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Key Takeaways Research beats volume. A few well-targeted, genuine pitches consistently outperform hundreds of generic emails.
Give the recipient something useful first — a data point, insight or resource — before requesting anything.
Keep pitches relevant and concise, and limit follow-ups to one meaningful reminder instead of repeated nudges.
Gatekeepers can sort most pitches into a failure bucket from the preview line alone. Fixing what kills them costs less than most senders think.
The email that finally made me write this piece arrived on a Tuesday morning. It congratulated me on an article I never wrote, on a site I do not run, and asked for a favor in the same breath.
That sender had no idea how ordinary the mistake was. I run a digital PR agency called ESBO and publish a handful of industry sites, which means cold pitches reach me all day, every day, and have for a decade. Read enough of them and something depressing happens: you can sort a pitch into its failure bucket from the preview line, before you ever open it.
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