10 Insightful Stats to Boost Your PR Efforts in 2016 written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing
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If you are a business owner, you are already familiar with public relations and their input in the success of your business. PR is something no one can avoid since you can either have good or bad relations. This makes the whole process a rather challenging one because it relates to both the organization and the individuals’ appearance and behavior.
Getting a journalist write about you is not an easy task and one must understand the need for public relations in order to succeed on the market. Of course, every individual has their own standards, but this does not limit you in finding a way to maximize the chances for the success of your PR.
What follows are 10 stats that can help you boost your PR:
1. The golden time to send an email
According to the research done by GetResponse, the majority of the e-mails being sent to journalists are opened at a specific period of the day. The fact is, there is always such a thing as a ‘right timing’ when it comes to communication with people. The golden time for sending an e-mail is 8am-10am.
Angela Spark, an outreach specialist for the resume writing service Resumesplanet has confirmed this theory claiming that ‘journalists tend to reply with angry emails if contacted at 3.30am and 6.30pm. For them, later is the ‘dead’ time since they have already finished their job and turned to engaging in other activities.’
2. The perfect day to send an email
When contacting journalists, you also need to pick the right day. A massive study conducted by iAquire and Buzzstream has chosen Tuesday as the best day to send an e-mail. Why? Because this is the day when emails are most frequently opened and replied to. A veteran journalist for The Post Register, Jennifer Austin, claims that Monday is a busy day for everyone and one may easily miss an e-mail or postpone the reply for the day that follows.
Art of outreach
3. Name importance
A case study conducted by iAcquire tries out two methods of opening salutations: ‘Aloha’ and ‘Hi, Mike’. The result is quite obvious: choosing a personal salutation rather than a general one such as ‘Aloha’ gives you more chances that your e-mail will get a response. Why? Because generic salutations give the impression that you don’t know who you are contacting and choosing a personal salutation gives the idea of being more professional and involved. Additionally, the problem with spam emails that feature these types of common, generic salutations is always present, so you may not get a response due to your email being misplaced in the ‘junk’ folder
4. Number of follow-ups
When it comes to contacting people via e-mail, the timing and the salutation is definitely not the only thing that needs considering. Another point captured by iAcquire is the number of follow-up emails required for successful communication. The general understanding is that persistence gets the best results and this study proves this point exactly. A second and third email resulted in 60% more responses than one single e-mail.
5. E-mail or phone
iAcquire has pointed out that 64% of the total number of journalists included in the study have chosen phone over e-mail communication. Why is this? The answer would be that the time spent while contacting via e-mail can be much longer than by a simple phone conversation. Matters can be more easily discussed when you are not waiting for the other party to open their inbox and normally, this saves up much time for the journalists.
6. Getting to the point
The attention span of Americans is approximately 8 seconds, according to a study from Microsoft Corp. The results of this research show that people can lose concentration after as little as eight seconds. This was based on a survey of 2000 participants and brain activity studies of 112 participants. This means that getting to the point fast can be one of the key factors in boosting your PR when communicating with journalists.
7. E-mail length matters
If you’ve found yourself wondering why the journalists you contacted are not reacting to your e-mails, you should know that the length of the message is a big factor in them reading it. A study from Boomerang has shown that the optimal length that an email should have is between 50 and 125 words. The response rate for this length has proven to be above 50% and short emails are most commonly followed by a response.
8. Keep your e-mail to the point
The B2B PR blog has conducted a study that resulted in 68% of the journalists wanting just the facts. This is why it is crucial to keep an e-mail short and concise, with the purpose of making sure that the journalist knows the facts and does not reject reading your e-mail because of all unnecessary details included.
9. Include a question
According to a statistic found on Hubspot, the best practice when writing an e-mail and expecting a response is to include a question in the message. The Boomerang study has discovered that the right amount of questions to be asked is from one to three questions. The results showed that the chances of getting a response were increased up to 50%.
10. No phone number in the first e-mail
iAcquire points out that removing a phone number in the first email you send can lead to a 4.78% increase in the response rate! These e-mails can additionally get 2,48% link closes, due to the lack of the phone number in an unsolicited e-mail. Having placed your phone number in the message can easily correlate the e-mail with a scam.
Follow the guidelines above to boost your PR to a new, advanced level. Creating a good reputation or enhancing the one you already have is not simple and usually takes a big chunk of time, but if you manage to develop and update your plan, your success will be guaranteed!
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