Lessons

Lesson Info

Craft a Pitch Perfect Email Submission

Crafting a pitch perfect email submission so work she can have an opportunity on the spot in just a minute to play with this a little bit because we're going to be crafting an email submission on the fly I'm so excited so to do this before we get started I want to show you what the template is so that you know and you can follow along with what we're doing here so the template for your pitch perfect email submission I think I might leave this slide up actually is you wanna have basically it's an email right so to back it up just a little bit the best way to reach out to another blogger is simply something them an email not sending them product if you're a publicist you might pick up the phone but I don't recommend it for most people because the you know it can really very on how much an editor will like it or not like it if you called them and I just think like an email will get the job done and it feels more comfortable so why not just do it feels good and get the job done so you're s...

ending out an e mail that is just giving an editor a blogger a little bit of information that is gonna wet their interest about telling your story right? You want to sell them on your story idea you want to sell them on using your products and so this is the perfect email template for doing that so what you gonna do in your subject line is immediately catch their attention you wantto use your subject line and model it after actually a headline that you could envision appearing in their publication and their media outlet and their block so this is where ripping those inspiration from the headline will get come in really handy and you don't have to customize everything about every single pitch when you're doing product you know because you can send your product to like five different media outlets and send kind of similar product maybe you picked two different you know, two different angles to go on or something or maybe you sent it all but you're subject line you really want to customize it to that media outlet so they can envision it right away 00:01:58.539 --> 00:02:00. then you want to address the editor that you picked 00:02:00.8 --> 00:02:03. to the blogger by name you never want to send you 00:02:03.32 --> 00:02:06. know hey there too who maybe concerns your editor 00:02:06.34 --> 00:02:09. really make the effort to get their name really make 00:02:09.3 --> 00:02:12. that for ticket their name and your first paragraph 00:02:12.87 --> 00:02:14. this is where a lot of people sometimes go a little 00:02:14.89 --> 00:02:17. astray they spent a lot of time introducing themselves 00:02:17.44 --> 00:02:19. and really want to get straight to the idea you've 00:02:19.65 --> 00:02:22. got like I mean editors are super busy they're getting 00:02:22.71 --> 00:02:25. hundreds of thousands, you know, hundreds of e mails 00:02:25.16 --> 00:02:28. every single day hundreds of pitches and this is what 00:02:28.1 --> 00:02:31. makes them stand out that headline that matches is 00:02:31.12 --> 00:02:33. going to get them to say like I can see how this fits 00:02:33.25 --> 00:02:34. that's why you're doing that 00:02:35.62 --> 00:02:37. and then when you have your first paragraph and you 00:02:37.83 --> 00:02:39. get straight to the point then you're saying like 00:02:39.98 --> 00:02:43. I'm not squandering your attention I have your attention 00:02:43.16 --> 00:02:45. on I'm going to give you what you need right off the 00:02:45.07 --> 00:02:48. bat it's in your first paragraph what you want to 00:02:48.09 --> 00:02:50. dio is you wanna get them very quickly like what it 00:02:50.83 --> 00:02:53. is that that you have an idea for them to cover then 00:02:53.57 --> 00:02:55. in your second paragraph you know you could give them 00:02:55.71 --> 00:02:58. a little bit more background about your product so 00:02:58.69 --> 00:03:00. this might be a place where you want to talk about 00:03:00.53 --> 00:03:02. what the price point is, what materials there are 00:03:02.55 --> 00:03:05. what makes it really special and then in the third 00:03:05.54 --> 00:03:09. paragraph um you want to talk about explicitly how 00:03:09.41 --> 00:03:11. you see it fitting this is kind of a call to action, 00:03:11.84 --> 00:03:14. so if there's a specific column or feature that you 00:03:14.14 --> 00:03:16. picked your product out for the third paragraph, you'd 00:03:16.6 --> 00:03:17. actually mention that 00:03:18.97 --> 00:03:22. and then if it's appropriate, we'll talk about samples 00:03:22.29 --> 00:03:24. in a later lesson but if it's appropriate, you can 00:03:24.23 --> 00:03:27. offer to send a sample or you can offer to send them 00:03:27.01 --> 00:03:30. high risk high rez product photography but I don't 00:03:30.18 --> 00:03:32. recommend is that you actually attach high res images 00:03:32.81 --> 00:03:35. your email because it will go to their spam filter 00:03:35.19 --> 00:03:37. so they'll never get it instead you want a link to 00:03:37.69 --> 00:03:41. photos linked to photos and our second segment is 00:03:41.17 --> 00:03:43. all about how to create a media kit that has all of 00:03:43.7 --> 00:03:45. the information that they need all that backup information 00:03:45.99 --> 00:03:48. of one place you'll just link directly to that you 00:03:48.58 --> 00:03:52. don't want to attach anything to your email ever never 00:03:52.67 --> 00:03:56. and then you to sign off and like I said before definitely 00:03:56.05 --> 00:03:57. include your phone number if you're reaching out to 00:03:57.99 --> 00:04:01. an editor you can to a blogger too I mean itjust shows 00:04:01.27 --> 00:04:03. them that you're going to be really responsive it's it's like this little subtle psychological thing of like I'm here for you I'm here for you if you want to cover this tomorrow you can reach me I'm here for you so we're going to do now because it's so much easier to go through this when you can see it is we're actually going up touched his volunteer to write a pitch with us on the fly so come up and bring your coaster with us we'll use it for some inspiration right hate all right well welcome and do you want to just tell us a little bit about your product what people love about it we can see it here and what media outlet you'd like to be pitching okay. So coast dramatic it's a web site you go to costa mac dot com and you log in with your instagram, uh credentials username password and then you can pick up to four different images, and then we print them onto these ceramic coasters that are very absorbent and send them out to you. So we do that so there's, a custom component and then there's also package set. So I worked with designers in the past and they have designed I think we have about seven. Now. I'm saying, come in and just sort of, baya said, if you're not feeling particularly creative that day, very cool, so are the co branded with those designers than a couple of them are yeah, okay, that's, fun, that's, fun because, you know, some people get overwhelmed by choice. I sense a great option. So which of those do you want to focus on today? I want to focus on the custom component and also just like talking about coasters, because when you say coaster, it does not necessarily make people excited, okay, so coast, posttraumatic, I'm gonna write coaster out. I want to swap with me, okay? Coaster manic. I feel a little bit of brainstorming here, custom. And then what was your media outlet? Um, let's. Go with real, simple, real simple. Show of hands who loves real simple I think you picked a winner any real simple on anyone else's list no okay it's a common when I get a lot so it's very it's very cool and I can see why because people are 00:06:05.483 --> 00:06:08. designing this it's a kind of a fun there's a lot 00:06:08.35 --> 00:06:11. of different angles for that for that very cool okay 00:06:11.67 --> 00:06:13. it's unfortunate we don't have a real simple in front 00:06:13.38 --> 00:06:17. of us but what we do know is like I think enough information 00:06:17.65 --> 00:06:20. to at least get you going with your pitch because 00:06:20.08 --> 00:06:22. we're not gonna let say like the specific name of 00:06:22.23 --> 00:06:25. this section right but we can get you going enough 00:06:25.19 --> 00:06:27. that um you know you'll be able to have this template 00:06:27.77 --> 00:06:30. that then you can just take a couple of little tweaks 00:06:30.52 --> 00:06:33. and when when you're doing this at home that's really 00:06:33.01 --> 00:06:35. what you want to do right now is think about what 00:06:35.8 --> 00:06:39. is something that I can put together using this this 00:06:39.91 --> 00:06:42. template that then I could just tweak and send out 00:06:42.71 --> 00:06:44. really quickly to other media outlets you don't need 00:06:44.86 --> 00:06:47. to recreate the wheel every time you want to have 00:06:47.36 --> 00:06:50. this bass pitch you can put together and then as you're 00:06:50.45 --> 00:06:52. reaching out to different media outlets you might 00:06:52.53 --> 00:06:55. tweak the headline maybe you substitute one product 00:06:55.45 --> 00:06:58. for another but you don't have to start over from 00:06:58.8 --> 00:07:00. over and over again, right? You can just send this 00:07:00.71 --> 00:07:02. out and that's one of the nice things about product 00:07:02.09 --> 00:07:05. pitching that is a little bit different than when 00:07:05.02 --> 00:07:06. you're pitching something where you're like if you 00:07:06.83 --> 00:07:08. sent out a guest poster a contribution it needs to 00:07:08.98 --> 00:07:11. be totally unique when you're sending your product 00:07:11.18 --> 00:07:13. your product is your product right? So you don't have 00:07:13.96 --> 00:07:16. to worry about that so much so it's a really nice 00:07:16.28 --> 00:07:19. approach to this okay, so we're going to be sending 00:07:19.08 --> 00:07:21. out to really simple um 00:07:22.32 --> 00:07:25. just thinking about their publication um do you have 00:07:25.73 --> 00:07:28. any ideas of like what kind of coverage you might 00:07:28.21 --> 00:07:30. want to get into that gift guide is that around up? 00:07:30.46 --> 00:07:33. Is it season how they think a gift guide because they're 00:07:33.42 --> 00:07:35. really great gifts to give to people who are hard 00:07:35.28 --> 00:07:38. to shop for uh huh. 00:07:39.32 --> 00:07:39. Okay, 00:07:42.25 --> 00:07:42. I love that 00:07:44.32 --> 00:07:47. okay and who let's get a little more specific her 00:07:47.86 --> 00:07:50. to shop are we looking at like because real simple 00:07:50.44 --> 00:07:52. give guys or anyone's gift kites are usually like 00:07:52.69 --> 00:07:56. for your system mom who has it all for your assistant 00:07:56.17 --> 00:07:58. right there usually by recipient and that's one thing 00:07:58.51 --> 00:08:00. you notice when you look at gift guide so who is kind 00:08:00.61 --> 00:08:02. of the recipient a little bit more about the person 00:08:02.59 --> 00:08:05. that's hard okay, so we could d'oh I don't know it 00:08:05.9 --> 00:08:09. could be a mom that has it all or or like a ah hard to shop for relative relative. Okay. Like your aunt's? Yeah, the hard shell for auntie. Okay and we're definitely then here, looking for, like, a woman, which makes sense, like a house where gift usually goes to women. Let's, just let's. Just put that out there that, you know, you know, magazines were going to be kind of syria, typical. So, like, just roll of it. I'm not going to get all leg social justice on her pitches you know just rolling with what they've got we're not going to send a man cave hit real simple right right exactly we're going to make some assumptions about people that we might not want to take ourselves okay so we're going for a gift guy for somebody hard to shop for so are you thinking for gift guide holiday here yeah holiday mother or mother's day mother's day is coming up mother's day is great mothers teo I think this is my god okay can you imagine a mother's day gift with like a coaster and you've got like you know little baby shaw's you're like oh so cute sorry I'm getting all mushy I don't even like have babies but can't you see how much the real simple would love it okay this is awesome so we're getting really specific and drilling down and creating a vision for real simple of what that coverage might be ok so what this does is just it helps them you know understand exactly where you might fit in but they might not put it there right they might say I'm doing coast around up I'm gonna use it so this can only help you it will never hurt you okay that's what this will do is is they might get it and say like this isn't a fit for my gift guide or maybe my gift guide was just wrapped up a week ago but if they're working on something else and you're able to give them this vision it will help the gear's go for them and see where it might fit in what they're doing so getting the specific can never hurt you cause I know you might be thinking like what if they're doing around up what if they're doing a decorating story? You know you could also do like how to spruce up your home for spring or something like that little deliberation a little seasonal see how that works so you're not going to miss that using this technique which you're going to do is you're going to show them very clearly using what they're planning and what their languages and their tone is in their focus is that you're a fit for them okay? And then they might come back at you with another idea that happens a lot okay, so you're not limiting yourself that's really nice to hear because I feel like a lot of times when I tried to write these pitches I'm like I'm not a mind reader what if I said something wrong and that will be like enough of a blocker did not move ahead yeah yeah and but what's beautiful is you can kind of be a little bit more maybe not a mind reader but noticing the patterns and that's what they say about my work a lot is that my job is pattern recognition and so the more you look at the publications for this kind of guy, the faster it's going to be. So in the beginning, you might struggle a little bit, say, like, is this going to be in the next issue? And so it can be good to go back and look at another issue and figure out those patterns. But thiss helps them get a vision. Okay, where were your product? Okay, so we've got a mother's day gift guide, it's for somebody who's, hard to shop for, so because we know it's a gift guide. Do you remember the name of the type of editor you probably reaching out to, um, an assistant editor, market market assistant market? We'll say it. Market editor. If you were doing more about just like a straight up decorating story that would go to like the assistant home editor ok but give guys usually go to that market editor this is like one of those cheats that most people don't know about so was sending it to the right person wow you're way ahead we're already way ahead okay so what we need now are to start out with a line headlines are hard for me too okay so but we want to be want to be an official izing like what might their headline that they do for this give guys so this is actually pretty easy we kind of have to have it right like the um all right why don't we get some ideas I don't want to do this by myself does anyone have a headline idea do you think about shop one's like maker make your mom cry on mother's day that could work make your mind up to where you go why would you wanna make your mom cry and click on it do you know what amy and I cried with joy the only reason I wouldn't do that for real simple is because they wouldn't use that headline right okay so one of you wanted to look exactly like something they would use in fact you could go to a gift guy they did two years ago and just tweak it and use it okay that would really be good for the buzzfeed one exactly. So I'm so glad you brought that out because that is one place that people often go a little astray is they're trying to be, like, maybe a little too creative or like a little sneaky with it, and you want to make them see it like immediately like, oh, I see how this fits and the way to do that is actually reflect their language back. Um, would you really great bonus that comes with this particular lesson? I do want to encourage everybody to check out that on the course. Paige it's called pitches that work that's a pdf that bridges put together to make sure you have that as part of the course. Yes, that is an amazing packet of people just like you creative entrepreneurs, their pitches, they sent out to get coverage there, not pitches that I sent out to get coverage, but people who are running their creative businesses that have done so great any other ideas on what a headline might be real simple. Honestly, I think we go super simple. Yep, because real simple is like they're very like, you know, so it's kind of like I don't I don't like the word perfect, so say, give mama, give, she'll really use. Yeah, that's. Wonderful. Okay, thank you. I told you, this is where I struggle, gives mom. And this is where having a bunch of creative people in the audience can really help. Okay? So in our first paragraph, what we want to do is ok. So here we're going to say, dear, I'm going to make up a name. I don't know the name of market at her, you're erin. You guys can probably read that to your errands. We have her name or higher and hello, what, you know, hair, like whatever you would use and an email that somebody. So in the first paragraph, you want to reflect that tone and kind of use that if you look at the beginning of how they would actually do a gift guide, they had that cute little intro paragraph, right? So in first paragraph, I would want to say something about, um, hi, erin, um, as you're putting together your holiday gift guide, so are as you're putting together, you don't write this whole thing out, you as your guide pulling product. You know, is you're pulling product for your holiday gift guide. You're no doubt you're looking for something for the mom that's her to shop for, okay, okay, this. So this is really don't mean here right so right away you want to say this is what you're doing I am sure you're working on your mother's day gift guide right now and I know that you're going to need some content for that mom that's hard to shop for so this mother's day give her the gift that she'll really use ok ok so you want to repeat this and then in your second paragraph is where you will describe this product okay okay so here you want to talk about you know the fact that you're able to customize it so I'm just gonna like right out okay when I talk about the custom ization there's more to a set okay and what what's the price the price point right now is twenty eight okay that's an awesome price point so and give guys you also see you know they have them group by price under twenty five under fifty one hundred dollars under one hundred so you want to say this is the perfect gift underfoot fifty dollars okay so think about actually like how they put them together now if you can't do that like if you don't have that information like I've been doing this for a long time it's ok but if you could just notice those little details it will go so great. So you want to say something? You know you'll want to mention the price in here so you have as you're putting together your your gift guys know you're finding something hard from on the shot for you know mike holsters are completely customizable you can put a picture of mom and kids on it it's functional she'll get four to a set she could put her water glasses on and save the table at twenty eight dollars thes air the perfect gift under fifty bucks and then the next thing you want to know is where they could buy it okay so coast dramatic dot com okay cose dramatic dot com so you want to include just a few sentences with all of those information here your product detail so is it better write that out of the sentences or to just have it bulleted you know I usually do in census because they'll do it in senses okay if you could do it and like two okay you know what you could do a bullet it tio it's not a big deal okay son of a bitch I find that when I'm writing these lists out they get really word it's like yeah absorbent and you get four and they cost ended in yeah yeah right you definitely don't want to do too many compound sentences you won't see that a lot in publications if you could write him short and then just remember too that you're going to be linking tio information so we're going to cover what should go on your media kit but any kind of supplemental information she needs us here so you even want to say like click this link to see some photo of the product okay and then here in your third paragraph you want to have how it fits the media so we have this in the beginning but you might want to repeat it you know um as you're putting your gift guide together I'd be happy to overnight you a sample or as you're putting your gift cried together you know I could send you high res images if there's a photo you wanna use I can do it so like whatever that called action is of how you'll be able to help them fit it in there would go in the bottom and then he'd sign up okay okay so this feel like kind of I know this is a mess I don't know why I got this flip chart on when I can't run next I had somebody else do the write off on I hope you know this is being recorded so you'll be able to get it can you see how that works? Yeah, I find that like the subject line and the reiterating in that first paragraph is super helpful because you're just like oh here's what you're doing let me let me just tell you how what I'm doing helped you yeah exactly like here's what you're putting together let me sow how helps you that's wonderful for magazines when do they work on like when with a mother's day for instances in may are they working on mother's day now or is it already done november six months so it expects that's interesting a note because I had absolutely no idea was that far yeah it's six months for magazines and then online usually want to plan one to two months because think about the bigger bloggers you know they're not like doing that content for tomorrow they're planning out with editorial calendars and you want to have time don't follow up so well like she'd talk about this at the end of a how to integrate your follow up but you know you want to make sure that you're at least having time for one follow up so if you send it to a blogger and then you want them to cover it in a week and they don't see your email you have time you know time to recover for that or senate tweet or something like that yeah it is a little bit harder when you're when you're having to plan ahead the other thing doesn't think about with magazines if you're missing it you can actually pitch for their online so so many publications now have online exclusive content and so on something like this you might see a slideshow you know huffington post you might see a slide show or you know if you're doing a product roundup for somebody who's a little more unconventional so, like a lot of business, publications will do product for the holidays, so you can get maybe on their website. Even if you can't get in the print and websites are really valuable, cause any of it links, you don't get those in print, right? So that can be really strong, really strong, any questions about no, but I think this is gonna be really fun. Did you have an awesome pitch and so real simple? Six months, and our may might be a little way you might want to think about and do this for holiday. You could do it for a holiday and it's just about time. You have enough time to pull this together, okay, yeah, holiday pitching, then really important. You want to be doing your planning in june for holiday. Ok, great, thank you so much. You are welcomed. This is awesome.