Writing a Catchy Headline for Pitching Your Product to Blogs?

[Testament]

Hey all!

Recently a friend of mine agreed to vouch for me so that I could become an intern at the start up he was consulting. I've been set to the task of writing pitch emails to popular blogs for the launch of the start up's product, but it's been tough coming up with a title to hook an editor in. I've been doing the Gary Halbert copy challenge, so I've been taking pointers from that, but I still feel as though my headlines are pretty lacking. I'm currently reading Tested Adverising Methods, and from what I've read so far, nothing matters as much as the headline.

We'll say that the company I'm pitching for has just invented a brand new "smart" chair that works with your smartphone to create the ultimate comfort experience.

At first, I was running with the headline:
"A Killer App for your Chair?"
Then reconsidered, as I thought that to an article writer that could just as easily be random spam...plus it's only a call to someone's curiosity, with nothing else in it.

Next, I changed it a bit to:
"An Article Your Readers Will Love - The Killer App for your Chair"
My thinking behind that was putting something the writer would be interested in (putting out an article his readers would love) in the headline, and also to mark it out as being an article pitch and not just any random message.

But something still looks off to me about it. I'm not really sure what and was wondering if any of you PR/Copy masters could impart some of your ever-valuable wisdom on me.

Thanks for the read!

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Emails that pique my queue...

"Hey MJ... can you take a look at this?"

I typically read those pretty fast. Depending on the content, I usually respond quick as well.

Sorry but when I'm scanning my inbox, the "copy written" headlines/titles that sounds like a sales pitch get put into a "later" queue or are deleted altogether.

 

[RogueInnovation]

Comfort is what I'd leverage

Our app will make getting down to business comfier than...

 

[JoeB]

Agree with MJ, you need the personal touch - these bloggers get hundreds of emails daily.

Informal subject with their name, then in the body mention a couple of things from their blog - not just their most recent post and also find their twitter account, follow them, then @message them to say you have sent an email.

I've go for quality over quantity with this - quantity if you can outsource some of the research.

 

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[Andy Black]

Emails that pique my queue...

"Hey MJ... can you take a look at this?"

I typically read those pretty fast. Depending on the content, I usually respond quick as well.

Sorry but when I'm scanning my inbox, the "copy written" headlines/titles that sounds like a sales pitch get put into a "later" queue or are deleted altogether.

Lol. Get ready for a flood of those MJ...


I agree about "copy written" headlines not looking right.

I started writing emails to my list in "Proper Sentence Case"... because that's what you're "supposed" to do. (e.g. "Are You Only Buying Traffic?")

Then I realised I don't write to my friends like that, so I change the style to be more like I'm writing to my friends. (e.g. "Are you only buying traffic?").

I don't have enough actual data to say one way or another.

Personally, I also prefer the subject line or blog headline to indicate what's inside the email, as I want to learn a little bit from the open-rates of different subject lines. But then I'm not sure open-rates mean too much anyway.

HTH

 

[Bartez]

Maybe this would fit: "No idea what to write about? Share our product with your readers"

I think that writing every word with capital letter is a bad idea and can look like a scam, also it's gramatically incorrect

 

[Testament]

Thanks a ton for all the helpful responses, guys!

Yeah, you know I had that sense when I was writing out my "good form" copywriting. I thought to myself, "These guys must see literally hundreds of emails that look just like that, every single day."

Is it just me, or does anyone else tend to in (general) avoid clicking on obviously copy-written headlines? After finding out a lot about copy-writing, it feels as though I'm being manipulated into clicking their stuff, hence I do not.

So I woke up this morning to a grand total of one email response, out of 14 sent emails - 8 sent with MJ's suggested headline. But the editor who responded to me was from one of the bigger blogs whom I'm thinking gets a lot of messages, so it must've cut through pretty well!

Does anyone know of a good program to check how many of your emails were actually read?

 

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[Joe Cassandra]

Are you talking subject lines for emails? Or the article heading for the content you want to write?

Subject lines to emails to get them to open

Thanks a ton for all the helpful responses, guys!

Yeah, you know I had that sense when I was writing out my "good form" copywriting. I thought to myself, "These guys must see literally hundreds of emails that look just like that, every single day."

Is it just me, or does anyone else tend to in (general) avoid clicking on obviously copy-written headlines? After finding out a lot about copy-writing, it feels as though I'm being manipulated into clicking their stuff, hence I do not.

So I woke up this morning to a grand total of one email response, out of 14 sent emails - 8 sent with MJ's suggested headline. But the editor who responded to me was from one of the bigger blogs whom I'm thinking gets a lot of messages, so it must've cut through pretty well!

Does anyone know of a good program to check how many of your emails were actually read?

Banana tag, you get 5 free, you can pay for premium if you want. Tells you when it's opened and if a link is clicked (for the free version).

I never send more than 5 a day I would want to know if it's opened, but check it out! It's funny because I heard about banana tag from a track coach (not very techy) who wanted to know if emails to potential recruits were being read. So he figured out which subject lines to use and what not, smart dude.

http://bananatag.com/

 

[Testament]

Thanks for the link! Yeah, I meant subject lines for emails.

 

[Emanuel]

I'd use something on the lines of: *insert person's first name* does your back still hurt?

 

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[leonbenj]

I'm doing the Gary challenge as well!
Hope this inspires you: "the ultimate chair your smartphone relaxes you into"

 

[DennisD]

"Hey [name],
I read [article name], I think you might like this too"

 

[Testament]

Really great stuff! I'll give all of your titles a test, as soon as I'm finished testing the one MJ gave me. I just downloaded a chrome extension called "Streak," that's monitoring when people open my email and how many times they've viewed it.

Unfortunately, I blew through my entire email list before I found it, so I've only been able to test it with 3 emails.

However, the title that MJ gave me seems to be working...uhhh, spectacularly from those three tests. First one was opened and viewed 13 times by a 1 unique ID, second was opened 8 times by 1 ID as well, and third one was opened once, 1 ID.

So far the only response I've actually gotten has been to the email I mentioned earlier. However, if the data from this extremely small test group is true of most of the emails I've been sending, then I'm guessing there must be a big issue with the actual body of the pitch...

Would I be correct in that assumption?

 

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[JDM]

I'm no copywriter but I can speak from experience. Here are three PR subject lines I recently sent:

1. Exclusive and perfect follow up story! - 54% open rate
2. The follow up story, as promised! - 41.5% open rate
3. I thought you might be interested in this! - 59.4% open rate