Some Honest Reasons Why Your Email Pitches Are Being Deleted
So in my inbox yesterday was a link to an article (from a friend) entitled "10 Dead-Honest Reasons Reporters Delete Your Emails" that was recently published on Business Insider. Since it came from someone I knew...I didn't delete it. In truth the title alone was compelling enough for me to click the link.
I'm not going to go through the entire article as one, you can read it for yourself and two, not all of the information is pertinent to fashion & beauty bloggers, but for the most part it was pretty dead-on.
Here are three of my favorite reasons why pitch emails get deleted (of the 10 detailed):
1. Accept that most of your emails get deleted instantly.
Not only do I (and I assume every other fashion/beauty blogger that has been at this long enough) receive anywhere from 200-400 emails per day...most are worthless. I find myself hitting the delete tab at rapid-fire pace. Do I possibly overlook something worthwhile? I'm sure I do, but the headline wasn't compelling enough for me to open it then. The main reasons I delete your email (even if I do open it) is because:
I don't know who the sender is
You spelled my name wrong or worse yet, called me "Dear Blogger"
Your first sentence was boring or confusing. That's about all the time I can give you. Next!
2. Do not ambush or give a false sense of urgency.
I can not tell you how many pushy follow-up emails I receive from PR peeps and all this does is turn me off more. Trust me, if I were interested I would reply. And probably pretty quickly. When you send me the initial email, and the next day send me a "just checking in" and then an "I thought I would try one-more time" (but proceed to send me 3 more emails, so you lied) and then call me? Well, you are a stalker and are now on my black list. Oh and marking your email as urgent is plain annoying. As is putting 'RE: XXX' to make me think we have communicated before on this subject. We are all on to this sly tactic. Delete!
3. Decide what is most compelling about you to the vast majority of people.
True most PR sent emails nail this (or why would they get paid?), but I do get quite a few emails from start-ups doing their own PR and marketing and so many miss the mark. I appreciate a start-up may not be able to afford professional marketing help, but that is no excuse to be vague about what you do. If you can't communicate what you do, how you are doing something fresh and what sets you apart from your competition in the first (short) paragraph, you are going to lose me. I don't have time to figure out what you do. I have at least 200 more emails to read/delete.
Read the rest of "10 Dead-Honest Reasons Reporters Delete Your Emails" here.
- Lauren Dimet Waters, Second City Style
