Three key outreach tips for successful Digital PR + a free template
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Impactful outreach is a crucial ingredient of any successful creative digital PR campaign. It’s no good having a newsworthy asset and piece of content if you get your pitch wrong. Digital PRs can spend months working on a campaign, researching data, designing assets, sourcing quotes and writing content – the last thing you want is for this to be let down by poor outreach.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the ways in which the Embryo PR team ensures that we get the most out of our outreach.
So, what is PR outreach?
But first, let’s start with the basics. PR outreach is all about focusing on building your brand’s awareness and forming trusted links with industry partners. That might be anything from fellow professionals to reputable media outlets – or even influencers, depending on your sector.
As such, PR outreach is key for any business looking to make an impact. It can help you reach thousands of potential customers with just one piece of coverage, making it one of the most powerful marketing strategies at your fingertips.
In this next section, we’ll touch on the amazing things you can achieve – straight from the mouth of our resident experts.
What are the hallmarks of successful PR outreach?
Isobel Aylmer, Senior Digital PR Executive at Embryo, knows what it takes to make PR outreach work – and do it well.
She said: “Successful outreach often comes from a lot of trial and error! When you start your initial round of outreach, it’s important to split test subject lines, this helps you determine which angle is the stronger of the two and is more worth pushing.
“Following up with journalists and also re-pitching your press releases to journalists is important and will help to ensure your email is seen by the other hundred or so they receive every day! Re-pitching can be done by switching up your subject line and initial pitch, to ensure it’s different from the first pitch you sent them.
“Attempting to build relationships with journalists is a great way to make them come to you first when they require expert commentary or data from your client. This can be as simple as asking them about their weekend and thanking them when they do cover your press release.”
Deeper insights
- Understanding a Digital PR Strategy for Beginners
- Is Digital PR right for my business?
- Best creative marketing campaigns in 2024 so far
Our top tips for Digital PR Outreach
Whether you’re just starting out, or have already got a strategy in place, there are a number of ways you can optimise your PR outreach plan.
We’ll touch on them in detail in this section.
1. Be strategic when building your media list
Before you even send an email, it’s important to build a comprehensive list of contacts that you think would be interested in covering your story. Make it too small and you’re going to limit your success before you even begin out reaching.
But while there’s a temptation to simply make your media list as long and extensive as possible, you don’t want to be contacting publications and journalists that simply aren’t relevant to your story. Doing this is just going to bloat your outreach and leave you with a bunch of unopened emails.
2. Try to open up a dialogue with your contacts
It’s true that a lot of journalists that cover your story may do so without ever replying to your email. This is to be expected, but where possible you should always try to open up a conversation with the journalists you contact – regardless of whether they have accepted or rejected your story.
By creating familiarity with journalists from a range of different publications, you’ll open up new opportunities. If your story is rejected, you might be able to find out what kind of stories they are interested in. You might be able to get inside access to other journalists who will be valuable contacts for future campaigns.
At the very least, getting to know specific journalists will increase your chances of securing future opportunities with those people – you’ll no longer just be a name they don’t know.
3. Take time to study your open rate, click rate and response rate
Success in digital PR is often defined by how much coverage you can secure – but the truth is that there are a range of valuable metrics that you should be keeping an eye on.
Open rates, click rates and response rates aren’t just something for you to report to your client. These are important indicators of how successful your campaign is while it’s still going on. After a day of outreach, take time to study these. Is your open rate lower than expected? A little tweak to your subject line and intro paragraph could be all it takes to push this number up a little bit. If no one is clicking on your link, you might want to change its location in the email.
By keeping an eye on these numbers while you’re actually performing your outreach, you can be adaptive and reactive and improve your pitch as the campaign rolls on.
Need some help? Here’s a PR Outreach template
If you’re looking to get started, here’s an example template to help. Outreach is made easier with platforms like Buzzstream, but that still means formulating an outreach email you can use again and again.
You’ll have to change certain sections depending on your industry and who you’re looking to target, of course, but this is a great place to start.
Subject Line
First, greet your target, whether that’s a journalist, influencer or contact!
Introduce yourself, your company and who you’re working with.
Now, add that you are reaching out because you believe your client has a story that would be of interest to your readers/viewers/listeners.
Here, briefly introduce your company or client and highlight its unique value proposition. Then you can concisely state the newsworthy angle or key message, with supporting details like:
- Statistics
- Quotes
- Case studies
Then, draw attention to the press release for review, before signing off with your details and fielding any questions.
Get in touch with Embryo today
Want to find out more about how the Embryo PR team pitches our successful and creative campaigns? Get in touch with us today to find out how we can help boost your brand exposure, raise your authority, and secure your business coverage in leading media publications.
