How to keep your pitch from getting deleted
Jeremy Porter recently blogged for Journalistics: “13 ways to keep your pitch from getting deleted”. One way, he writes, is to keep it personal.
“If you really want to keep your email from being deleted, make it personal. Demonstrate that you understand what the journalist writes about and that you’ve done your legwork. You should NEVER cut and paste a pitch or use mail merge software of any kind to switch out names and details in a pitch. Journalists can smell this tactic a mile away and will almost always click the ‘delete’ button.Write the pitch as though you were emailing a family member about the news. You should have that level of comfort and knowledge of the recipient before sending. If you tailor the pitch to an individual, you are much more likely to receive a response. If you do cut and paste, or you do try to mail merge, you will screw up. You will call him a “Mrs.” and you will call John “Sally”. Don’t do it.”
