Writing the pitch

Lesson 23 of 50Module 5 · Outreach that works6 min read

By Bill Hartzer · Hartzer Consulting · 25+ years in search, domains and expert witness work

What the pitch has to accomplish

A pitch has four jobs, and it has to do all of them before the reader decides to stop.

1. Establish that a human wrote this to them specifically. Achieved by one true, checkable observation about their site that could not appear in any other email.
2. Give them a reason that serves their interest. Their page is broken. Their list is missing something their readers want. They cover this beat and you have data.
3. Make one small, explicit ask. One. Explicit. Small.
4. Provide an exit. A sentence that makes ignoring the email socially costless, which sounds counterproductive and is the opposite.

The exit is the part experienced writers add and beginners omit. No reply needed if it is not useful removes the obligation, and removing obligation is what makes a message feel like professional correspondence rather than an imposition. People reply more, not less, when they are free not to.

Everything else — the background about your company, the explanation of your methodology, the promise of social shares — belongs in the reply, if there is one.

The structure, sentence by sentence

Here is the skeleton I have used for years. It is four to six sentences and fits on a phone screen without scrolling.

• Sentence 1 — the specific observation. What you noticed, with the URL. No greeting-compliment. Straight in.
• Sentence 2 — why it matters to them. The consequence for their reader or their page.
• Sentence 3 — what you have. One line. What it is, why it is relevant, and nothing about your company.
• Sentence 4 — the ask. Explicit and singular. Would you consider adding it. Would that be useful. Do you want the file.
• Sentence 5 — the exit. Permission to ignore.
• Sign-off with a real name and a real signature. Full name, role, site. Not a marketing footer with four social icons and a banner.

Note what is absent. No opening compliment. No paragraph introducing your company. No I hope this email finds you well. No list of your credentials. No attachment. No tracking pixel — and I mean that seriously, because open tracking is the single most common cause of an outreach email being classified as bulk mail by a filter that would otherwise have delivered it.

An annotated example, in full

This is a complete broken-link pitch, written out as it would be sent. The site and names are illustrative.

Subject: Dead link on your beekeeping resources page

Hi Karen,

Your beekeeping resources page links to the Midlands Apiary Guide under Getting Started, and that domain has been parked since some point last year — it now redirects to a domain sales page.

Two of the other links in that section point to the same site under different names, so the section is currently sending readers to three dead ends.

I maintain a beginner's guide covering the same ground (hive setup, first-year inspection schedule, regional swarm timings). If it is useful as a replacement, it is at the URL below. If not, the dead links are worth removing either way.

[URL]

No reply needed if it is not a fit.

Bill Hartzer
Hartzer.com

What each part is doing:

• The subject line states the contents. It is not a tease, not a question, and not Quick question. Someone who maintains that page will open it.
• The first paragraph is the proof of work. It names the page, the section, the specific link, and what happened to it. This cannot be templated, and its presence is what separates the message from the batch.
• The second paragraph raises the value without exaggerating. It gives her a reason to act that has nothing to do with me: her page is misleading her readers in three places.
• The third paragraph is the offer, and it is deliberately subordinate. The parenthetical exists so she can judge relevance without clicking. There is no claim that it is the best guide on the internet, because she can see it for herself and the claim would only invite doubt.
• The bare URL, not a hyperlinked phrase. Editors want to see where a link goes, and a plain URL in a plain-text email is also less likely to trip a spam filter.
• The exit line makes not replying free.
• The signature is two lines. A real person at a real site.

The email is 118 words. The research behind it took about six minutes: open the page, run a link checker, look at what the dead domains resolve to now, find the maintainer's name in the page footer. Those six minutes are the entire difference between this and the batch it is competing with.

Subject lines

The subject line has one job: tell the recipient what is inside, accurately, in a way that makes opening worthwhile. It is not a headline and it is not a hook.

What works:

• Descriptive and concrete. Dead link on your beekeeping resources page. Correction on your 2024 supplier list. Data on regional swarm timings, if useful.
• Short enough to survive truncation on a phone — roughly six or seven words.
• Sentence case, no title case, no emoji, no all-caps.

What does not:

• Quick question. Universally recognized as outreach, and it is never a quick question.
• Fake reply and forward prefixes. This is a small deception that ends the relationship on discovery, and filters catch it.
• The recipient's first name alone, or their domain name alone. Both are merge-field signatures.
• Anything promising a partnership, a collaboration or an opportunity. Those three words are the vocabulary of the batch.
• Curiosity gaps. You will not believe what I found on your site is the subject line of a message that will not be read.

One practical note: subject lines that describe a problem on the recipient's own site outperform everything else in my experience, because they are the only ones that are unambiguously about the recipient rather than about the sender.

Length, and what to cut

Write the draft at whatever length it comes out, then cut it by a third. The cut is almost always the same four things.

• The introduction of yourself. Nobody has asked. Your signature says who you are and your site says the rest. If your credentials genuinely matter — you are a researcher, a practitioner, a named expert — one clause is the maximum.
• The justification. Explaining at length why the resource is valuable reads as insecurity. State what it is and let them look.
• The reciprocal offer. Promising to share it with our audience is in every template, is almost never worth anything, and marks you.
• The second ask. Adding and if not, would you be interested in a guest post? converts a two-minute decision into a project, and the recipient does neither.

On length: under 150 words for a cold first message. Longer is defensible only when the substance genuinely requires it — a data pitch to a journalist may need a paragraph of methodology, because that is what they will ask for anyway. Even then, front-load. Assume the recipient reads the first two lines on a phone notification and decides there.

Format as plain text. No HTML template, no logo, no banner, no columns. Rich formatting says marketing department, and marketing department says bulk, and bulk says the promotions tab. The most effective outreach email looks like an email a colleague sent you.

Variations by tactic

The structure holds; the observation and the ask change.

• Resource page. Observation: the specific gap in their list. Ask: consider adding it. Works best when your entry genuinely completes a category they already have — a region, a subtopic, a price point.
• Broken link. Observation: the dead link, with what it resolves to now. Ask: fix it, replacement optional. The strongest cold pitch there is, because the first sentence is a favor.
• Link roundup. Observation: you read the last issue, and reference something specific in it. Ask: consider it for an upcoming issue. Send close to their publication day.
• Testimonial. Observation: you actually use the product, with a detail that proves it. Ask: would they like a short written testimonial. This one inverts the transaction — you are offering them content — which is why it converts unusually well and why it only works if the use is real.
• Guest contribution. Observation: a gap in their coverage, named specifically. Ask: would they consider a piece on it. Read their contributor guidelines first and pitch a topic, never a finished article.
• Unlinked mention. Observation: they already mentioned you, with the URL. Ask: would they link it. The easiest yes in link building, and the one most people never get around to asking for.