You’ve just poured your heart and soul into another great email pitch, only to have it met with ego-crushing silence. Is there anybody out there?

The fact that a reporter hasn’t responded to your pitch, doesn’t necessarily mean that he or she’s not interested. With the daily email wallpapering reporters receive these days, there’s a very good chance your pitch was never seen.

Here’s a tip for following up on an email pitch. Wait a reasonable amount of time to place a follow up call (depending on the immediacy of the story, a day or two can be OK). Chances are you’ll get voicemail, but either way, identify yourself; tell the reporter you’ve emailed information; and then — instead of repeating your pitch — say you know they receive hundreds of emails every day and that you just wanted to make sure they knew you’d sent them a message. Tell them the day and time you sent the email, and what the subject line says. Of course, if you do happen to catch a reporter live, always begin by asking if they have a minute.

So many times reporters have responded by phone or email, thanking us for the follow-up, acknowledging they hadn’t seen it. We don’t always get a story, but many times this technique has helped us get results.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2007 at 4:21 pm and is filed under Media Relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.