Of the other 9 Instagram influencers I

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Of the other 9 Instagram influencers I reached out to with the same customized template as my conversation with Alex, only 2 got back to me, albeit after the giveaway had already ended. What’s important is afghanistan telemarketing data I still had great conversations with them, which will lead to mutually beneficial interviews in the coming months.

That brings my total up to 3 out of 10 influencers who responded to my cold email—a 30% response rate.

One of the influencers is Zachary Domes, an amazing commercial and outdoor photographer who has almost 42,000 highly engaged followers. Photography is his core business and he’s definitely someone I’ll want to associate my brand with.

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Zachary also lives in San Francisco (where I live) so I used that mutual connection to suggest we get together over the coming months to chat about my site & do our interview in person. Here’s his reply to my cold email.

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The other influencer who got back to me is Ed Rader, who appears to primarily be a hobbyist photographer (assumption based on not having a website linked in his bio)—but a very skilled photographer nonetheless.

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Ed also lives in the bay area, so I was able to use the same localized connection approach and suggested we meet up to chat about my project in the new year. Here’s his quick reply to my cold email.

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All in all, my Instagram influencer outreach netted 46 new email subscribers—almost all of which came from the influencer I already had a relationship with.

If I switched up my approach the way I outlined above and had a live website to boost my credibility before reaching out, I’m confident I’d be able to get better results next time.

Regardless, the giveaway continued to pick up pace thanks to the viral sharing tools that are built-in.

Ending the giveaway and earning back what I spent on gear.

By time the giveaway ended, I had 518 entrants.

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After scrubbing the list of a couple of duplicates and spammy looking email addresses, that brought it down to 513 unique entrants in the giveaway.

I used the built-in random selection tool to choose a winner and reached out to them to confirm they wanted to accept the prizes.

After the winner confirmed, I bought the GoPro ($184.99 with tax and shipping) & Osprey Atmos pack ($259.95 with tax and shipping) for a total of $444.94, which would have put me at $8.41 over budget for the $500 I’d allocated to validating this business idea.

Total dollars spent was now sitting at $508.39 for this project.