If you're unsure about how to email editors...

Quick question for you before we get into it.

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Using two examples from real businesses, this month’s PR Questions edition includes tried-and-true PR tips to ensure your stuff is a good fit for the editor you’re pitching

Q: What are the best practices for making an initial pitch to a publication?

Email vs. sending samples vs. a snail mail pitch?

A: One of the things that Kirsten and I built our business on was design thinking methodology. One of the main pillars is empathy.

So if we think about this editor who is getting a zillion emails a day AND is probably working from home AND home is likely a small NYC apartment since a lot of the media live in NYC-- they don't want unsolicited samples. If everyone sent them a sample they would run out of space in their home almost immediately.

For that first email, there are a couple of things to keep in mind.

You can't ask an editor to write about you.

You're offering them information that will make their job easier so that they can give that information to their readers.

Use language like, "I think you might be interested in this story because I noticed like your readers are interested in (insert relevant topic)."

This is such a better email than, "I would really love for you to write about me", or "it would really help me out." Honestly, it's not an editor's job to help you out.

Ultimately, remember to have empathy. Keep it brief, make it an interesting pitch, provide them value, and give them images that they can use.

A lot of PR advice online says "just have a relationship with editors". I think that totally useless advice because it doesn't explain *how* to do that.

A good way to start thinking about how to start that relationship goes something like this-- "I would like to have a relationship with you, my business does this, I know you generally write about this, I'm going to have something coming up that I like to update you on."

In this type of intro email, you just want to say hello so you're not just pitching the whole time. This is a really great pre-pitch approach.

I hope that helps! Also generally don't send snail mail unless they've already written something about you and then you can send a thank you card.

Q: When you reach out to an editor and you don’t hear back from them? Can you email them again? What are the standards for that?

A: That's a great question! Following up is where the magic happens honestly. We get about 2-10% of responses from our initial outreach, and that’s super common. So prepare yourself to not hear back a lot after your first email.  

You’ve got more work to do, the follow-ups. We get about 50% of our responses after our third follow up. So initial outreach email, second follow-up, THIRD follow-up.

We always advise people to keep it to 3 total emails.

It's pretty clear at that point, and we want to treat these editors like humans. But following up is really important. Typically in the third and final email we’ll use a phrase like “one last time” to let the editor know that we respect their time and won’t be bombarding them with more emails.

Useful tools to help you get started:

Content that Converts—a roadmap for your creative business

9 Tips to Ensure Your Images Support Your Story Angles

Access to our 90-minute workshop: Grow & Get Press