Outreach e-mail templates are just that, templates. You need to personalise your e-mails, you need to think about how busy your contacts are going to be, you need to be polite, you need to vary your approach. It’s an amazing feeling when you see your story go live on a dream publication, but outreach is where the magic happens. There’s an element of sales to it, without being salesy.
Regardless of how good your outreach is, you need to be able to be resilient, you will get replies that aren’t pleasant, but that is part of the role, please never take it to heart.
There are many different types of outreach, but the two that I believe are the most common pitches are either for tactical PR (sometimes known in the industry as ‘quick wins’), or digital PR campaigns.
For tactical PR outreach, it’s about being straight to the point. It’s also remembering who your target is. Journalists are SEO savvy, and you’re competing with 100s, if not 1000s, of other e-mails whereas with tactical PR it’s different. You need to be explicit in what you are asking.
Tactical PR outreach email template
Here is a rough example of asking for an existing brand mention link:
Subject line: Enquiry about the {name of piece} article
Hi {name}, Hope you’re well.
My name’s {name} and I’m getting in touch on behalf of {client name}.
I saw that you’d kindly mentioned us in {name of article} here: {URL of article}.
I’m getting in touch to ask if you could please add a link back to {landing page URL} from where we are mentioned?
Here’s what I mean: Include an example
Is this something that you will be able to help me with?
Kind regards, {Name}
Things to bear in mind when pitching for a digital PR campaign
With Digital PR campaigns, the outreach will vary significantly. And whilst it’s more difficult to give an example; there are some things to bear in mind when writing a pitch for a digital PR campaign.
- Make sure you target the correct journalist
- Use what you predict the headline to be as your subject line (A/B test)
- Make sure to personalise
- Show that you know who you’re contacting
- If you reference their work, then make sure that it’s not disingenuous it’ll be transparent
- Sell your story in quickly
- Use bullet points for stats or data-driven stories
- Do not attach items (press releases/images etc.)
- Include press release in the body of the e-mail
- Use Dropbox/WeTransfer etc. for any media rich content (You can also include a copy of the press release in the Dropbox/WeTransfer)
- Include a URL to the landing page you’d like to be linked to
- Give the journalist everything you can in the first instance
- Be polite and appreciative of their time
- Answer the who, what, where, when, why and how in your outreach
- Let them know why it’s a good story
- Sign off
- Follow up but don’t overdo it
Read more about Digital PR.