Free templates

Link outreach email templates

Six emails covering the whole sequence: the exchange pitch, the guest post pitch, the value pitch for when you have nothing to trade, two follow ups, and the nudge for a partner who owes you a return link.

Full copy for every one is on this page, along with why each line is written that way, the subject line rules, and the cases where you should not send at all.

We will email a plain text and Gmail snippet version. No spam, unsubscribe in one click.

Link outreach email template editor with an exchange draft, preview, and manual review control

Definition

What a link outreach email is

A link outreach email is a message asking a publisher to link to a page of yours, or to accept something you would write for them. It differs from cold sales email in what is being asked for and what makes it work: there is no budget cycle to catch and no product to demo, only a person deciding whether pointing readers at your page makes their own article better. That means the useful levers are relevance, specificity, and how little work the recipient has to do, rather than volume or persistence.

What actually moves replies

List quality first, then a genuinely specific opening line. The body copy matters least of the three, which is awkward for a templates page to admit.

The line every template shares

An explicit way to say no. It reads like weakening the ask and it removes the defensiveness that produces silence.

Where volume belongs

In qualification, not in sending. Filter hundreds of domains mechanically, then write to the handful that survive.

What this is not

A cold email sequence. Two follow ups is the ceiling, a reply cancels the rest, and a removal request is permanent.

The templates

Six emails, full copy

Variables in double braces are the parts you replace. Anything you cannot fill in honestly is a sign to reconsider the domain rather than a blank to guess at.

First touch: link exchange pitch

When to send: A qualified domain you have never contacted, where you have something worth trading.

Subject: Quick partnership idea for {{their-domain}}

Hi {{first-name}},

I read {{specific-article}} last week. {{one-true-sentence-about-it}}

I run {{your-site}}, covering {{your-topic}} for a similar audience. I have a piece on {{your-page-topic}} ({{your-url}}) that would sit naturally in that article, and I would be glad to return the favor with a link from {{your-relevant-page}}.

If a straight exchange is not something you do, no problem at all. Happy to send the piece anyway in case it is useful for something later.

Either way, thanks for {{specific-article}}.

Best,
{{your-name}}
{{your-site}}

First touch: guest post pitch

When to send: A publication that accepts contributions, where you can write something they do not already have.

Subject: Pitch for {{their-domain}}: {{working-title}}

Hi {{first-name}},

Your piece on {{specific-article}} covered {{specific-point}}, which is the part most write ups skip entirely.

One thing it raised and did not answer: {{gap-you-noticed}}. I would like to write that for {{their-domain}}. Working title: {{working-title}}.

The shape I have in mind:
  1. {{section-one}}
  2. {{section-two}}
  3. {{section-three}}

I would include {{original-element}}, so it is not a rewrite of what already ranks for the term. Around {{word-count}} words, and I will work to your style guide.

If the topic is wrong but a byline is welcome, tell me what you actually need and I will pitch against that instead.

Thanks,
{{your-name}}
{{your-site}} · {{previous-work-link}}

The value pitch

When to send: A site you want a relationship with but have nothing to trade yet, or one where an exchange would be the wrong opening.

Subject: {{specific-thing}} on your {{page-topic}} page

Hi {{first-name}},

Not a link request, or not exactly.

Your {{page-topic}} page cites {{outdated-source}}, and that figure has moved since {{when}}. We keep {{your-resource}} updated ({{your-url}}) and the current number is {{current-fact}}, with the method written out so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Use it or ignore it. If it is useful and you want to point readers at it, here is a sentence you can paste:

  {{ready-to-paste-sentence}}

No follow up either way. I know how these emails usually land.

{{your-name}}

Follow up 1, around day four

When to send: No reply to the first email. Shorter than the original, and it repeats the ask in one line.

Subject: Re: Quick partnership idea for {{their-domain}}

Hi {{first-name}},

Short bump in case this got buried.

The ask: a link to {{your-url}} from {{their-target-article}}, and a link back from {{your-relevant-page}} in return.

If the answer is no, saying so is genuinely useful and I will close it out on my side.

{{your-name}}

Follow up 2, around day ten, then stop

When to send: The last message you send. Its whole job is to reduce the reply to a paste.

Subject: Re: Quick partnership idea for {{their-domain}}

Hi {{first-name}},

Last one from me on this, then I will leave you alone.

If it is easier to say yes to something concrete, here is the sentence and the link, ready to drop into {{their-target-article}}:

  {{ready-to-paste-sentence}}

If not, no hard feelings and I will not chase it again.

Thanks for reading,
{{your-name}}

The reciprocity nudge

When to send: A partner who took a link and has not published the one they agreed to. Send at day 14, escalate at day 30.

Subject: Checking in on the {{agreed-month}} swap

Hi {{first-name}},

We published the link to {{their-url}} on {{date-you-published}}, in {{your-article}}. It is live and it is staying live.

The return link we agreed, to {{your-url}}, has not appeared yet. Checking where it sits in your calendar rather than assuming anything went wrong.

If plans changed and it is no longer a fit, tell me and I will stop counting on it. That is a completely fine answer.

Thanks,
{{your-name}}

Six outreach email types matched to exchange pitches, guest posts, value pitches, follow ups, and return link reminders — Choose the email by what you can honestly offer, then personalize the opening for one recipient.

Line by line

Why these are written this way

Adapt the wording, keep the jobs each line is doing. These are the parts that stop working the moment you edit them out.

Start with the subject line, because it decides whether any of the rest gets read. Every subject here is deliberately flat: a partnership idea, a pitch, a note about a specific page. None of them contain the word backlink, none promise a benefit, and none use a question mark. Editors filter on pattern rather than reading, and the pattern that survives is the one that looks like ordinary correspondence between two people who both publish things.

The line that looks like it weakens the ask is the one that makes a yes cheap. Give every recipient a clean way to say no.

The opening line is the only sentence that cannot be generated. It has to reference something you actually read, specifically enough that you could describe it in a second sentence if asked. This is the whole email, functionally. A recipient who believes you have read their work will read your ask, and one who spots a merge field in the first line will not, regardless of how good the offer underneath is.

The ask itself sits in the middle and stays concrete: a named page of yours, a named article of theirs, and what you are offering in return. Vague asks get vague outcomes. Would you be open to collaborating gives the recipient work to do before they can even evaluate it, while a link to this page from that article is a decision they can make in ten seconds.

Then the exit line, which is the piece most templates published elsewhere leave out. If a straight exchange is not something you do, no problem at all. If the answer is no, saying so is genuinely useful. Explicitly permitting a refusal feels like giving away leverage. What it does is remove the sense of being cornered, and a cornered editor resolves the situation by never replying. It also converts your silent non-answers into real answers, which is what lets you clear a pipeline honestly.

The paste-ready sentence appears in the value pitch and the second follow up for the same reason: it changes the ask from write something to paste something. That is the largest single difference in effort you can remove on the recipient's side, and effort rather than willingness is what most of these requests actually die of.

Finally, the sign off carries your site rather than a signature block full of titles and social links. The recipient is deciding whether to link to a publication, so the useful credential is the publication.

Subject lines

What gets opened and what gets filtered

Subject lines carry more weight in outreach than in almost any other kind of writing, because they are doing triage rather than persuasion. An editor scanning forty unread messages is not evaluating your offer, they are sorting correspondence from noise, and the sort takes well under a second.

So the goal is to look like correspondence. Reference their property or their article, keep it under about eight words, use sentence case, and let it be slightly boring. Quick partnership idea for their domain reads like a person. Boost your rankings with a link partnership reads like the fortieth version of a message they have already learned to delete.

Avoid anything that signals a campaign. No brackets, no all caps, no emoji, no numbers promising a quantity, no exclamation marks, and no personalization tokens visible in the subject itself. First name in a subject line was a differentiator years ago and now reads as automation, since automation is exactly what put it there.

For follow ups, keep the original subject with a Re prefix rather than writing something new. Threading matters: a fresh subject starts a fresh evaluation, while a reply lands as an ongoing conversation the recipient has already half-agreed to be part of. That single choice does more for a follow up than rewriting the body.

Subject line rules

Name their site or their article, not your offer
Eight words or fewer, sentence case
No brackets, emoji, all caps, or exclamation marks
Never the word backlink, and preferably not SEO
No promised numbers or percentages
Follow ups keep the original subject with Re
Slightly boring beats clever, every time

The sequence

Running these properly

The templates are the easy part. This is the order that makes them work, and steps one and two are where most of the outcome is decided.

1
Qualify before you write anything
Run the domain through your mechanical checks first: does it resolve, is it indexable, does the language match, how many outbound links per page. A shorter qualified list beats a long unfiltered one, because fit is what drives replies. Writing a beautiful email to a link farm is wasted craft.
2
Check when the domain was last contacted
Before writing, sort by last contact date and hold anything touched in the last 60 days, by you or a teammate. Two people pitching the same editor in one week is the most common self-inflicted wound in team link building, and it is a data problem rather than a discipline problem.
3
Find a named person
Author byline first, then the editor, then a generic address as a last resort. A named recipient changes the response rate more than any sentence in the body, and the contact belongs on the supplier record rather than in your sent folder so the next person can find it.
4
Write one true opening line
Read something they published and say something specific about it. Not a compliment about great content, an actual observation you could defend. If you cannot write that sentence honestly, treat it as a signal that the domain was a poor fit rather than a copywriting problem.
5
Pick the template that matches your position
Something to trade goes to the exchange pitch. Something to write goes to the guest post pitch. Nothing to offer yet goes to the value pitch. Sending an exchange pitch when you have nothing they want is the most common mismatch.
6
Send from your own mailbox and log it
Paste into Gmail or Outlook, send, and record the date against the supplier. The log is what makes the follow up schedule work and what stops a colleague duplicating the approach next month.
7
Follow up twice, then close the loop
Day four for the bump, day ten for the paste-ready version, then stop and record the outcome. A reply at any point cancels the rest of the sequence, which is the behavior that separates outreach from a cold campaign.

Responsible outreach workflow from domain qualification through manual review, sending, follow up, and stop handling — Manual review sits before every send. A reply pauses follow ups, and a stop request is permanent.

Failure modes

Six ways outreach emails die

In rough order of how often each one is the actual cause, rather than the copy being bad.

The list was wrong

No email recovers a domain that was never a fit. If the site does not serve your audience, has no editorial standards, or exists to sell links, a better opening line changes nothing.

A generic opening line

Love your blog, great content. This tells the recipient a template arrived, and everything after it is read with that assumption in place.

No named recipient

A generic contact address or a form is a much weaker starting position than an author byline. Finding a person is worth more than an extra hour on the copy.

Wrong timing on the bump

A follow up the next day reads as pressure, and one three weeks later has lost the thread. Day four and day ten, then stop.

Too many follow ups

The third and fourth message convert almost nobody and turn a neutral contact into somebody who now associates your brand with being pestered.

Duplicate approach

A teammate emailed the same editor last week. Nothing in your message is wrong and the relationship is still damaged, which is why last contact date belongs on the supplier record.

Responsible use

Where we draw the line

These templates are built for outreach, not for cold campaigns at volume, and the distinction is practical rather than moral.

A human reviews the list before anything goes out. Bulk qualification narrows a list, it does not replace the judgment call about whether a specific site is somewhere you want your client's name to appear. Every message identifies who you actually are, from a mailbox on your own domain, with a real site in the sign off.

Anyone who asks to be left alone comes off the list permanently, not just off the current campaign. This one is worth writing into your process rather than trusting to memory, because the failure mode is a fresh pitch landing next quarter from a teammate who never saw the request. Two follow ups is the ceiling. A reply cancels the remaining steps immediately.

The reason to hold that line has nothing to do with being nice. There is a finite number of real publishers in any niche who will ever link to the sites you work on, and it is a much smaller number than most prospect lists imply. Burning one for a marginal extra send is a bad trade you make invisible to yourself when your tooling does not show you the last contact date. That is precisely why the field sits at the top of the supplier record rather than buried in a history tab.

One more thing worth stating plainly, since the industry tends to be coy about it. If what you are really proposing is buying a link, say so in the first email and record the deal as paid. Not because a tool will judge you, but because your client, your finance team, and whoever inherits the account in two years all need to be able to tell an earned mention from a purchased one.

Terminology

Terms used on this page

Definitions for the words that get used loosely in outreach writing and precisely here.

First touch: The opening message to a domain nobody on your team has contacted before. Its job is a reply, not a closed deal.
Value pitch: An approach that leads with something useful to the recipient rather than a trade, used when you have nothing they want yet.
Paste-ready sentence: A complete sentence containing your link, supplied in the email so the recipient's task is a paste rather than a piece of writing.
Exit line: The explicit permission to refuse. Present in every template here, and the reason they get straight answers instead of silence.
Reciprocity nudge: The message to a partner who took a link and has not published the one they agreed to. Sent at day 14, escalated at day 30.
Merge variable: A placeholder like {{first-name}} filled per supplier. Useful in the body, and a tell if it appears in the subject line.
Last contact date: When anyone on your team last emailed this domain. The single field that prevents duplicate outreach.
Stop request: A recipient asking not to be contacted. Applies to the workspace permanently, not to one campaign.

Questions

Frequently asked questions

Still unsure about something? Talk to our team and we will give you a straight answer.

What reply rate should I expect from these?

We will not give you a number, and you should distrust pages that do. Reply rate is dominated by how well the list was qualified, not by the wording of the email, so any figure we published would describe our prospecting rather than your results. Track your own by template and by niche for a quarter. That number is the only one worth acting on.

Do I have to personalize every email?

You have to personalize the opening line, which is the only part that cannot be merged from a field. Full personalization of every sentence is a myth at any real volume, and zero personalization is why reply rates collapse. The workable split is a template body with variables plus one true, specific sentence you wrote yourself about their publication.

How many follow ups is too many?

Two, then stop. The first bump catches a buried email, the second makes saying yes a paste rather than a task. A third message on a favor request converts almost nobody and costs you a relationship you may want next year. If your sequence has five steps, it is a cold campaign rather than outreach.

Should I mention SEO or backlinks in the email?

Not in the subject line, and lightly in the body if at all. Editors receive a lot of mail with the word backlink in the subject and most of it goes unread. Describe what you are proposing in plain terms: a link in a specific article, a contribution, a corrected figure. The word SEO adds nothing the recipient needs.

Does LinkSwapy send these emails for me?

No. LinkSwapy stores your templates, fills the variables per supplier, tracks the status, and reminds you when a follow up is due, then you copy and send from your own mailbox. Gmail and SMTP integrations are on the roadmap. Sending from your own domain is deliberate rather than a missing feature, because your sending reputation should carry your own behavior instead of being pooled with other people's.

How do I handle someone asking to be left alone?

Remove them from the workspace, not just from the current campaign. A removal that only applies to this month is not a removal, and the same person receiving a fresh pitch next quarter is the single fastest way to burn a publisher relationship permanently.

Can I use these for paid placement outreach?

You can adapt them, and if money is involved say so in the first email rather than the third. Leading with an editorial framing and revealing a budget later wastes everyone's time and reads as a bait. Record the deal as paid on your side too, so a year from now anybody can tell the difference between an earned mention and a purchased one.

What makes these different from the outreach templates everyone else publishes?

Mostly that they give the recipient a way out. Every template here contains an explicit line making no an acceptable answer, which feels like weakening the ask and does the opposite: it removes the defensiveness that makes busy people ignore a message entirely, and it gets you a straight answer either way instead of silence you cannot act on.

Where these fit in the workflow

Templates are the middle of the job. Qualification comes before, and verification comes after.

Outreach workflow

Statuses, reply tracking, and reminders around these templates.

Recovery email template

The seventh email: asking an editor to restore a removed link.

Bulk domain quality checker

Free qualification pass, so you write to domains worth writing to.

Link exchange tracker

Free spreadsheet for recording what each partner agreed to.

For link builders

The full prospecting to placement loop for high volume specialists.

Link partnership CRM

Contacts, notes, and the last contact date that stops duplicate sends.

Templates are better with a memory

LinkSwapy fills these per supplier, tracks which status each conversation is in, and tells you when a follow up is due, so nothing gets sent twice or forgotten.

Try LinkSwapy free Browse all templates