in isolation, it’s mediocre. It’s unclear whether you can set up automated follow-up reminders and set up email sequences.
The only thing that makes Upfluence stand out is its native ChatGPT integration. You can use it to modify the tone of your emails, whip up a first draft, and suggest a follow-up response.
Upfluence is often considered one of the popular GRIN alternatives, so if you want another all-in-one influencer marketing tool with better outreach features, try GRIN. It integrates with Slack along with Gmail and lets you track your email performance.
The lack of a vast influencer database applies here too, though. GRIN uses first-party data, meaning any creator you onboard needs to connect their social media accounts to the platform. It’s also more expensive at around $25K/year.
💡 Want to learn more? Read our guide on Grin vs. Upfluence where we dive deeper into which tool is better for your team.
7. Mailmeteor
Best for sending mass personalized emails using Gmail
Mailmeteor is a Google-recommended solution for sending mass emails using Gmail — like influencer outreach. The downside is you have to find the creators’ emails yourself.
Free trial: no, but it’s free for 50 emails per day.
Pricing: premium plans for up to 15,000 emails per day begin at €9.99/user/month.
Features:
- Personalize your outreach emails
- Track your open and response rates
- Segment your influencer email lists and set automatic follow-ups
Mailmeteor is an affordable option for influencer marketers who use Gmail and don’t want to burn a hole in their pocket with influencer outreach tools. You can do all the basic stuff within Gmail like tracking your email response rates and personalizing your messages.
But the disadvantage is you have to find the influencer emails yourself or use another tool to do that job. There’s also no feature to add personalized email templates, but Gmail natively has a canned responses option that can do the task for you.
If you want a tool that has those features, try Ninja Outreach. You can create personalized email templates and automate up to two follow-up messages. There’s also the option to find Instagram influencers and YouTube creators, but the database isn’t large enough — there are around 120M creators in the tool. You’ll likely need to find your creators elsewhere and use Ninja Outreach solely for reaching out to influencers. The plans begin at $99/month.
8. Lemlist
Best for B2B influencer outreach
Lemlist is an AI-powered cold outreach tool primarily made for B2B lead generation. But if you’re looking for influencers in the B2B space and want to reach out to them, Lemlist has some great features. The downside is that since Lemlist is B2B focused, there aren't any options for finding influencer emails for channels like Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube.
Free trial: available for 14 days.
Pricing: premium plans start at $59/month for one user.
Features:
- Over 450M B2B contacts in their database
- Connect with influencers using multiple channels like LinkedIn
- Personalization features to use first name, last name, etc. in emails
Lemlist is an A+ influencer outreach tool if you’re looking for B2B creators. It has a vast influencer database and all the functionalities you can think of — personalization, multichannel outreach, email sequences, automated follow-ups, and more.
The con is its channels are limited to LinkedIn in its database and multichannel prospecting feature. If you’re an ecommerce business, Lemlist isn’t the right choice for you.
9. ManyChat
Best for doing influencer outreach via Instagram DMs
ManyChat is a chat marketing product that can also make your influencer outreach process more efficient. You can schedule Instagram direct messages to influencers and set up automated responses to creator queries. The con is ManyChat is limited to Instagram DMs and doesn’t translate to influencer outreach via email.
Free trial: free plan available for up to 1,000 contacts.
Pricing: paid plans begin at $15/month.
Features:
- Automate responses to your Instagram posts asking for influencer sign-ups
- Schedule direct messages on Instagram to potential influencer partners
- AI assistant to help you create a direct messages (DMs) flow
ManyChat is primarily a software for chat marketing, but there are several use cases for influencer outreach, too. Let’s say you want to recruit brand ambassadors and you shared the opportunity on your brand’s Instagram account. ManyChat will help you automate Instagram DMs to answer any frequently asked questions, share coupon codes, and schedule messages to creators you want to collaborate with.
The downside is it’s only made for Instagram, so you can’t use this feature on other platforms like TikTok or YouTube. There’s also no functionality to continue the conversation via email and see the whole context in a shared inbox.
10. SwipeMagic
Best for finding emails of TikTok influencers
SwipeMagic searches TikTok in real-time to help you find the most relevant creators for your query. It scrapes the influencer's email if it's publicly available. No other channels are present yet, and the search is turtle-pace.
Free trial: available for one query.
Pricing: paid plans begin at $35/month.
Features:
- Export contacts in bulk of TikTok influencers
- Get a real-time overview of an influencer’s metrics
SwipeMagic uses AI-powered natural language search to find TikTok influencers based on the criteria you entered. Alongside influencer metrics like follower count and engagement rate, SwipeMagic also helps you find TikTok emails in influencers’ profiles if they’re publicly available on their profile.
While the real-time update functionality is excellent for getting accurate metrics and unearthing niche creators, it takes a lot of time for SwipeMagic to finish its search. It’s also unavailable on any other channel, which is an even more significant disadvantage. The UI & UX is also clunky and full of friction points.
The tool is only the beginning
Finding the right influencer outreach tool gets you started. The right templates, offers, and subject lines keep you going. Use a tool like Modash to house all your influencer marketing efforts under one roof. Jumping from one tool to another can get taxing, and the costs quickly add up as you scale. Try Modash for free for 14 days and see the headache lessening yourself.
If you’re looking to dig even deeper, check our ultimate guide on influencer outreach. It answers questions like: how often should you follow up? What’s an enticing subject line to improve open rates? What should be your offer? And more.