Since the inception of influencer marketing, the tried and true method for creators to reach potential new brand partners is by sending cold pitch emails. Creators have been taught that sending more cold pitches equals landing more deals. Splattered across TikTok are videos from coaches teaching creators how to formulate the perfect pitch email, but in 2026 this strategy isn’t having the same effect that it used to.

With the influx of new creators in the space, brands are now overwhelmed with anywhere from tens to thousands of emails in their inbox every week from hopeful creators. The effectiveness of the cold pitch email is declining, and yet cold pitching is still one of the only methods that we see being taught by social media coaches.

Common Issues With Cold Pitch Emails

There are some fundamental issues with the classic cold pitch email strategy. While many creators are aiming for volume of pitches considering they don’t often get successful responses, the level of personalization takes a hit. Most creators are writing an email template and customizing only a small portion of it, or they’re getting plug-and-play templates from social media that make all the pitches sent by different creators simply blend together.

A high volume of pitch emails that essentially all say the same thing and aren’t effectively able to actually set those creators apart makes it hard (or virtually impossible) for brands to read them all top-to-bottom and/or respond.

“You have to put yourself in the brand’s shoes,” says Maren Hamilton, Senior Director of Marketing & Growth at Popfly. When she was the Head of Social at The North Face, she was getting hundreds of cold pitch emails a week and notes that most were generic, misaligned and clearly written by AI with no real understanding of the........

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