Welcome to the Q&A Forum

My most successful emails have consisted of the following Ego-Stroking:  Make them feel like they are important and valuable WIFM:  People want to know what are they getting first before you can really grab their attention and negotiate a link/social mention/interview/ etc. Personalized:  Obviously don't be a robot and try to be genuine. Also when contacting other webmasters/bloggers try to find out what kind of person they are, meaning are they humorous, boring, academic, liberal, etc.  The reason why is because people enjoy like minded individuals, so if you find a webmaster/blogger that tries to be funny in their blog posts than try to add some kind of humor in your email outreach. This might sound like a sketchy method, but I have seen some good results out of trying to personalize my emails to match the webmasters/bloggers personality.