Getting content creator coverage with cold email
Email is still very much cool and a great way to build wishlists
Email is one of those things that a lot of people, not just game devs, like to ignore. I used to be one of these people. I was convinced that whatever new fancy communication method was better than email (and rarely took the time to justify that to myself).
Email is too old school.
No one uses email anymore.
People are just going to delete it.
Any of those sound familiar to you?
These are all excuses I used at one point in time. They’re exactly that, excuses. Email is an incredibly powerful tool even in 2025. If you’re interested in getting more eyes, and eventually more sales, for your game you’re going to want to read this.
Why should you care?
I’ve talked about this on my YouTube channel a few times, but one of the most effective ways to grow your wishlists before launch is to get your game in front of content creators. They already have an audience of people who like to play games. Those people might like to play, or even buy, your game. You want content creators to play your game.
Sometimes when I say this people counter with, “But I can’t afford to pay that like the big studios.”
Here’s the thing. It doesn’t have to cost you anything but your time. Believe it or not, many content creators will play your game simply because you ask them to. It’s not some parasitic relationship either, this is a win-win for both of you.
Content creators need games to play to keep their audience engaged. Combing through Steam to find games to play takes time, time which they could be using to actually play games for their audience. You want people to see your game. Taking your game to the creator saves them the trouble of prospecting and gets you eyes on your game. For YouTube, aim for smaller creators, usually under 50k followers, but still solid view numbers.
Cold email to the rescue
Hopefully by now you’re convinced this is a good idea. The better part is that it’s easy to get in touch with them. Enter our new (old) friend email. If you check the channel description of nearly any gaming content creator you can find their email simply by clicking a button. They put it there so you know how to contact them.
This is where “cold” email comes in. It’s cold because the two of you don’t know each other, as opposed to “warm” which would be an introduction or some prior relationship. You just need to draft an enticing enough email to catch their attention so that the creator reads your email and wants to play your game. How do you do it?
Your two key tools for doing that are your email’s subject and the first few sentences of the body.
Subject lines get clicks
Spend just as much time crafting your subject as you do your email. Possibly even more time. You want the email subject to stand out to the creator so they see all of the other greatness you’ve packed into your email. Subjects are what get clicks.
This is where you should be you and personalize the message to the creator. It will take you more time to write these one-liners for every creator you email. You will see better results if you do it.
For example, if the creator you’re emailing has a Corgi avatar, mention that. You want to show them up front that you’ve done your research and this isn’t an automated spam email.
Personally I like to aim for 3 to 6 words. We’ll check out an example next.
Your email body closes the deal
Your heading gets someone to open the email. The body is where you ask them to take the action you want. Otherwise known as closing the deal.
This is the actual email template I used for my first game, Trace Hunters:
Hey <Name of creator>,
I'm Kyle, founder of indie game studio Moon Mantis Games. I'm working on the studio's first game, Trace Hunters, a single-player third-person shooter where you play as an armed vehicle! <personalized message>
Here's a two-sentence pitch for the game:
In Trace Hunters, you're outnumbered and alone. Blast through hordes of enemies in a futuristic combat vehicle to uncover traces of lost technology, earning a variety of upgrades to become even more powerful.
The demo is around 20 minutes long, including the first level and part of the second, with one additional weapon you can unlock after leveling up. If you're interested in playing Trace Hunters here's a download link and media assets:
Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2706210/Trace_Hunters/
Press Kit: https://open.substack.com/pub/moonmantisgames/p/trace-hunters-press-kit?r=251dsy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thanks for reading through this. Even if you don't decide to make a video, I hope you get some enjoyment out of the game.
Have fun!
I urge you to not just copy-paste and change some names. This is nowhere near as effective as making the email genuine and using your own personality. You want the person to know you’re a human and not a robot, unlike those thousands of LinkedIn messages you might get on a weekly basis.
Notice how the first thing I do is introduce myself. That is very important, again, because you want this to be a human talking to another human. Say who you are and why you are emailing them up front. You’ll notice too there is a placeholder for a <personalized message>. Don’t skip this unless you absolutely cannot think of anything genuine to say. This message lets them know you have spent time looking at their content and you specifically selected them.
For example, using our same Corgi avatar creator from before, I might say something like
Can Corgi’s drive?
Is it corny? Yes. Does it work? Also yes.
In this case, I would also use this as the email subject because it’s catchy.
The rest of the email is more or less standard business. Give them everything they need to get started, including a press kit. If they have to ask for your link, they will probably pass. In this case my demo was public. If you wanted the creator to play a special, private branch on Steam include a Steam key in this email. Do not make them ask for one. Most people will just hit delete.
What about embargo dates?
You may notice that I didn’t include an embargo date. By the way, “embargo date” is just the term for the date after which you want creators to publish their content. I didn’t have one in this email because by the time I sent it, the value of an embargo had passed and there was no point to do it.
You set embargo dates to create a bigger splash by having multiple creators publish their content on the same day, or very close to the same day. Most people will adhere to this without issue. For example, you may want to set an embargo for the week before your game’s Steam Next Fest to start generating hype and hopefully get better placement in the event.
Now execute
This is the part that most people don’t do. Amass a list of around 50 or so creators, or more. Send every single one of them a cold email. This is not difficult to do, but it is still work. You should send these from your own domain, not a generic domain like gmail.com. It makes the email seem much more legitimate.
Allow a few weeks between the time you send the email and the time you want the creator to publish videos. Creators typically have backlogs to go through and need a little time to get the content ready. You don’t want to be much earlier than three weeks or you risk falling out of memory.
To give you an idea, my YouTube content is only scheduled about a week in advance with the next two weeks as “roughly planned”.
One last thing. Make sure to say thank you if some covers your game!
Find of the Week
Everything I’ve gone over in this article will get you set on a good path for writing your own cold emails.
If you’re the curious type and want to dive in deeper though, here is a detailed article from Woodpecker on writing cold email for sales prospecting. They bring up some additional insightful details, like making sure your “From” field is actually from a person and not a generic name.
I had actually never heard of Woodpecker before coming across this article, but it’s a service to manage cold email campaigns for you. Unless you’re sending thousands of emails (which you shouldn’t do, odds are you’ll get your email banned) you’ll be fine running these from your own domain manually.
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