PART 2: A Look INSIDE the Process of How Writers Handle an Inbox Full of PR Pitches

What happens after you hit “send” on your pitches? Jill shares everything you want to know about how she reads, processes & decides on the pitches that land in her inbox

Hi TTC Substackers. Happy Thursday!

We really appreciate all the great feedback you’ve been sending our way on these newsletters — some of you have even shared new client wins/successes based on our advice, and that just makes our day (week! month!)!

As a paid subscriber, you have access to our entire archive of Substack newsletters, so don’t forget to take advantage of reading topics we covered before you joined!

Last week’s Substack was part 1 of this 2-part series, featuring Nicole’s insights on how she goes about tackling her insane inbox, what pitches catch her eye, how she decides what to move forward on, how she handles email replies, what she’s looking for in a pitch that lands in her inbox, and more.

The week before that, we dove into 8 Things You Need to Do to Help Prep Your Clients for Interviews, to remind you how taking a few extra steps before handing your client off to do an interview with a journalist can make all the difference in helping the interview run smoothly. The end result? A much better chance of your client making it into the article and with more prominent placement. If you haven’t read it yet, check it out here:

And if your clients conduct a lot of email-based interviews (or you’d like them to), don’t miss How to Help Clients Rock Email Interviews. Here is this one if you haven’t seen it:

And our course, it’s not too late to read our best practices for holiday gift guides! Read our holiday pitching guides below. We talk about ways to get your clients into gift guides (how to make them stand out in the sea of emails all writers are getting right now about gift guides) and how to get sources into stories around the holidays beyond gift guides (there are lots of other stories editors care about around the holidays not related to gift guides).

Now onto this week’s newsletter. We’re bringing you part 2, with a look into how Jill handles your pitches!

We know that you put in a lot of effort when sending pitches to writers/editors, and an equal amount of time figuring out which writers/editors to send it off to. But have you ever wondered what happens after you push send? I’m going to shed some light on:

• How many emails do we get per day?

• What times of the days are our inbox the craziest?

• Do we read all of our emails? Scan through them at least?

• Do we delete anything without reading it?

• Do any subject lines turn us off?

• What catches our eye in an initial scan/read of a pitch?

• When and how do we make a decision on a pitch once we receive it? 

• What goes through our heads when we are opening pitches?

• What are we looking for when we’re scanning through our inbox? What makes us want to move forward on a pitch email we receive?

• What do we write back to right away, vs. what do we instantly delete and what do we save to respond to at a later date?

Now it’s Jill’s turn to spill the beans … but first, a picture of me from my staycation at the JW Marriott Scottsdale Camelback Inn this past weekend:

I don’t always pose on a rock in front of an organ pipe cactus with the iconic Camelback Mountain in the distance, but when I do, it’s because my poor fiancé is trying to get a photo to accompany a first-person Insider article I’m writing!

Managing my inbox … it’s both the bane of my existence but also kind of exciting each day. How is reading hundreds and hundreds of emails exciting? Because each email is an opportunity. I never know what cool new things are going to end up on my radar, what’s going to help me finish an article, or what will eventually turn into my next great assignment. Of course, there are a lot of duds. So how do I know what is useful and what’s not a fit? Here’s how I decide: