A journalist covering your industry gets somewhere between 50 and 300 pitches a week. They open maybe a third of them, read past the first line of maybe a tenth, and reply to two or three. Your pitch isn't competing against a blank inbox. It's competing against 200 other people who also think their news is important.
The good news: most of those 200 pitches are bad in predictable ways. They're too long, they bury the news, they open with flattery, and they're addressed to someone who doesn't cover the beat. Fixing those four things puts you ahead of most of the pile.
Subject line rules
The subject line is the entire pitch until someone clicks. Five rules, in order of how often they're broken:
- Put the news in it. "Story idea" and "Quick question" are not news. "Seattle clinic network cuts no-show rate 41% with SMS deposits" is news. The reporter should be able to decide relevance without opening.
- Keep it under 60 characters if you can, 75 at the outside. Gmail truncates around there on desktop and much earlier on mobile, and a lot of reporters triage on their phone.
- No all-caps, no "URGENT", no emoji, no "RE:" on a first email. Fake-reply subject lines get you remembered, badly.
- Lead with the number or the noun that carries the surprise. "41%" is doing the work above. If you have no number, lead with the concrete thing: "Three of the top five DTC mattress brands now use the same 12-person factory."
- Say the format if it's unusual. "[Data] " or "[Exclusive] " prefixes are fine and useful when they're true. They are not fine when they aren't. An "exclusive" you sent to nine people is the fastest way to get blocked.
A test that works: if the subject line were a headline on the outlet's homepage, would anyone click it? If not, you don't have a subject line problem, you have a news problem. Check whether the news is actually news first.
The five-sentence structure
A cold pitch should fit on a phone screen without scrolling. Five sentences, in this order:
Sentence 1: the relevance hook. One specific reference to something they wrote, in the last 60 days, that your news genuinely extends. Not "I love your work." Name the piece and the point you're adding to.
Sentence 2: the news, stated flatly. What happened, who it happened to, when. No adjectives. If you need a comma-spliced 40-word sentence to explain the news, the news is not clear enough yet.
Sentence 3: why it matters to their readers. The trend the news is evidence of, or the consequence for people outside your company. This is the sentence founders skip and journalists need most.
Sentence 4: the proof. The data set, the customer willing to talk, the internal number you'll share, the document. One line. Specificity here is what separates a pitch from an announcement.
Sentence 5: the ask. One clear, small, easy-to-say-yes-to request. "Want the numbers?" beats "Would you be interested in scheduling a call to discuss a potential story?"
Then a signature with your name, title, company, phone, and a link to your press page. That's it. No attachments on a first email. A 4MB logo pack is a spam-filter magnet, and nobody asked.
Three example pitches
1. Funding announcement (the hardest one to make interesting)
Subject: Series A for the API that replaces prior-auth phone calls Hi Dana, your March piece on prior authorization backlogs at regional payers is the clearest thing I've read on why the 2024 CMS rule didn't fix the phone problem. We raised $6M led by Corner Ventures to expand Relayforms, which submits prior authorizations directly to payer systems for 340 clinics. The reason I'm writing isn't the round. Our clinics went from an average 6.2-day authorization turnaround to 1.4 days, and we have 18 months of before/after data across three payers to back it up. I can share the full data set, and our CMO at a 40-provider Tulsa group will talk on the record about what changed operationally. Want the data?
2. Data or research pitch
Subject: 61% of small law firms quietly raised rates in 2026 Hi Marcus, following your piece on billable-hour pressure at mid-size firms: we have the small-firm version of that story, with numbers. We analyzed 11,400 anonymized invoices from 1,900 U.S. firms under 20 attorneys, covering January 2024 through August 2026. 61% raised their standard hourly rate in the last 12 months, the median increase was 8.4%, and the firms that raised rates lost no measurable client volume, which cuts against what most firm owners assume. Methodology and the full state-level breakdown are ready to send, and I'm happy to give you an exclusive window through Friday if it's useful. Want the file?
3. Expert commentary on breaking news
Subject: Source on today's FTC subscription ruling, DTC operator with 400k subs Hi Priya, saw you're covering the click-to-cancel decision. I run subscription ops for a DTC brand with roughly 400,000 active subscribers, and we rebuilt our cancellation flow to the proposed standard 14 months ago, before it was required. The part nobody's saying out loud: our cancellations went up 9% and our net revenue went up too, because win-back offers at cancellation converted better than the friction did. I can share those numbers and be on the phone in the next hour. Useful?
Notice what none of them do: describe the company's mission, use the word "platform" twice, or attach a PDF. Notice what they all do: name a real recent piece, state one number, and make a small ask.
Follow-up etiquette
- One follow-up. Maybe two. Never three. Wait three to five business days, reply in the same thread so they have context, and add something new: a fresh number, a new customer who'll talk, a competitor's move.
- Never write "just bumping this to the top of your inbox." They saw it.
- No response means no. It is not a filing error or a spam-folder problem. A journalist who wants the story replies within 48 hours. One who doesn't has made a decision that more emails won't reverse.
- If they say no, say thanks and ask what they do want. "Noted. What kinds of stories are you looking for this quarter?" has produced more coverage for more founders than any follow-up sequence ever written.
- Track it. A spreadsheet with outlet, reporter, date sent, angle, and outcome is enough. After 40 pitches you'll see which angles get replies, which is worth more than any advice in this article.
What a pitch is not
A pitch is not a press release, and sending one in place of the other is the most common self-inflicted wound in founder PR. A release is a record: structured, quotable, distributed, and built to be found later. A pitch is a personal argument to one human about why one story is worth their time. They do different jobs, and the difference is worth understanding properly before you spend money on either.
The realistic hit rate for a well-targeted cold pitch from an unknown company is somewhere around 5 to 10 percent, and that's with a real news hook, a correctly matched reporter, and a tight email. Anyone promising better than that is selling something. Pitch 30 reporters who genuinely cover your beat and you'll likely get one or two conversations. That's the game, and it's winnable, but only at that volume and only with that much targeting. If you'd rather not start from a blank page, our pitch and release templates give you the skeleton.
Ready to put a real announcement behind your pitch? [See how RepuPR works](/how-it-works).