Kibbe on Marketing: Knocking Email Pitches Out of the Park

Say a marketer has just crafted the best email pitch ever, full of great newsworthy information and exciting contacts ready for interviews. The media list is ready, a finger is poised over the send button… it’s going – going…

It’s a foul. Why? For “subject,” the marketer used “Press Release”.

How much more uninformative and, frankly, boring can you get? Marketers are very sharp and creative folks, so why oh why is the subject always “Press Release”?

The whole point of a pitch is stand out from the crowd and get some coverage for the client. Please, I’m begging here, put something in more descriptive than “Press Release”. The client deserves more, not to mention me. There’s probably a headline or deck on the release itself – “Joe Schmoe, Award-winning Wood Artist, Launches Dental Device Store” -- just use that. Even better, shorten it: “Juried Woodcarver Opens Toothpick Boutique”.

Many marketers also include a press release as an attachment, either as a Word doc or a PDF, but nothing in the body of the email. That’s fraught with issues, and I'll tell you why.

Computer attachment viruses still exist, unfortunately, and nasty things can and do happen. But much more frequently, something goes awry with the attachment and I can’t open it. Without copy in the body of the email, I don't know what the release is about. It’s not very likely I’ll have time to reply or call to ask for a resend. (If it’s a “Press Release,” I’m even less inclined. I don’t know what it’s about – why would I ask for more spam?)

PDFs hold the same issues. Even more vexing – I can’t easily copy and paste information into a document to create an article. The marketer was hoping to get something in print, right? It stands to reason that I actually need to get at the text to write something. By their very nature, PDFs are meant to be printed, not used as a document. When I try to use PDF text in another document, all formatting is obliterated.

I have even had some folks send press releases as a JPG – yes, a picture file! How in the hell can I use that?! I’d have to physically retype the thing to get it into a usable format. I don’t think so.

Marketers can and, and in many cases, should send releases as attachments, but please include the information in the body of the email as well. And for heaven’s sake, please put something descriptive in the subject line. If I know what I’m reading about and the information is in a usable format, it’s a good bet I’ll be able to consider it for coverage.

Cindy Kibbe, an editor for a New England business publication for nearly a decade, can be reached at cindykibbe@comcast.net.