How to Send a Funding Pitch

Funding round stories are essential to a startup’s success, especially during an economic downturn. They show the world that there is confidence in the longevity of the company as investors believe the company is likely to succeed and generate returns. These notices too generate enthusiasm and further emotional investment in the company. However, with journalist response rates falling every quarter, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to get company news out, especially for funding.

To determine what makes journalists more likely to open and respond to a pitch, my company, Propel, analyzed about 3,500 financing places and found three key insights to use in your company’s next pitching strategy:

Related: Five Ways to Raise Money to Start Your Own Startup

1. Use short, eye-catching subject lines

Journalists want to know exactly what they’re going to find when they open a pitch email, and it’s no different when it comes to funding announcements. In fact, across the data, we found that funding pitches with subject lines no longer than nine words were the most opened, with a response rate of 7%. This is huge, especially considering that the industry average response rate for all types of pitching is just 3.35%.

One reason is that journalists are inundated with pitches, so the sooner they understand a pitch, the better. Many journalists also check pitch emails on their phones, and with only so much room for so many characters in the subject line, PR professionals need to be able to tell the story quickly and succinctly from the subject line. I recommend putting the name of the company and the funding amount in the subject line so the journalist knows what they’re going to read.

Related: 7 Headline Writing Formats That Will Get Journalists to Read Your Pitch

2. Don’t turn the pitch into an epic novel

The adage “short and sweet” also applies to the body of the field. We found that pitches between 50-149 words were the best response rates of 15%. However, for some reason we saw that most PR professionals sent funding pitches of between 500 and 1000 words. For context, that’s the length of 2-4 word pages double spaced!

Journalists don’t have the time or energy to read a novel about the company getting a round of funding. Instead, a PR professional should provide enough background information about the company and its budget to interest a journalist in the story, with the ultimate goal of them asking for the press release. That way they aren’t intimidated by a wall of text.

Related: Why Your Marketing Team Should Be Journalists

3. Pitch Friday, mid-week release

It turns out that the day of the week you pitch a journalist a funding story is just as important as the length of the pitch or subject line. To that end, we found that the days with the most response from journalists to funding pitches fell on Wednesdays 24% of the responses take place on this day. However, we found that perhaps counterintuitively, the day with the highest probability of opening a pitch is Friday. Most PR professionals felt that these were the best days to pitch financing news, but now there are hard numbers to back it up.

While Wednesdays are still great days to pitch and get press releases out of the embargo, it came as a surprise that pitching on Friday gives you such a high chance of getting a response. However, the data only shows that about 5% of the pitches will be shipped on Friday. This means journalists aren’t inundated with new pitches, giving them time to read your story idea. 15% of responses took place on Friday, making it the day with the best ratio of pitches to responses.

Given the global economic slowdown, it’s more important than ever to communicate that your organization is stable. One of the best ways to do this is to release funding, which sends a signal of strength to potential clients and stability to prospective investors. And by using actionable, data-driven insights, you can ensure your funding campaign reaches its maximum potential. I hope these findings will be used as signposts for other professionals in the PR industry so they can develop better pitch strategies and get better results.