This is a post made of 4 parts:

1. Outreach elements we test (and recommend others test in their own campaigns)
2. Citation Labs experiment examples
3. The Citation Labs Best Practices Record
4. A webinar conversation between Garrett French and Megan Hannay on Citation Labs Outreach Hacks.

The first rule of outreach is that there are no rules.

Except for one:

every outreach effort needs to be accompanied by a value proposition. This goes back to quality content creation and audience understanding: provide something of value to the right people. (Rand Fishkin did a great Whiteboard Friday on this topic recently as well.)

We’re calling this piece a “record” instead of a “guide” because we’ve learned that most outreach advice is only effective in a vacuum. Change one variable and results may alter with it. Instead, we recommend that you take all results with a grain of salt and experiment on your own…

11 Email Experiments + The Citation Labs Outreach Best Practices Record