Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Better Than a Pitch



I get pitched a lot.

20-30 promos a day. Track submissions, contact form submissions, messages from publicists to my personal Facebook inbox, and the worst, in public places.

There are a ton of good articles out there on the internet about "How to write a better pitch email." If you want advice about how to write a better pitch email, great, Google "How to write a better pitch email" and read everything you can.

(Want a quicker path to success? Simply be genuine and use empathy to determine what matters most to the person to you're emailing, steer the conversation in that direction, find out what motivates them.)

Here's an even better idea...before you go out and read 100 articles about how to craft a better pitch email, determine which writer you are going to reach out to.

That's right, not which publication or blog, but the specific writer.

If you send me an email pitching me a new song, my typical response is something along the lines of:

Hey XYZ, 

Thanks for sending over the new track...But honestly, I'm not the best person to reach out to, you'd be better off befriending a writer on the team that posts about a similar genre as the track you want reviewed. Or, go find a writer who has already covered your artist and hit them up :)  

Good luck! 

Yes I am the CEO of Onlythebeat.com and yes I am ultimately the gatekeeper on content...but I need you to pitch writers that have covered the same topics before, the same artists. I need you to make the connection for yourself. Especially if you're a publicist working with a specific artist...If you haven't searched the site to see if we've covered your artist before, then you're just making life harder on yourself by cold-pitching me instead of contacting someone who's already clearly passionate about your artist.

Here's another way to think about it....If you didn't know President Obama, you wouldn't email President Obama to get the email address of his Chief of Staff.

You will be 100 times more successful reaching out to one of my House Music writers than pitching me a single House Music track because I don't have time to do the track write up. If you wanted to catch my eye then reach out to me about doing exclusive video content with your artist (or yourself) when you're in Seattle. I like the sound of that. Until then, really try to think about who in the organization would benefit the most from doing the thing that you're asking for, contact them.

And always follow up until you get a no.


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