How to send out a press release? We analyzed 1 million subject lines
Yes, that is too many pitches. Here's what we found đľď¸ââď¸
"Should I write 'PRESS RELEASE' in the email subject line when sending it out??"
This is an interesting question that has been brought up numerous times by public relations professionals. As a provider of tools for PR teams, we were keen to find out the answer, so we decided to investigate. We wanted to identify how to write an email introducing a press release example in a way that grabs readers effectively.
Publish your first press release in 5 minutes
The Research: 1 MILLION email pitches
By talking with a lot of PR professionals, attending conferences, and having conversations with journalists, we noticed everyone is doing email pitches in a different way. Some are using text-style emails with compelling headlines while others are sending stunning visual email templates to support their story. (And it turns out that yes, adding visuals to your press release does make a difference to whether it gets read.)
Trying to find answers to some of the recurring questions âdo you attach the entire story to your email?â or âdo you include all the visuals in your email?â, we found out most decisions were made using âsoftâ arguments such as emotion, previous experiences or gut feeling.
Yes, gut feeling.
We examine some of the top-performing press releases of recent years to uncover 4 practical steps you can take today to improve your PR performance.
While it's notoriously difficult to decide how to measure PR engagement, we thought we'd take it a step further to see what really goes on. We set out a challenge to use both qualitative and quantitative research to come up with an answer to that question.
In this post, weâll show what we learned from both crunching 1 million press release email subject lines and interviewing journalists. How do you create the perfect press release subject line? This is what we learned from analyzing our own data:
Labeled vs unlabelled
There are a lot of different ways to add the press release label to your email subject line. Some email pitch subject line examples include:
- Press release: title of the story
- PR: title of the story
- Title of the story [Press release]
For the purpose of our study, we count a press release subject line as "labeled" if it includes the term "Press Release".
What do the numbers say?
We crunched the data (click and open rates) of over 1 million email pitches and got these results:
Surprising results.
The average open rate of "labeled" press release emails is 2% higher than their âunlabelledâ counterparts, while looking at the click rate, we donât see a substantial difference.
How we tracked open rates
The method to measure open tracking is similar for all online email providers. To run this experiment we used Prezly, our own software that combines a multimedia pitch editor with straightforward contact management, newsroom publication, and story distribution.
How the magic works...
We embed a tiny, invisible picture at the bottom of your email. This image is unique to every email you send. Each time someone opens your email and views the images in it, we know which email was opened.
Disclaimer: Open rates are tricky to get right. We have analyzed the behavior of over 1 million emails from over 1,000 email campaigns. Although we feel that is a decent number to draw some conclusions itâs important to highlight the data might be more accurate with a larger data set.
How one boutique PR agency used metrics to turn a campaign around
Reading into the numbers
Emails sent to a known journalist or media will first be given a quick glance to see if it is worth their time. With very little time on their hands, journalists need to scan numerous emails and make a decision on the newsworthiness of what they get in their inbox. Add to that that these people are on the go, and likely viewing your email on a mobile device.
Having a clear subject line that states exactly what the email contains immediately tells the journalist what they can expect. Knowing that journalistsâ primary source of news is still their mailbox, we believe adding âpress releaseâ to your press release email subject line makes them more likely to view the email resulting in an increase in open rates.
OK, got it. From today I should start all my email pitches with "Press Release:"
Hold on. Not so fast.
While labeling your press releases might have an impact on your open rate, remember that it does not generate a significant difference in clicks.
And clicks are far more accurate to measure interest.
That means that every story, labeled and unlabelled, gets treated equally.
In conclusion: There is no clear winner here.
What do actual journalists and bloggers say?
In addition to searching for the mathematical answer to our question we figured it was a good idea to ask the recipients of those emails.
So we sent the question to a list of 100 journalists, bloggers, and influencers.
We received 42 replies. Here's what they said:
Most recipients confirmed there is no change in behavior for âlabeledâ or âunlabelledâ press releases, which falls in line with our number crunching. But we did get some other insight:
One of the recurring themes was that brands and PR professionals should realize the email subject is where you pull in journalists seeking good stories. Knowing that your subject line should be around 50 characters or fewer, the word âpress releaseâ takes up quite some room in that valuable spot.
You only have one chance to make a first impression.
There's more.
After our initial email, a conversation started. We asked about the inner workings of the media, the workflow used to select newsworthy content and what their mailboxes looked like. Here's what we found out.
Some food for thought
It might help when itâs from someone who knows what a press release is, not when itâs just marketing tagged as a press release.
We do not really care if an email is labelled as a press release. Our news office is trained to process huge amounts of information in a very short time. Doing that we see beyond the words âExclusiveâ, âBreakingâ or âFor immediate releaseâ. âPress releaseâ is another of those words.
And when people DO decide they want to use the word âpress releaseâ, make sure the content of the pitch actually contains news. If you do not have an interesting story, donât email it.
I would say that every unnecessary word in an email headline is less space for the sell. So basically, Iâd say I wouldnât put "press release" in my subject line.
In conclusion
Do you need to add âpress releaseâ to your email pitch to increase the impact?
No, there is no reason to do so if you provide value fast.
Although the data (open rate and click rate) did not provide us enough valuable insight to strengthen that argument, our survey and conversations with journalists and influencers showed no one really puts much stock into the word "press release" anymore.Â
Your email subject should be as engaging as it is accurate.
To get an even better idea of what sorts of press releases get covered, have a look at our gallery of real-life great press release examples or check out these case studies.
Tired of using a million tools to support your PR workflow? We got you.
