How to Send a Media Kit to Brands (and Get a Reply)

To send a media kit to a brand, attach it as a one-page PDF or paste a link to a live web version, and put it in a short, specific email addressed to a named person, not a generic inbox. The kit gets you taken seriously; the email is what gets it opened. Send it after a warm touch when you can, keep the message under 150 words, and make the audience and the ask obvious in the first two lines.

Most creators obsess over building the media kit and then send it in a way that guarantees it gets ignored: a giant attachment, a vague subject line, and no reason for the brand to care. This guide covers the sending part, the step almost nobody teaches. If your kit itself still needs work, start with our media kit examples and come back here.

What format should you send a media kit in?

Send a media kit as a one-page PDF or a link to a live web page, never as an editable document or a heavy slide deck. A PDF renders the same on every device and cannot be accidentally edited; a live link stays current and lets you see if it was opened. Avoid Google Doc or PowerPoint files that ask the recipient to have the right software or make a copy. The rule is simple: the brand should be able to read your kit in one click, on a phone, without downloading anything they have to think about.

If you keep the kit as a link, host it somewhere stable and use a clean URL. A page that loads instantly and reads well on mobile beats a beautiful PDF that takes twenty seconds to download over a data connection. Our media kit feature builds a live web version from your listing and keeps the numbers current, so you can send the same link every time without re-exporting anything.

Who should you send a media kit to?

Send your media kit to a specific person on the brand or marketing team, not to a shared info@ or press@ address. The best targets are influencer marketing managers, brand partnership leads, social media managers, and at smaller companies the founder or head of marketing. Find them on LinkedIn, on the company site, or through a mutual contact. A kit addressed to a real person with the right job gets read; the same kit sent to a generic inbox usually does not.

Warm the target first if you can. Engage with the brand honestly for a week or two, reply to their posts, use the product, tag them when it is genuine. When your name is already familiar, your email is a follow-up rather than a cold pitch, and the open rate on a follow-up is far higher than on a first contact from a stranger.

What should you write in the email?

Keep the email under 150 words with four parts: a one-line hook about why you fit this brand, one or two sentences on your audience with a real number, the specific thing you are proposing, and a clear next step. Attach the kit or link it, then stop. Do not paste your whole media kit into the body, and do not open with your life story. The brand decides in the first two lines whether to keep reading, so lead with the audience match and the number, not with how much you love their product.

Here is the shape that works in practice:

Write the hook fresh for each brand. The audience line, the ask and the next step can stay largely the same, but the first sentence has to prove you are talking to them specifically. That one sentence is the difference between a reply and the trash folder.

When is the best time to send a media kit?

Send a media kit mid-week and mid-morning in the recipient's time zone, typically Tuesday to Thursday, when marketing inboxes are active but not buried under Monday backlog. Timing matters less than relevance, but a pitch that lands Friday afternoon or over a weekend tends to get skimmed and forgotten. If a brand is running a seasonal push, send four to eight weeks ahead of the campaign window, because partnership decisions and budgets get locked well before the launch date.

How do you follow up without being annoying?

Follow up once, four to seven days after the first email, with a two-line message that adds something new rather than just asking again. Reference a recent post of theirs, share a fresh result from your audience, or offer a specific date. One good follow-up roughly doubles your reply rate; a third and fourth chase mostly damages the relationship. If two messages get no response, move on and try again in a couple of months when you have a bigger number or a more relevant angle.

Should you test different versions of your pitch?

Yes. If you are sending to many brands, treat the pitch like any other piece of copy and see which version earns more replies. Try two subject lines, two hooks, or two ways of stating your audience, and keep the one that performs. You do not need fancy tools; a simple tally in a spreadsheet works. If you want to be more rigorous about which wording pulls, running the two versions through a quick conversion-copy audit can surface why one lands and the other stalls before you send another fifty emails.

The mistakes that get a media kit ignored

Three sending mistakes kill more pitches than a weak kit ever does. First, the mass blast: the same generic email to fifty brands, which every marketer can smell. Second, the wall of text: a five-paragraph email that buries the ask, when the reader gave you two lines of attention. Third, the missing number: no audience metric, so the brand has no way to price the opportunity and no reason to reply. Fix those three and your reply rate climbs before you change a single thing about the kit itself.

A fourth quiet killer is stale figures. If your kit shows last quarter's subscriber count or download average, a brand that checks will notice, and it reads as careless. Keep the numbers live so what you send is always accurate. For the full breakdown of what belongs in the kit, our guide to how to make a media kit walks through why the audience section carries the most weight.

Skip the cold email: let brands come to you

The fastest way to get a media kit in front of the right brand is to stop sending it cold and publish it where sponsors already search. List your audience and rate on Sponsorships, attach your media kit, and brands browsing your niche find you, see the price, and book directly. Membership is flat, commission is 0%, and payment goes straight between you and the brand, so you keep 100% of every deal. See how creators use it, or build your kit first from the media kit page and start listing today.