The Perfect Digital PR Pitch with Maddie Davies

Stephen Baker:
Maddie, welcome back to the Digital PR Podcast. It’s great to have you. How are you?

Maddie Davies:
I’m well, thanks. Thanks for having me back. How are you?

Stephen Baker:
I’m very well. I’m very well. I’m looking forward to this because you have come up with a very interesting topic in a slightly different format to some of the other podcasts we’ve put out there, different to your last one as well. I am going to flatter you at the start of this podcast by saying that it is fair to say you’re a genius at the art of pitching a story. I think that is true. I’ve seen it in action. I’ve seen it on the Slack channels around the agency. You are an absolute natural at it, pitching a story, securing coverage. In your opinion, Why do you think you’re going to be taking us through a pitch email and why it works? Why do you think pitch emails are important? Surely it’s just the press release and you get it out there and that’s enough or no, according to you.

Maddie Davies:
You would think or you’d hope that would be enough. First off, that is very, very flattering. Thank you. But I think when it comes to pitch emails, because I trained up journalist side, I think I’ve seen the good and the bad of pitches. So I think that’s always in my mind of what I remember disliking quite a lot. And it’s obviously different when you’re on different beats as a journalist. So when I was on Breaking News, which was very short lived because it was not for me at all, because it was very much people messaging you being like I’ve got a breaking news story and their mobile number and that was the communication and you just had to call them and just hope there was a really good story and at times it was but then when you came to like more lifestyle and features where you know the type of people that we tend to pitch to that much more you needed a bit more of bulk to the story you couldn’t just say here’s my mobile number please give me a ring Well, you could give it a go, but I don’t know what the success rate would look like, if I’m honest. But in terms of why they are so important, I think what we often forget with the upfront pitch that supports your email and your press release. That’s like your chance to really introduce your client. It’s your chance to explain who they are, why they’ve conducted this research or released this product. And it’s literally a chance to sell in this piece of work. So from my perspective, you know, it’s a chance of you have the pleasantries, which is the human connection, which tees you up nicely. Hello, their name and wish them well. I know that’s quite the controversial one. Always up for debate. Do you wish them well or not? But you wouldn’t just walk up to somebody in the street and say, hi, Steve, and just go straight into whatever it is that’s on your mind, because that would be absurd. Like nobody talks like that, or they might do. And again, don’t know what the success rate would be. You did speak to people like that. So that’s like the human connection part. And then you’ve got the space to go into the top level overview of the story that you’re pitching, followed by the key takeaways, wrapped up with some more pleasantries before going into a press release.

Stephen Baker:
Makes sense. Before we get into the pitch email you’re going to analyse, which I’m obviously very keen to hear a bit of a spoiler. I have obviously seen it and it is great and it was a great campaign. I know it’s quite a lot of talk within our industry, on social media and the like about what makes a good and bad pitch. There’s often quite a bit of back and forth as well from journalists, from PR people. How much inspiration do you get from outside sources and potentially, I’d be putting you on the spotlight, but could you give an example of when you’ve used a piece of advice on pitching that’s kind of really paid off for you?

Maddie Davies:
Yes, this is going to sound really made up. And when people listen to the podcast, I don’t want them thinking that I’m just on a plug for Propanonet. I promise it’s not. But in the midst of lockdown, when there was lots of webinars in the world of SEO, digital PR, I can’t remember who was the host of said webinar but Louise Parker, one of our head of PRs, was on the panel and somebody asked her a question about why your story is so successful basically and how do you get connection and build relationships with journalists. and I always remember Lou saying in that that you basically have to make sure you give the journalist absolutely everything and go even above and beyond so that there’s no need for them to follow up because we know journalist time is quite stretched in the UK it’s estimated for those who work for News UK or Reach PLC They’re like churning out 10 articles a day, so they’re really up against it. They don’t have time to come back to you saying, oh, do you have extra info on this? Can you provide a comment on that? Do you have any imagery? You know, et cetera. So that’s always remained in my mind. And that was before I joined Propelnet, before anybody questioned if I’m just here to plug the agency. No, I promise that’s true.

Stephen Baker:
I believe you 100% because Lou is full of good advice. But it does amaze me that people don’t do that just as a natural thing, because why wouldn’t you? I suppose if you’re pitching a story, you’ve got to think about what you’re pitching, why you’re pitching, you want coverage. Ideally, you want it as soon as possible. and making someone’s kind of life easy. I think we’ve all had sales emails where the pitch is kind of asking you for something, which just isn’t, we want the coverage. The journalist knows that. So provide them with what they need rather than, Oh, could I just grab five minutes of your time? You know, trying to tease them in some way. It’s got amazing relationship. Yeah, I totally agree with that. That’s a great tip. So. You’re going to take us through one of, well, is it fair to say it’s one of your best performing pitch emails? Like why this one? And can you tell us about it and take us through it?

Maddie Davies:
Of course, yeah I believe it is. I really had to traipse through lots of stories I’ve done over the past three years and this one had a 75% open rate and it led to great results which we can go into a bit later. I personally think it was the one where I’ve actually had a lot of responses from as well, like we often get coverage where Journalists don’t necessarily have to reply to the email and to me that sometimes is proof that we have provided everything that they needed because they didn’t need to come back at all. So I don’t take that as they’re not going to cover it. But yeah, 75% over rate I think is pretty strong, but I thought it’d be helpful to go through kind of step by step of what this pitch looked like and why I think it was the key components of the success of the story, as well as giving a bit of an insight into what the story was as well. Cause obviously a good story is going to help with the coverage as much as the pitch email. If you follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn or any social media, you’ve probably come across this already. So we’re going to talk through the pitch email of the world’s bluest water, which was conducted on behalf of CV Villas, a luxury travel agency. So the first most important thing when it’s coming to your pitch is obviously the subject line. My piece of advice when it comes to that is always just have your keywords right up front. So for us, this was world’s bluest water revealed by scientific theory. Having the word scientific in there as well gives it a bit of leverage. I think it leads to a bit of intrigue as well. That’s quite a key component, I think, of the pitch is that’s the thing that’s going to get them to click through. So you do have to think about those keywords. What is going to really appeal to different journalists? And I’ll think you’re cutting the story in different ways. You have to think about if you’re pitching this to a travel journalist versus a lifestyle, or if there’s any other angles, what’s going to be most important to them, essentially. And then diving into the body, as I said, there’s always going to be the pleasantries up front. So just hi, first name, whoever the journalist is. I hope you’re well, because as I said, it’s nice to make sure that They’re looked after. They’re busy people. So a nice little message. That’s all they need. Don’t ever go really with the, how are you? With the question mark, because that can lead to journalists who don’t want to cover it, you know, kind of replying, saying that they don’t want to chat. You’ve opened a conversation there. So I always do a, I hope you’re well, and then go straight into, I wanted to share new research and then going on to what it reveals. So I’d already said that in the subject line, it reveals where in the world has the bluest unfiltered water, according to scientific colour theory. And then the next sentence is listing the three beaches that come out on top, beating the likes of Bora Bora and the Maldives. So there, I think gives what it does and why this is of interest by having the comparison to the Maldives and Bora Bora. gives that instant kind of hook of, oh, that’s obviously interesting to readers because they are the two places that I think you automatically think of when you think of an ideal beach situation. So you’ve got your pleasantries, you’ve got your overview and you’ve got your nice hook in there as well. And then the next sentence goes into who it was done by. So that the travel expert for CV Villas collated, give a brief overview of the methodology. But we essentially used unfiltered Google map images of 200 beaches from around the world. And we analysed their RGB colour code, cross-referenced that with the world’s bluest shade of blue, which was proven by the University of Oregon in 2016. That’s where the scientific theory comes into it, in case you’re wondering. And then we ran the calculations using a color-coded tool to reveal which ones have the bluish sea. And that gave us a lovely list of the top 20 around the world. But for this pitch section specifically, we included a list then of the top five beaches, the name of the beach and the country that they’re in. And below that then, just to sell them the idea even more so you can sell the dream, show them that, you know, the vision of what you’re thinking as well. I always include like a little screenshot of three pictures next to each other and underneath like a reference of what each of those images are. So I’ve got three pictures next to each other of the beach in Albania and two Greek beaches that were first, second and third place. so that the journalist gets a bit more of a visual idea of the story as well and they can start thinking how this article could look when they write it up. Again, this is something I found really useful when I was journalist side. And then below the images is a nod to the fact they could see the full press release below, along with the methodology. I then supplied a document full of Instagram images. With stock imagery, it’s really hard to be able to tell if it’s, when it comes to the beaches, that it’s those specific beaches that are in the images. So to make sure that I did give the journalists absolutely everything that they needed, I created a document which had images that were Instagram posts. saying that they could embed this into their article if they wish. That is a quite a nice get around if you’re struggling to get images and it has led to people doing that in the past as well. So it just shows journalists that you’re willing to, you know, really try and help them out as much as you can. And then again, the pleasantries of if you use any data, please can you credit with a link to this source. If you have any questions, please reach out kindest and then whoever it’s from. So in this case, me. And that’s the pitch section of that email.

Stephen Baker:
It’s beautiful, Maddie, because… For absolute transparency, I didn’t work on this campaign at all, so I didn’t see the pitch email before it went out. Obviously heard about the coverage that was coming in, which was amazing, both the quantity, the quality, and the impact that it’s had. You referenced at the start that obviously you need a great story, like a great pitch email won’t cover something that’s not a great story. So you had a great idea, of course, but it is a masterclass in a pitch email because for listeners, the absolute word count of this is 188 words for the pitch. So, it is short, it’s to the point, and the art of it, I think, is that, and you’ve taken us through it really well, you know, you’ve got the pleasantries, but it’s a great subject line which piques the interest, because it doesn’t tell you absolutely everything, but it’s kind of like, I want to know what the world’s bluest water is and how they got there, that’s interesting, but you haven’t teased them or made them wait, you just said, this is the beach, that it is how we’ve done it, and how it could… So you’ve offered that kind of comparison. So lovely imagery as well, which obviously is going to help sell the story. Exactly as you said at the start, Maddy, it’s made it easy. You’ve given them everything they need. What I want to know, and something that me and you don’t talk about enough, and I think something that we could talk even more about as a team, is how we come up with pitch emails and how long we spend on them. How long did you spend crafting this pitch email? Because a lot of work goes into the campaign, a lot of work goes into the release, a lot of sign-off points, and then almost the final stage is this pitch email. How long do you spend on it and how many times do you check it? Talk to us a little bit about that.

Maddie Davies:
That’s actually really interesting because no matter how many of these I’ve written, I always underestimate how long it’s going to take me to be happy with the kids section of an email. It’s for all the reasons that you just touched on, to be honest. You want to make sure you haven’t overcomplicated that selling part. I think that’s quite difficult when Your head’s in a story and you’ve been part of the production, coming up with the idea, you know, doing the research, writing the press release. Your head is so in it that to you it makes complete sense. So when it comes to explaining it in the simplest form, you know, so a journalist can understand it, it really does take time. And the way that I work, and I’ve done this since university, I remember doing this with my dissertation, I’m much better at getting all of my thoughts in my head onto the page, or in this case, the screen, and then just cutting. So I kind of work and take it all back that way. So for me, it does take a long while because that then considers, you know, all of the editing going into it. So for example, when I said that the second line is an intro to the client and this is what they’ve done. I didn’t go into the full methodology there, but when I first wrote this up, I copy and pasted the whole methodology in so that it was there. And then in my mind was like, okay, how can I condense this down so it’s now in its simplest form? Because I think the actual methodology at the end of the press release, we broke down into like five parts so that you could see each step. But if I put that in the pitch section, you’re going to completely check out after. you know, the third sentence of, we created a long list of global beaches by Annalisa Rapport for around the world, the most beautiful beaches. You’re going to kind of check out by that point. So that’s very much how I go about it is getting it all there and then condensing it and thinking, if I only had 30 seconds to sell this to a person, if we were face to face, how would I summarize it? But even then, I’d say I could spend like an hour to a couple of hours getting it to where I want it to be. And then I always get more eyes on it to make sure that it then is digestible to somebody who hasn’t seen it. So I remember with this story, I actually asked a friend of the podcast and colleague of ours, Abby Bennett, to read over it because she hadn’t been involved in the idea and the actual production and she’s not on this account. So I asked her to read over it and she was like, yeah, that all makes sense. I get it. I get how you did it. And she was excited about the story as well. So I was like, okay, we’re in a position where We could probably send this to a journalist, but even then I still, and I think this is like a tip, most people probably do it already, but a reminder, always send it to yourself before you pitch it out to journalists, because it’s surprising what can come through when you see it in the body of an email rather than on Buzzstream or whatever kind of media database that you send out via.

Stephen Baker:
Yeah, great tip because then you’re seeing how it sort of looks in the wild, not just to you in like, you know, a database or a tool. Yeah. You mentioned that you only named the client in the second line. Why is that?

Maddie Davies:
For me, I use that first sentence to say, I want to share new research that reveals, and then we’ll give the big reveal. And then once I’ve got that, that is kind of the way I hook to get the journalist in. Then the next one is the travel experts at CB Villas. That then is like, Oh, okay. Somebody who clearly is an expert in the field of travel has conducted this. personally, again, from being journalist side of this is the story, this is the source. That’s also how you write your story for newspapers is first paragraph, the story and what it’s done or why you should care. The second part, this is who has done it. This is why it’s reputable. So yeah, for this, it makes sense for them to obviously be talking about traveling.

Stephen Baker:
I was hoping you’d get to that because I know you have that journalistic background and it’s mirroring the way a journalist writes. That’s really, really important in PR. Obviously, pitching to a lot of different publications, you’re not always going to get it absolutely bang on every single time and might need to tweak things, which obviously we do a lot. Obviously, this one didn’t need it, which is why we give it because it was such a beautiful pitch. And it worked so many different publications. But yeah, mirroring that kind of style rather than trying to crowbar the client in like straight way and make it about them when actually the story is about the bluest water. It just so happens that CB Villas are the people that kind of made that happen. I think it really, really worked. You’re so experienced in the world of PR and pitching. It’s not an exact science, PR, digital PR. It’s just not. And I sometimes wish it was. Heck, it would be reassuring. But did you know it was going to go well as soon as you’d written it and started sending it?

Maddie Davies:
Interesting. I had a really good feeling about this one. Again, I was thinking of the people who I know, who I’m connected to in the travel journalism world and was thinking, I think they’ll like this one in my mind. However, because it was a new methodology, there was that little bit of risk it felt attached to it. Obviously a new methodology is a really good thing because you’re presenting something fresh. to the journalists, it’s not something they’ve seen a hundred times in their inbox before, so that gives you the advantage. But at the same time, because it’s not tried and tested, it did come with that little bit of risk factor. However, I remember once we had sent this, I think within an hour we’d had coverage and that to me was like, okay, it’s going to be fine.

Stephen Baker:
That’s amazing because it’s so rare, particularly now. We have talked about it a little bit about as a team that it’s got harder, you know, there’s less and less journalists and yeah, they’re more and more sort of stretched so to cut through particularly quickly is tough. But I wish you could bottle that feeling like when you send something out that just like something goes live straight away and you’re like, yeah, this one’s a winner. This one’s definitely going to go well.

Maddie Davies:
Very good.

Stephen Baker:
Lovely. When you put that work in, you don’t need to tweak or change because often that is the case. You need to tweak or change, see what’s working. But yeah, it’s a beautiful pitch email. I wanted to conclude by asking you, challenging you, insisting that you share with the listeners your top three do’s and don’ts for creating a pitch email, if you would, Rabi.

Maddie Davies:
Yeah, of course. You’ve actually said this already, but don’t send through a nugget of information. Don’t tease it. A journalist doesn’t want to be teased. They’re not playing games. You just send them the information that they need. So I have heard, I can’t remember whose portrait they’re listening to, where they did mention that sometimes they’ll give like that pitch section, but not include a press release. And they’ll say at the bottom of the press release, get in touch if you want the full study, which You know, if it works for you, that’s great. And I guess if you’ve got that relationship with journalists where you can do that, amazing. However, like general stories, I’d say, especially for one like this, if there was then no full explanation of the methodology or anything, and you just said these are the top five bluest beaches in the world, pictures of three random beaches, like no context to it, I don’t believe that it would ever go down as well if you were just teaching the story. So that would be number one, do not. And then secondly, this is one, it’s like a very dodgy tactic and this used to happen quite a lot, I remember this being journalist side, PR saying this is an exclusive when it’s not an exclusive. Staring Barry Naughty into that. Yes. Because as a journalist, you then go to your editor and you say, great, I’ve got an exclusive. We will be the only ones covering this. You get sign off. And then, you know, there’s a lot of pressure on you to be getting these great hits and clicks because you’ve got an exclusive. And then you actually find, say, if you were at the Daily Telegraph, that the Sun have covered it and so have the Express and so have the Mail. and it’s just it’s really embarrassing then as a journalist when you’ve listed it as exclusive so don’t do that just to try and get coverage because you’ll get somebody in trouble so please don’t do that. And the third one, we’ve touched on this already, but don’t include attachments in your email. So that includes the press release, don’t attach that, just have it in the body of the email so they can easily scroll down. Same with images, just include a WeTransfer or a Dropbox, or as I mentioned, a sheet with links out to TikToks or Instagrams. that would support their article, mostly because it’s not, you don’t want to go in and quit them. It’s the actual capacity of your inbox that those attachments take up. It just slows down your, it sounds ridiculous, but it really slows down your system. And if you’re a journalist who needs to be receiving emails at a rapid rate, not helpful. And then I guess the do is just the complete opposite of all of that. So do give all of the info. Make sure that they don’t come back asking for more. But at the same time, do offer to help with anything else. I think always showing that you’re willing to go the extra mile if they do want extra commentary from an in-house expert. Offer that out by all means. I think it’s good to show journalists that you want to work with them. It’s not just a Send over the info when you’re done with it. It should be a two way relationship. And yeah, do just give as much as you can with like images and stuff. We know already that publications kind of struggling financially. As a result, a lot of them no longer have access to stock imagery and Getty images and stuff, which costs thousands of pounds to give journalists access to those. So if you can supply any imagery that would help them, that would get a massive tick. And yeah, just do remember there’s like the human element to kitchen. Like you are communicating with another human being. So be nice, be kind.

Stephen Baker:
A lovely note to end on. I think also you talked about, and it’s something that I definitely have in mind, is just take your time with it. You know, read it, treat it with the kind of love and respect that you would give to the creation of a campaign or a press release, because ultimately it’s kind of what’s between that bit and the journalist and you getting and the kind of coverage that you’re desiring. So some amazing tips there, Maddy. And I really, really appreciate you taking the time to go through what was a brilliant pitch email and a fantastic campaign, which your partner might be tired of, but we’re certainly not. We love it.

Maddie Davies:
Thanks for the support.

Stephen Baker:
It’s crucial. Thank you again, Maddy. Pleasure to have you on the podcast as always. Thank you very much for your time.

Maddie Davies:
Thank you.