December 22, 2008 · 8:27 am

Tip #98: Make it snappy, Sweetheart

Emailing a pitch? Put your company or product name in your first paragraph. Better yet, first sentence. Best: first word. I’m not reading to the end of your pitch regardless, so why take chances?

10 responses to “Tip #98: Make it snappy, Sweetheart”

Chuckerpated

December 22, 2008 at 9:06 am

I write for the Chicago edition of a daily men’s e-newsletter and receive all manner of pitches, many of which share this very difficulty.

I seem to remember this lesson from the FIRST day of my FIRST PR class in college.

Since they don’t seem to understand this, I will now be sharing the link to this post so they can “get the memo”…from you.

Reply
Yvonne

December 22, 2008 at 9:54 am

I disagree. I’d rather have a statement of the product’s benefit in the first sentence. “A new mind reading interface from SuperPhone will make the guesswork of voice dialing and touch screens obsolete.”

Reply
Rafe

December 22, 2008 at 11:39 am

Yvonne, how about, “SuperPhone has launched a new mind reading interface that makes voice dialing and touch screens obsolete?”

Reply
Brad

December 23, 2008 at 5:01 pm

Rafe, how about, “SuperPhone just came into a lot of capital from investors who didn’t quite hear their pitch and will be out of business before year end.”

Reply
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