Personal Touch -
It’s particularly frustrating to receive an email with the name of another brand as the subject title, or within the paragraphs.. (you'd be surprised at how often this happens!) You might think that the best opportunity to achieve a sponsorship is to reach out to as many brands as possible, but it’s still important to personalise each email, and prove that you’re interested in that company specifically. This means that you should refer to your target brand by name, and if you’ve done a bit of research on the company, or better yet, are a long-term fan, we want to hear about it.
Numbers and Statistics / Content Plan -
For new teams or startup organisations, it might be more difficult to have tons of impressions or previous examples of partnership numbers, but just show us what you can. If you’re willing to cooperate by creating unique partnership opportunities, even if you have a small reach, this can still be influential for the brand. For example, if you can show examples of content you’d like to achieve alongside the brand, instead of purely a list of numbers, that is sure to make you stand out against other requests! Can you already make great pictures of existing esports jerseys that you have? Cool, let us know this!
Furthermore, whilst having a growing community of 500 people in your discord channel can be a great way of assessing your overall reach, it does not immediately mean that each of these 500 people are likely to be influenced by your promotions. Do you know how many of those people interact on a daily or weekly basis? Perhaps some of these people have your channel muted, and wouldn't even see your posts? These are all things that a brand will be thinking about when you approach them with only numbers.
Expectations -
A lot of companies will already have a section on their website that discusses the kind of partnerships they can offer. For example, in our FAQ section, we advertise that we do not have a sponsorship system that will result in any form of free items or financial aid. So, if you email us requesting free items, don’t be offended when the answer is no. It’s important to have an understanding of what a company can offer, depending on their marketing techniques, size, and general approach to sponsorships. If we have cooperated together for a long time and you have already proven to us that you’re loyal to our brand, and fun to work with, this doesn’t mean that the occasional giveaway product is out of the question, but it’s not something that will be 100% agreed upon from an initial email.
Alongside this, if a company offers you X amount, it’s really not necessary to tell us that another company can offer you more. That may be true, but this immediately creates a tension in our relationship, and doesn’t prove your loyalty to our brand. Whilst you might have good intentions with this, and perhaps you're using this as a persuasive or bargaining technique, you don't want to destroy a companies image of you by immediately using competitors against them. Whilst one company might offer X amount and the other company offers a little more than X amount, this doesn't mean that the company offering you more will support you in the ways that the first company can. There's always pros and cons.
Professionalism -
Many brands love to have fun as much as the next person, but you will still want your first impression to be a good one. There's a few small things that can make a big difference to an introduction email - for example, by using an online spell checker (including check you've spelt the brands name correctly), and ensuring all your website links work correctly!
We hope that these tips help you on your way to achieving a partnership, and let us know if there's something else that you think is equally as important!
