The Propel Media Barometer - Q1 2024

Each quarter, the Propel team does an extensive study on nearly a half million PR email pitches sent to journalists, sharing key findings in a quarterly Media Barometer report. The goal of these reports is to highlight overarching trends and changes in the PR industry to make it easier for any organization to get the earned coverage that exceeds their branding goals in an increasingly difficult media environment.

It’s not surprising that securing high-quality press coverage keeps getting more difficult, especially given newsroom resources being stretched ever thinner, the continuing rise of deepfakes and misinformation, as well as a constant demand for strong PR across industries.

This report will teach you how to optimize your journalist outreach strategy when pitching news for your brand or clients based on the performance of over 425,000 pitches sent during Q4 of 2023. Here are a few key findings from our email PR pitching study.
‍
A few key findings from the report include:

The average response rate to pitches was 3.15%, a 5.41% decrease, and a rate more in line with the rest of the year
The most popular day of the week was Monday (24.67% of all pitches), but pitches sent on Tuesday received the highest response rate (35.69% response rate)‍
Subject lengths of 1-5 words were responded to the most (3.88%) but subject lengths of 6-9 words were sent the most (34.99% of all pitches)
There was a 22% increase in podcast pitching, but an 11.4% decrease in responses
Pitches with body lengths of 51-150 words were responded to the most (3.03%)