According to the 2010 PRWeek/PR Newswire Media Survey, more than 70% of around 1600 PR practitioners still consider that using email is the most effective way to pitch journalists. However, journalists receive a lot of emails and they may not have enough time to read them all. Here you are some guidelines to increase your email chance to be read.
1. Target your pitch
Journalists receive tens or may be hundreds of Pitching Emails; your email may be at risk if it's not grabbing their attention enough or if it's not sent in an appropriate time through the day.
To pitch a journalist, you should act like a sales person who is showing his merchandise to a customer. If you (the sales person) are offering a medical product or service, your customer (journalist, editors and producers) should be a specialist in the field of healthcare, not someone who is working as a sports reporter.
Usually customers don't have much patience to listen to sales persons or to read long ads; so if you are pitching journalists via email, you should get their attention from the first glance, from the subject line. You should give life to your email; make it like you are doing a face-to-face presentation, this will give a better effect on the reader.
You also should make your research to know if your story has been covered before or not. If you have a new idea in expressing your story, a new perspective for a specific topic, be sure that journalists would like to get new ideas and stories, but you should also be sure you are expressing your idea in an attractive way.
2. Have a clear, concise subject
Getting a journalist attention to your email takes only one second. If you want your email to be read, not to be deleted and not to be considered as a spam, your subject line gives the first impression. Your subject line should be descriptive enough to let the journalist know what this email is talking about. E.g. Subject: SME News Release - PR's Secret.
Don't try to be funny in the subject line; the reader might not get your joke. Avoid using common words that are used by spammers. Also it's not preferred to use the word "pitch" in the subject line.
3. The body should be conversational, to the point
Around 30 seconds will decide the destiny of your email, whether to be read or to be neglected and deleted; especially if it's the first time to contact the journalist. Journalists don't have much time to read long emails, so you must keep your body brief and to the point. Format the body of your email before sending and make it easy and clear to read by using bullets or whatever. Don't include smiley faces or emoticons, make it serious and formal.
The objective of the body is to convince the journalist to contact you after getting interested in your story. To achieve this you have to include enough information to answer all the questions of a journalist. Put yourself in his shoes, think about why he should contact you later, how your topic will add a value to his publications.
Avoid attaching any clips to your email, let the journalist know the resources and samples that you have and he will request them. Get their attention in the body of your email, and then you can send more detailed information after they contact you.
After writing your body, be sure that your signature include your contact information, email address, website and phone number. Let him choose his favorite method to contact you.
4. Let them opt out
One aspect of courtesy and being polite is to give them the freedom of choice whether to receive your future updates or not. This will be appreciated by them; they will feel your respect to them and will exchange it. As a result, they might pass your email to the appropriate place and get another one to benefit from your email.
5. Paste your news release directly below your signature
It's a good idea to paste your news story below your signature. In case the journalists are interested in your story after reading your email body, they can easily scroll down to the read the exact story in details. This will save some time and save one communication step of contacting you telling that they are interested and want you to send further information about your story.
Passing this step means that you will get happy news in the first reply of the journalist.
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