Episode 104 - 5 Best Hacks for Getting Your PR Pitch Opened by Journalists
Why You Need To Focus On Your Open Rate When Pitching Journalists
Welcome to another episode of the Small Business PR Podcast. In this episode I cover everything related to email open rates. This can easily get overlooked by founders who are only looking to get a direct “YES” from the journalist they pitch. But 90% of the time, you’re going to need to follow up AT LEAST once to get that YES. So paying close attention to open rates will help you determine the best follow up strategy.
1. Why Install an Email Tracking Device:
Before sending out any pitch, you’ll want to install an email tracking device. Free extensions like mailtrack.io will let the receiver know the email is being tracked, but this isn’t something I worry about. Paid options can remove that mark if it is a major concern for you, but I always recommend my community the free option as it's the most accessible. So why is this even important? Because not getting a response from a journalist tends to make people panic. But when you can see what they’re opening and if they’re clicking on links, it removes some of that guesswork and overthinking. “Omg they hated my pitch. I knew I shouldn’t have sent it”....when the reality is, it could have gone unnoticed due to technical issues or busy inboxes, not because they're poorly written. Knowing when an email has been opened empowers you to follow up strategically. If not opened, change your subject line. If opened, follow up with new points or value.
2. Use Schedule Send and Stop Stressing:
For us solopreneurs who are juggling everything, sometimes we don’t want to dedicate 1 hour every single day to do the same thing. Batching your email pitches on one day and using the schedule send feature in Gmail can save you loads of time and make your outreach more systematic. It also will take away that stress of hovering over the send button every single time. When we can remove the emotions around pitching-aka the self doubt from not getting a response or the anxiety of sending a pitch when you don’t feel “ready”, you’ll make the process much more enjoyable and efficient. This will also make it easier to outsource eventually.
3. Give your journalist options:
The end of your pitch should include multiple ways to contact you. Not everyone communicates the same way. Some people prefer email. Some prefer text. Some prefer calling or even social media. The more options you can present someone with, the easier it will be for them to actually follow up with you.
4. Get used to DM-ing:
After sending your email pitch, immediately follow up with a short and sweet DM on a social media platform like LinkedIn, Twitter, or instagram. It’s ok to do some stalking and see which platform the journalist is more active on. Take a look at recent posts, if they’re posting to stories, and if they respond to comments. If email+one social media follow up doesn’t work, try on their other platforms as well. It’s all about increasing touchpoints and getting them familiar with your name.
These PR hacks will help streamline your pitching process, increase your chances of getting noticed, and help you build valuable relationships with journalists. And hopefully adjust your mindset that pitching is some scary confusing task, because it isn’t!
PR success often comes down to persistence. By implementing these strategies, you'll be well on your way to getting your pitch opened and your small business featured in your dream outlets! For more in-depth guidance, be sure to check out episode 104 of the Small Business PR Podcast!
The CPR Pitching Method™ helped small business-owning entrepreneurs from PR Starter Pack members see themselves as a go-to expert with a point of view, instead of JUST a founder, seller, or consultant – a standout mindset that takes you far in the world of PR.
I hope you take notes throughout this episode and maybe even listen to it again so you can really nail down the three parts of the CPR Pitching Method™ and use it to your advantage!
So get ready to press send and get your message. And I can’t wait to see you featured in the headlines.
P.S. If you want your small business to go from invisible to visible, seen, and valued, register for my FREE PR Secrets Masterclass. Soon enough, your credibility and visibility will skyrocket. Register now at www.gloriachou.com/masterclass.
Resources Mentioned:
Join Gloria Chou's PR Community: Small Biz Pros: By Gloria Chou
Additional Resources:
Join the Small Biz PR Pros FB group
Listen On Your Favorite Podcast Platform
Follow & Review on Apple Podcasts
Are you following my podcast? If you’re not, I want to encourage you to do that today so you don’t miss any future episodes!
I would also appreciate it if you would leave me a review! Reviews help me make sure I am providing the content that you need! Plus, you will be entered to WIN a 1:1 pitch writing session with me where I will help you find your press-worthy angle! Click here to review, select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review”.
Here’s a glance at this episode…
-
[00:00:00] What's up, small business heroes. Welcome back to another episode of small business PR, where we break down what PR is and make it accessible so that all founders can be seen, heard, and valued. Today is a quick tip episode, but this one you're going to want to take notes and get back to. I am sharing my five best PR hacks to getting your pitch opened.
Yes, you heard that right. Now, PR is really simple and I teach this all the time on my free masterclass. PR is just writing a pitch and sending it out, right? It's just literally. What to send and who to send it to. So obviously if you've been in my community for a while, you know, that I teach my signature CPR pitching method, my proprietary pitching framework that I came up with after hacking PR from the outside, I used to be a government diplomat, I never worked in PR and through cold calling and emailing thousands of journalists.
cold without knowing them. I was able to crack the code on what makes a perfect pitch. So if you want to know what the secret formula of the winning pitch is, go to Gloria chow, pr dot com slash masterclass to watch it on demand. But for now, I am sharing with you the five best PR hacks to getting your pitch open after you've mastered that framework.
So the [00:01:00] first one is install an email tracking device. I say this on every PR masterclass and I say this when working with my PR students is that we want to install software. On our email tool, whether it's Chrome or Gmail, I prefer Gmail. I heard Outlook doesn't have the best deliverability and my students have a lot of success with Gmail.
What I want you to do is install an email tracking software. It can be really simple, something like mail track. io or any kind of Chrome extension for a low fee. And what it does is it tells you if your emails have been open, this is step number one, before you send. Any emails out now, obviously in my PR starter pack program, I have a comprehensive list of step by step exactly what to do, but this is always going to be your number one step is install an email tracking device.
Here's why it's important. We want to know who is reading our email. We want to know. If it's being opened, because a lot of times we always trip ourselves up. We as founders are doing the scary thing of pitching and a lot of time we start to get imposter syndrome. We start to say, Oh my God, this pitch is bad.
I knew it. I knew I shouldn't have done PR. I knew that my pitch is not wanted, but it really doesn't have to be that dramatic. It could just be simply [00:02:00] that the email wasn't read. It could be a deliverability issue. It can be an out of office thing. For the journalists or any of those issues. So in order to take the emotion out of that and get analytics so that we can pitch over and over again, install an email tracking device.
That way you'll know exactly if you can resend it as many times as possible, just to get them to open it. Or if it's been opened already multiple times, you know, that you have a warm lead. It means that the journalist really likes what you have to say in the pitch. They're just looking for a place to put it.
So be patient, my friend. If it's being open multiple times, what you want to do at that point is follow up once a week gently and comment on their latest social media posts or LinkedIn thing. remember, it's all about warming them up. It's kind of like sales, right? You want to warm that lead up so that they are familiarizing themselves with your name and you can do that across platforms.
You can follow them on multiple platforms. You can comment on their stuff because. Every day they're being bombarded with so many different things in their inbox. And what better way to stay top of mind than do that warm follow up gently and kindly. Okay. So that's number one, install an email tracking device.
Another bonus tip for this is the thing that [00:03:00] is most important in your pitch is your subject line because your open rates are all about your subject lines. And of course I have a training all about this in my PR starter pack, but you want to make the subject line super. Specific and outlining what the pitch is.
You don't want to say a subject line that has your name, your company, or please feature me. You want it to be almost kind of like the headline of a story, which is how I teach pitch writing in my PR masterclass. And you want to be specific. So for example, a subject line that is more likely to get open is specific about what the pitch is.
It doesn't hide anything, right? It's not like want to know the secret to X, Y, and Z. No, it's like three things you should know about X, Y, and Z. I'll give you an example, right? A subject line that says new skincare products you need to try. Is okay. It's fluffy. It's not specific. And I don't know if it works in 2050 or 1995, right?
But if you make that just a little bit more specific and relevant, which is something I say all the time as well, you can change that into something like new skincare serum made entirely a fruit for melanin rich skin that will be big this winter. Do you see how there's levels of specificity in there?
There's the demographic, [00:04:00] who it's for, what's the season, what's the reason, all of those things. So as you get familiar with this important skill of pitch writing, I want you to peel away the layer of an onion so that you can reveal that specific juicy core that's really going to flavor the dish. So, remember.
Always, always, always see how you can add more specificity and relevance. If it's a subject line that says, you know, best winter accessories, maybe it's about best winter accessories for 2024 or whatever that year is for X, Y, and Z audience. Do you see how I'm adding other layers of specificity? All right, enough about that.
Let's move on. So the next tip I want to show you, which will help you get your pitch opened, is using the schedule send button. Now, one of the things that all of our founders. Are dealing with is lack of time, right? We are solo entrepreneurs. We are wearing all the hats. Some of us taking care of family and elders and time is the most scarce commodity.
But guess what? Pressing send multiple times, and the more often you press send, the more likely you will get featured. It's really a numbers game, like dating. The more times you press send, the luckier you will get. And I always say that Everything you want is on the [00:05:00] other side of the send button. So how do you make this not an overwhelming thing? With everything else you have is, batch that on one day. So I usually suggest after you have your pitch, draft Your emails to all the journalists, whether it's 10 or 30 or 50, and then you can draft it all in Gmail and then you can schedule send.
So that way you don't actually have to type it in and send it live. You can have 1 day where you sit for an hour or 2 and draft up all your emails for your journalists that you want to hit up that week and then schedule send for like a Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday at 9. A. M. That way it becomes a system and it takes the emotion and drama out of it.
Right? they always say, successful businesses have systems for everything. Just like that quote, you want to have a system for PR and like a system for everything in your business, but especially when it comes to PR, I've been able to do this in my business where I have my assistant batch send 20 emails every single week and she follows up right away.
And then she does the same in the next week. And so through sending. 80 or 90 emails a month, we are able to consistently get on podcast and stay on top of the journalist radar. So to recap, use [00:06:00] that schedule send button on Gmail and don't be afraid to batch it all in one day and schedule send on another day.
So one thing, a bonus tip here is I want to avoid Fridays because a lot of journalists can be out of town or traveling. I usually like to send a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. Around 9 a. m. Eastern is usually the time that I like to schedule, send all of my pitch emails again, it's all about creating a system that you can replicate and not sitting down and having all this drama about what's going to happen that day or how your emotions are.
You just do it because like I said, it's a system. All right. the next hack that I have number fourth tip is always leave a cell phone number at the end of your pitch. Now, as you have seen in my PR masterclass, the CPR method, I show you exactly how to write a pitch from beginning to end. And the ending is very confident.
It states that you're happy to share more insights or offer a sample or speak more. But what I want to pay attention here is you want to end the email with. I can be reached on and then you put your number and then you put in parentheses, call or text. This is very important because if a journalist is a texter and a lot of journalists are, you give an easy way for them to contact you, right?
So [00:07:00] don't just put your email or. rely on email, give them multiple ways to contact you. So I like to give a cell phone and then put call or text to show that you are available for calling or texting. Again, it's about making sure that you make it easy on the journalist and provide multiple options for them to contact you because everyone communicates a little bit differently, right?
All right, here is the last hack that I want you to know a tip that you must, must do is every time after you send an email pitch, DM them right away, I want you to know this should be a habit. This is a habit of all of our successful PR students that get featured week after week is They draft an email. they send it and then immediately they go down the list of contacts that we provide for them and we provide tens of thousands of media contacts in our PR starter pack. They start DMing them. And the DM is always a shorter version of the email because DMS are short, right?
So it's just recapping what the pitch is and why you're in a position to talk about it, why it's interesting for your readers this season. I usually like to stay around three to four sentences max for the DM followup. And then at the end of the DM you want to put.
I have sent you an email titled XYZ, Which is the [00:08:00] subject line that you have chosen on this date. So put in the day that you send it and then you write, so let me know if you haven't received it. You see how clever that is? It's not a DM that's like, Hey, I don't know what to say, but I sent you a pitch.
It's saying, I sent you something valuable. Here's how you can look for it. I'm giving you the subject line and the exact date. This is beautiful because it does two things at once. It not only allows you to add them to your network, vice versa, right? You're adding them as a connection.
But you're also telling them to go check their email because again, it's all about that repetition. Journalists get hundreds of emails a day and it's the people who follow up and make it easy for their emails to find that get answered. I cannot tell you how important this is. It's not just about sending the email.
It's about following up immediately with the DM. So let's see if you send in all your emails on a Monday or Tuesday, I would send all the DMS immediately afterwards. So that way you don't forget about it. So. Write an email and then follow up, write an email, follow up in the DM, right? It's kind of like when you turn on the faucet, you shut it off after you're done using it.
I want this to become such a habit that's ingrained in you. So again, it's a habit and it's a emotionless. You send an email, you follow up on DM. [00:09:00] And I've given you the template of what to write and you always put in specific details about the subject line and the date so that they can go back and filter through all of their hundreds of emails.
All right. I promised you that this would be a quick, short and sweet and easy one. This is my five top PR tricks for getting your pitch opened. And if you haven't watched the masterclass to learn my CPR pitching method, one that's helped thousands of founders gain an organic. 1 billion views across outlets and podcasts and TV and radio.
I recommend you do that. You go to www. gloriachaopr. com slash masterclass. And if you're looking for a supportive community. Where I come in live and coach you every month on your pitch writing and get journalists to come and coach you as well, as well as having a database of every single journalist you could ever want to pitch to all the outlets.
Join our PR program. It's called the PR starter pack and you can go to www. prstarterpack. com. All right. Until next time.