A recent large-scale study analysed 25 million real PR pitches to find out why 97% receive zero response. It makes for sobering reading, but for us at Keith Bishop PR, a lot of it confirmed what we’ve been doing for years. Here’s our take on the key findings.
Keep your subject line short
The data is clear: subject lines of one to five words consistently outperform longer ones. Yet over a third of PR teams are still defaulting to six-to-nine word subject lines. We’ve always believed in getting to the point; it’s a philosophy baked into our team, which includes some of the country’s most experienced journalists of the last 4 decades. They know better than anyone what makes you open an email, and what makes you delete it.
The BBC problem
The BBC is the most-pitched outlet on earth, and has a 1.2% response rate to show for it. We’re not going to pretend that pitching the BBC is easy. But our response rate is significantly higher than that, and it comes down to three things: genuine contacts built over years, a reputation that opens doors, and knowing exactly what the BBC is looking for at any given moment. We simply know what kind of pitches work there, and the ones which just won’t.
The WSJ lesson
The Wall Street Journal receives fewer pitches than many other outlets, but has a remarkably high open rate (63%). What does that tell us? Journalists are curious, but curiosity alone doesn’t become a story. The quality of the pitch still has to deliver once the email is opened.
Timing matters
Friday evenings outperform Tuesday mornings, according to the data. We’re not surprised. The media doesn’t keep office hours, and neither do we. We pitch the right stories at the right moments, because timing a pitch well is half the battle.
Byline pitches get results
Finally, pitches that include a ready-to-publish byline piece get seven times the average response rate. Journalists want something they can use immediately, rather than a vague idea they have to develop themselves. This is where having genuine journalistic skills, not just communications skills, makes a real difference. It’s something most comms teams simply can’t offer.