- Journalists do not respond to most email pitches.
- Tuesdays and Thursdays are the best days to pitch a story.
- Short subject lines and pitches have the best chance of success
These are some findings from the Propel Media Barometer for the third quarter of 2022. This quarterly benchmarking study analyzed a sample of about 400,000 email pitches sent via the Propel PR platform.
The sobering statistics underscore the value of best practices in pitching journalists, such as making sure the topic is relevant, crafting a compelling subject line and keeping the pitch short. Here are some of the findings.
Response rates
Journalists ignore almost all the pitches they received (an average of 97% ).
The pitch
Journalists responded most to short subject lines (1-5 words) and short pitches (50-79 words). The optimal number of embedded links is two to three.
Timing
Journalists opened the most pitches on Tuesdays and Thursdays and responded the most on Wednesdays. Most pitches were opened within the first hour of landing in a journalist’s inbox. And most responses happen within four hours of the journalist seeing the pitch.
The upshot?
The report reinforced my commitment to five best practices:
- Make sure the pitch is relevant.
- Write short subject lines.
- Keep the pitch short.
- Use links for more information.
- Send the pitch on Tuesday or Thursday.
I encourage you to read the report in its entirety.
