We’ve all been there: you send an email you think is perfect to pitch journalists or media press, and you get complete radio silence that feels like you’ve burned a bridge forever.
Learning what not to do is often more valuable than learning what to do. So let’s talk about the hard lessons in email outreach.
What’s a specific mistake that taught you a valuable lesson? (Was it the timing? The tone? Following up too aggressively?)
On the flip side, what’s one small change you made that dramatically improved your reply rate?
As an early outreach lesson, I learned that mass e-mails don’t always work. Some journalists and influencers can easily tell if a pitch is a copy and paste.
What boost reply chances:
Ensuring that your emails are brief and personalized
Talking about their recent work
Describing why their target audience will care
Only one pleasant follow-ups
Remember, Making the pitches is difficult, and so is the game of relations.
the biggest mistake is making the pitch about you instead of about them. journalists get hundreds of “we just launched our amazing product” emails. the ones that get opened are the ones that tie into something they’re already writing about. check what topics they’ve covered recently and frame your pitch as “hey, i noticed you wrote about X, thought this might be relevant for a follow-up.”
keep it stupid short. 3-4 sentences max. subject line should be specific not clever, something like “new [category] brand doing [specific interesting thing]” not “exciting partnership opportunity.” and for influencers specifically, start by engaging with their content genuinely for a few weeks before pitching. a cold DM from someone who’s never liked or commented on their stuff feels transactional immediately.