Either way, you want to avoid your pitch falling into the swarm. This is what a torrential downpour of press releases looks like at 9am.
So when is the best time to send your pitch ?
And it seems that there is no perfect time. But there is unanimity on the recommended time slots:
- Best time slot: between late morning (from 10am) and early afternoon (around 1-2pm)
- To avoid: Mondays (or the day after a long weekend), Fridays and weekends.
Pro tip: If you’re sending your PR to outlets in different time zones, getting the email to everyone in the perfect time frame can be tricky. Unless you don’t mind waking up email data to send your pitch at odd hours of the morning, use a tool that allows you to schedule emails.
We use YAMM, a Google Sheets add-on. The free option doesn’t include scheduling, but $28/year seems like a fair price for a night’s sleep. It doesn’t allow you to schedule multiple campaigns at once, but if you need to send your PR to more than two time zones, there are other tools that allow this.
Email format
The issue of pitch
Let’s start with the subject line, which should be short, concise, and summarize the main point of the piece you’re pitching.
When it comes to words, there is no magic number, although flashing cartel and screen memory some experts maintain that between 6 and 10 is best.
In any case, avoid a subject line that is so long that it cannot be fully displayed in the inbox preview .
Numbers aside, don’t underestimate the power of a well-crafted subject line: 85% of journalists decide whether they want to know more about a pitch or not based on the subject line alone.
Remember the fact and put as much care into the subject many studies as you did into the press release.
Body of the email
Include a brief summary of the piece in the body of the email. Try to whatsapp filter condense the most newsworthy aspect or main pain point of the piece into a couple of sentences and draw attention to the full version.
Given the limitations, skip the formalities and get straight to the point.