YouTube Influencer Marketing: Sourcing 250 to 4,000 Creators With Email and SEO

Amber Kai, CEO of Sequential and a decade-long veteran of the creator economy, shares how she sourced and scaled a YouTube MCN's talent roster from 250 to 4,000 creators in two years using only manual email outreach and no third-party tools. Her core argument: think like a consumer first, not a marketer.

She offers several sourcing tactics:

• Rather than searching YouTube for "beauty influencers," Amber used Google SEO keywords tied to trending products like eyeshadow palettes to surface creators the way an actual viewer would.
• She also recommends creating a dedicated YouTube account for sourcing, because the algorithm will start surfacing relevant creators based on your search behavior automatically.
• On the analytics side, she tracked CPM trends across 30, 60, and 90-day windows to identify creators on a growth spike before they became expensive.
• For YouTube influencer marketing today, she pulls trends from Instagram and TikTok and cross-references them on YouTube, including through Shorts and hashtags.

Watch to see exactly how she structures a sourcing workflow that works even when budgets are tight and tools are minimal.