The ONE TRICK to Improving Your Pitch Follow-Up Strategy That'll Make Reporters Who Didn't Reply in Round One Say YES!
A deep dive into the best practice we KNOW from experience works in a pitch follow-up strategy (that many publicists sadly don't do!) + a look into why most of the follow ups we receive fall flat
Happy July 6th! Hope you all got to take some time off for the 4th and are back to work feeling refreshed. We have a great topic this week — and one that we know publicists will find incredibly helpful.
But first a quick reminder:
We’re almost sold out for our upcoming group Christmas in July Affiliate Workshop — so if you’re thinking of attending, it’s time to pounce!
Holiday pitching is right around the corner. Are you and your clients ready? To get you dialed in on everything you need to know about affiliate marketing and the holidays, we’ve enlisted the expertise of publicist Sarah Karger to join this Q&A session! She is a master-level gift guide pitcher (we should know … we’ve featured plenty of her clients’ products over the years because her pitches are always on point!) and a whiz at all things affiliate marketing. Between the 3 of us, we’ll be able to tackle any questions you have on this topic.
Speaking of questions, one of the main topics we get asked about at Top Tier Consulting is affiliate marketing. We often hear things like:
Is it a deal breaker if my client isn’t signed up with an affiliate program?
What are the best affiliate platforms?
How do I contact e-commerce writers/editors to get my clients into these gift guides?
How do I communicate that my clients are on affiliates?
When it comes to commission percentages, what gets an editor/writer’s attention?
So, we’ll address all that and more in this hourlong session. Plus, it will also give you a chance to learn from colleagues and hear answers to questions they bring up that you may not have thought of. You’ll walk away with ALL of your affiliate questions answered plus hear best practices on getting your clients on affiliate programs, pitching clients on affiliates, finding the right platforms, and more.
Here are the details you’ve been waiting for:
Date: Tuesday, July 11th at 10 am PT/1 pm ET (session will last one hour)
Can’t make it live? We’ll be sending the link out afterwards for anyone who pays to register (to watch on their own time).
Rate: $49 Paid TTC Substack Subscribers; $99 Free TTC Subscribers
Ready to sign up? Send an email to info@toptierconsulting.NET and we’ll collect payment and send you the Google doc to share your question(s) for the session!
We’re still available for ONE July 1:1 consulting session. Here are a few of the topics we offer:
Want to workshop a few pitches with two top-tier writers to help improve your success rate? Try our Pitch Perfecting session.
Looking to build deeper relationships with journalists that will pay off for years to come? You’ll love our Become a Journalist’s BFF session.
Have a slew of specific questions you want answers to? Book an Ask Us Anything session … the sky’s the limit.
Need fresh ideas for sending mailers to writers? Book our Press Package session.
Have other ideas you need help brainstorming or creating an action plan for? We offer Custom sessions, too! Email us at info@toptierconsulting.net.
Now onto this week’s topic: How to nail a pitch follow up
At Top Tier Consulting, we get asked a lot of questions about follow up emails:
Should I follow up on my pitches?
Over email, phone, or social media DM?
How often should I follow up?
What should I include in the follow up?
What is the best timing for an email follow up?
This week, we want to dive into one of those points a little deeper:
“What should I include in an email follow up?”
First off, let us let you in on a little secret. As writers, we look at pitches as potential story ideas, which means it doesn’t matter if your client is the coolest on the block. If it’s not something we can turn into a story idea, it’s not gonna land with us.
Very very often, we’ll open up an email pitch from a publicist and think to ourselves “gosh this sounds like a great product” or “this client has a very impressive background” and not make the connection of what we could do with that person or product in the moment. If it isn't inspiring a story idea when we’re opening the email, we’re not going to be able to do much more than ooh and ahh about a client, delete the email and move on.
This is where a good email follow up strategy can come into play. Maybe you pitched us a pair of shoes for Mother’s Day gift guides, a plastic surgery expert to talk a celebrity’s Brazilian butt lift gone wrong, a pizza oven that’s perfect for a 4th of July BBQ get together…
If those pitches didn’t resonate with us (read: we didn’t respond), no worries! You can still follow up and repurpose those and this is where a good email follow-up strategy comes in.
If crafted correctly, a pitch follow-up can catch our eye in a way that an initial pitch didn’t. It can take your pitch from “here’s a client or product I rep” to “here’s a story idea hand delivered to you on a silver platter (aka a writer’s dream!).”
As a publicist, you put time into your pitches. You carefully craft them to include all of a client’s top selling points, you make them timely, you perfectly curate the list of writers you’re sending them out to.
But then we see a BIG MISTAKE happen in the follow up strategy time and time again.
Just this week, Nicole went through her inbox to see how people were handling email follow ups. Here are some responses she found:
Just re-floating this as XYA Products are having a moment right now! Let me know if any of the below properties are a fit for anything you’re working on, or if you’d be interested in visiting any of the below. Thanks!
Circling back on the below
Kindly checking back in here
I am just circling back on the below
Just checking in
Wanted to put this at the top of your inbox
Wanted to follow-up here.
Quickly following up on the below
Happy Friday! Just wanted to bubble up this announcement and see if there's a fit for coverage. We have samples available upon request. Thanks!
Unfortunately in most cases, these types of pitch follow ups aren’t going to get you much ROI.
When it comes to figuring out how to nail the email follow up, we have ONE TIP that can make all the difference. We see it work in our inboxes time and time again — and we see email follow ups flop time and again when people don’t do this.
Ready to perfect the email follow up? Keep reading below to learn what works:
Not a paid subscriber? Upgrade today to read this newsletter + our extensive archive of past newsletters where we talk about everything from Our TOP Tips from 2022 (spoiler: they ALL still apply in the new year!) to 7 HARO Do's and Dont's That'll Improve Your Response Rate and beyond. Plus, as a paid member of any plan (monthly or annual), you can access our free monthly Top Tier Talks where we take member questions every month, bring in special guest experts, and discuss trending topics in the writer/publicist realm. This past week we had a GREAT Top Tier Talk where we discussed these questions and more:
How to connect with journalists beyond HARO and Qwoted
The best way to get a product added to a “Best products of 2023 story”
The hot categories for gift guides this year
How to best pitch an expert who is associated with a brand
When pitching a client as an expert, should you mention that they have been quoted in other outlets
Specific price points for products that are currently getting the most traction
How to reach out to reporters on social media platforms, like Twitter
Should you include links to past published stories your client has been published in when pitching a product
Is it OK to pitch a product for Mother’s Day, then go ahead and repurpose the pitch and same product for 4th of July or the holidays
If a new product is coming out and the URL is not available yet, how should we handle the pitch
What outlets are best for pitching a tween brand
How long should we wait in between email followups to pitches
How can I get luxury brands into gift guides
Are publications only into featuring products that have 500-1,000 4-5 star reviews on Amazon
How do publications work with Skimlinks vs. ShareASale. For example, if an outlet has covered a client using their Skimlinks link, is it worth it to invite them to join our ShareASale network? Or will they work exclusively with Skimlinks?