How to increase your media relations pitching success

Analysis of 400,000 email media pitches has found that brevity is the key to success.

The 2022 Propel Media Barometer provides a framework for creating the perfect email pitch. It should have a short subject line, be 50 to 79 words, contain no more than three links, and be sent on a Friday.

Propel, a customer management system (CRM) tool for media relations, analysed nearly 400,000 pitches sent via its platform in Q1 2022 to understand the most effective strategies to engage with journalists.

Journalist engagement has decreased from 2021, with journalists only responding to about 3.37% of pitches. The study results suggested that some pitches are more likely to be successful than others. The one underlying theme for successful pitching is keep your pitch concise to maximise impact.

Here’s a summary of the findings.

Have a short subject line: one-to-five words

Public relations practitioners tended to write subject lines between 10 to 15 words. But the Propel analysis found that journalists engaged most with pitches that had subject lines of only around one to five words, and least with subject lines that were over 16 words.

Keep pitch leads between 50-79 words

The first sentence of the pitch has to have impact – and this means that the least engaging pitch leads were those that were over 150 words long. The highest response rate was with the pitches between 50 to 79 words – where journalists responded 4.16% of the time, compared to 0.16% for those over 150 words.

Keep pitches short

The body of the pitch perhaps unsurprisingly should be concise too. The study showed that the shortest pitches were the most successful. Whilst PR professionals sent less than 200 pitches with under 20 words, it was these pitches that journalists engaged with the most.

The study also found that using emojis in a pitch didn’t have much effect on the rate of journalist response. Journalists responded slightly higher to those without – but only around three percent more. This probably suggests that if an emoji seems relevant or helpful, then maybe use one – but if not, then don’t.

Use two to three embedded links as a maximum

Brevity shouldn’t stop at word count. The pitches that journalists engaged with the most were also those that use approximately two to three embedded links - yet more than three-in-five contained four links or more.

Cramming links into a pitch clearly doesn’t help journalist engagement, but neither does using too few. In fact, the pitches that journalists responded to the least were those without any links at all. It’s about getting a balance.

Send pitches to journalists on Fridays

This is a more practical pointer, but the analysis found that the highest levels of engagement with pitches, relative to volume, was on Fridays. Whilst journalists do certainly respond to a lot of pitches mid-week, it was clear that practitioners faced significantly less competition from others on Fridays.

Striking a balance between being concise and being informative provides practitioners with the best chance of creating an engaging, impactful, and successful pitches.