Should you contact influencers by DM or email?

Email for formal, bigger or manager-represented creators. It is professional, threads and carries a brief. It is the safe default above a certain size.

It depends on the creator and the stage. Email is the professional default, especially for established creators, anyone with a manager or once real terms are on the table. It threads, it handles a brief and attachments and it signals you are a serious brand rather than a passing DM. Most creators above a certain size list a business email for exactly this reason and using it shows you did the basic homework.

DMs win in two cases: smaller creators who live in their app and rarely check email and a warm, genuine first touch where a short personal message lands better than a cold formal one. The catch is that DMs get lost in crowded request folders and do not handle detail well. A common pattern that works: open with a brief, specific DM to spark interest, then move the actual deal to email. Whichever you pick, the message being relevant matters far more than the channel.

Channel rarely is the real problem, fit nearly always is. Outreach to creators who were never a match fails on email and DM alike. Flinque helps you target creators whose audience genuinely fits, so the reason a message lands or dies is the offer, not the inbox it arrived in.

DM smaller creators who live in the app or as a warm first touch. Then move the real terms to email, where detail survives.

Channel matters less than relevance. A sharp, fitting message gets replies in either inbox, a generic one gets ignored in both.