Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Last Bad Pitch of 2013?


WHY are we publishing a post on New Year's Eve?

Well, because we're still getting pitched...badly. This one's from a sales person and it makes us look forward to 2014.

>>>
SUBJECT: Reaching out for new year story request
Hello there,
This is NAME from COMPANY. I hope you enjoyed a Merry Christmas and are looking forward to a Happy New Year.

 As you may recall, I’m a bit of a lurker and really enjoy reading your site. The insights and discussions are always interesting. Today I thought I would ping you to see if I can get a plug for our THING. COMPANY has proven its chops with many successful programs. As we look ahead to 2014, we know we offer one of the best ways of handling that THING that always occurs at the end of the year.

 Here is a formal news release on the topic: LINK but if you have follow up questions/would like to get a more in depth view then please let me know. I am happy to jump on a call. It would be great to have our news getting your (if you are okay with it) readers' attention.
>>>

 A Ping for a Plug?
I'm honestly on the fence about giving the person some points for being honest, albeit ham-fisted. But let's evaluate this as an actual pitch.

 1) Vague: Our salesperson knows how to structure a pitch. But there's no meat on the bones. I didn't have to edit much to anonymize it. There's not enough information about what the story is and why I should be interested.

 2) Perspective: Speaking of me, the perspective is way too slanted towards the salesperson, and his company, instead of my audience. Why should I care?

 3) Fake Personalization: If ANYONE that gets this email actually believes that this salesperson lurks on their blog, and someow wrote this pitch just for them, I am not suprosed. But I am hoping these individuals have no access to sharp objects -- for their own well-being. 

 Ready-Made Content
Is there a place for pre-fab content in thought leadership campaigns? Sure. But if someone is pitching an outlet on a byline article AFTER the article is written, everyone that gets the email knows that anyone with an email address is being pitched.

Recycling content is a tactic with diminishing returns. And I'm willing to bet the professionals using this tactic are measuring success with quantitative metrics and not qualitative ones.

 But this is a glass-half-full post. So remember that without bad pitches it would be tougher to identify the good ones. Thanks for reading and here's to an amazing 2014. Happy New Year!

 :: Kevin Dugan, @prblog

at

3 comments:

  1. Chris Foley10:32 AM

    A few days ago I received a press release rendered entirely in code. It started out like this:

    <img border=0 src="data:%3C;base64,/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQEASABIAAD/4hiwSUNDX1BST0ZJTEUAAQEAABigYXBwbAIQAABtbnRyUkdCIFhZWiAH3QAMABIAEQAhAB1hY3NwQVBQTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA9tYAAQAAA....

    I had to scroll for a long, long time to get to the bottom of the page. The title was actually a bit catchy, but the PR person's lack of knowledge about their emailing client put them at a definite disadvantage, since their "content" was garbled and incomprehensible code.

    Keep up the wrath and Happy New Year!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous4:56 PM

    Hehe, I just came on this blog to try and pitch a guest post but I came across this instead. It's good advice! I'm new to the "Outreach" department at my work and I'm working on the premise that honesty is the best policy when trying to get the go ahead for a linked article. So far, not so good...
    Anyway, this is good stuff. I'll be back!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown5:34 PM

    I can't tell you how many times I've come back to this. It is just too damn funny! Even though I am new in the PR world and had my first internship not too long ago, none of my pitches were ever this good, or bad whichever way you look at it. My favorite part is that they refer to the following release as "formal" even though they use words such as "chops" and "lurker" in the pitch. I love reading these mistakes so keep them coming!

    ReplyDelete