Email Pitching

Read time 11 min Level Beginner to Intermediate Prerequisites A Story with an approved media release, a published NewsWire page, and media contacts in your CRM

In a nutshell: Email Pitching walks you through a six-step flow -- ACTIVITY, RELEASE, NEWSWIRE, PITCH LIST, CONTENT, SEARCH & SEND -- that turns an approved release into journalist outreach. Compose in the rich-text editor with merge-field pills from the Field Picker, choose recipients from a saved Contact Group, a media-database Search, or Smart Match, then queue the send. Buzzscribed measures the two signals that matter for proof-of-pickup: opens and downloads from your NewsWire page.

Pair this with the craft article The wizard sends pitches; Pitch Craft: Writing Emails That Get Opened teaches what to put in them -- subject-line technique, the hook-value-ask body structure, follow-up cadence, embargo etiquette. Read that one alongside this one and the tool plus the craft work together.

What you will learn

What Email Pitching does, and how it differs from EDM.
The six steps the page walks you through.
How to compose a pitch with merge-field pills from the Field Picker.
Three ways to find recipients -- Contact Group, Search, and Smart Match -- and the safety toggles that keep your sending list clean.
How to self-test, schedule a send, and manage the queued batch from the Mail Dashboard.
What you can measure: opens and downloads (placements) -- the two signals that count for ProofScore.

The mental model

Email Pitching is the page where you take an approved release out to journalists. Find it under the PITCH menu. Acme PR Corp runs every Globex Wellbeing Index pitch wave through this wizard.

Picture it as a wizard with two halves. The first half answers which Story, which release, which NewsWire page -- pure selection. The second half is the actual pitch: pick (or build) a saved pitch, write the body in a rich-text editor using merge-field pills, choose recipients, and queue the send.

Nothing leaves the platform instantly. Pressing send drops your selection into the mail queue, where you can reschedule or cancel before delivery. That is by design -- it gives you a beat to catch a mistake before it hits real inboxes.

One thing worth understanding up front: a pitch (subject + body) belongs to a Story, while email templates are company-wide. A well-built template earns its keep across many Stories.

The six steps

A wizard rail along the top shows where you are. Move forward with Next, click Back to revisit any earlier step.

[Screenshot placeholder -- the Email Pitching step rail showing ACTIVITY, RELEASE, NEWSWIRE, PITCH LIST, CONTENT, SEARCH & SEND with the current step highlighted]

The six-step wizard rail. Completed steps show a tick; you can click Back to revisit any earlier step.

1. ACTIVITY: Pick the Story you are pitching. Location filter, "Search stories..." box, Story cards below, and an "Include Completed" toggle when you need to revisit a finished launch.
2. RELEASE: Choose which release on that Story you are sending out -- a Story can carry a Primary and a Secondary, or several labelled releases. This is the release that fills the {headline}, {bullets} and {body} merge fields in the email.
3. NEWSWIRE: Confirm the Story's NewsWire page -- the public asset hub journalists pick up from. The fingerprinted link on that page is what the {url} merge field resolves to, and downloads from it are how Buzzscribed proves pickup.
4. PITCH LIST: Each Story can hold several saved pitches (subject + body), shown as cards. Pick an existing pitch to keep working on, or use Add New Pitch to start a fresh one. The compose surface opens inline below the list.
5. CONTENT: The compose step: an Email Subject field, an Apply Template dropdown (company-wide templates), a Field Picker tree of merge fields on the left, and a rich-text editor on the right. Drag a field from the tree into the editor -- or click it -- and it drops in as a styled pill.
6. SEARCH & SEND: Choose how to find recipients, run the search, pick contacts from the grid, set the sender name, reply-to group and scheduled send time, then press Review & Send Email. That button queues the batch -- nothing bypasses the queue.

The merge-field pills

The Field Picker groups available tokens into branches. Drop one into the editor and it shows as a styled pill with a friendly label; the underlying token resolves at send time. The picker is the source of truth -- if a token is in the tree, it works; if not, it does not exist in the platform.

{UserName} -- the recipient's first name.
{intro} -- the pitch intro text.
{url} -- the NewsWire link ({directurl}, {subscription} and {live} are related variants).
{headline} and {image} -- the release headline and its hero image.
{bullets}, {body}, {questions} -- the key points, body and Q&A / citations.
{filelist} -- the list of downloadable files attached to the NewsWire page.
{spokesperson1}, {job1}, {bio1}, {fullbio1}, {headshot1} -- spokesperson #1's name, position, short bio, full bio and photo. The same set exists for {spokesperson2} and beyond.
{prcontact}, {premail}, {prmobile}, {prphone} -- the PR contact's signature block.

The Hive Maker group at the top of the picker offers ready-made combos -- Intro Combo, Story Combo, Spokesperson #1 Combo, Signature Combo -- which drop several tokens in together with sensible layout. Start a new template by combining those, then refine.

Finding recipients on SEARCH & SEND

Three "How would you like to find contacts?" routes:

Contact Group: Use a saved group from your CRM. The fastest route when you pitch the same set of journalists or stakeholders repeatedly -- build the group once, reuse it forever.
Search: Filter the media database by Media Category (Broadcast / Print & Digital / Social), Media Type, Tier (1-4) and Location. Run the search; results land in a selectable grid.
Smart Match: The topic-matched suggester. Smart Match analyses the Story's content, identifies its topics, and ranks journalists who cover those topics -- blending recent article count, recency, topic breadth, prior placements, interviews and opens. Press Find Matches and the ranked list loads into the grid.

Safety toggles sit above the grid, all sensibly default-on: Skip Already Sent (don't double-email someone on this campaign), Skip Snoozed (skip contacts with active snooze alerts), and a "Skip contacts who have bookings, declines, or NewsWire downloads for this Story" option. Allow Follow-up Sends (off by default) is the deliberate override when you want to re-include contacts already queued. An Additional Exclusions panel lets you subtract a whole Contact Group from the current selection in one move.

Sending: self-test, scheduling, and the mail queue

Before sending to anyone real, use Send Self Test on the compose step to get the email in your own inbox exactly as a recipient will see it -- pills resolved, styling applied, attachments present. Read it. Refine it. Test again.

On SEARCH & SEND, the Send Settings card carries:

Sender Name -- the team member the email comes from.
Reply-To Group -- a routing alias or a custom address that catches replies.
Time Zone -- read-only, matched to the sender's profile.
Send Time -- a date-time picker. Leave it blank to send as soon as the queue allows; set it to schedule a future send.

Pressing Review & Send Email adds the batch to the mail queue. From that point, manage the send -- postpone, view, or cancel -- from the Mail Dashboard, where outreach batches show their status: Scheduled, Queued, Sending, Complete, Cancelled. Queued is not delivered. Delivered is not read. The Mail Dashboard is the source of truth for each batch's progress.

Try this: On your next live Story, walk steps 1-5, apply a template, drop in the Story Combo and Signature Combo, then hit Send Self Test. Read every pill carefully -- that is the email a journalist will see. Only when you are happy, go to step 6, run a media-database search for one outlet, select it, set a Send Time 30 minutes out, and Review & Send. Open the Mail Dashboard, find the batch, and cancel it. You have now seen the full loop without anything hitting a real inbox.

Frequently asked

Where is this page in the navigation?: PITCH > Email Pitching.
What metrics does Email Pitching capture?: Two signals that map to ProofScore: opens (via tracking pixel) and downloads (files pulled from the NewsWire link). Those are the data points that prove an outlet picked your assets up -- the same data points that anchor coverage attribution downstream.
Are email templates tied to a Story?: Templates are company-wide, so a strong template scales across every Story you run. A pitch (subject + body) belongs to a Story -- that is the artefact you save and refine per launch.
What is the difference between Email Pitching and EDM?: Email Pitching emails journalists about a Story. EDM (Email Direct Marketing, under Clients & CRM) is marketing email to your client's own contacts -- a different audience, a different page, a different consent model. See the EDM article.
Does Smart Match send the emails?: Smart Match finds and ranks relevant journalists, then loads them into the selectable grid. You still review the list, set the send settings, and press Review & Send Email, which queues the batch.
I pressed Review & Send Email by mistake -- can I stop it?: Yes, while the batch is still in the queue. Open the Mail Dashboard, find the batch, and use Cancel (or Reschedule if you just need a later send time).

Key takeaways

Six-step flow: ACTIVITY, RELEASE, NEWSWIRE, PITCH LIST, CONTENT, SEARCH & SEND.
Compose with merge-field pills from the Field Picker -- the picker is the source of truth.
Templates are company-wide; a pitch (subject + body) belongs to a Story.
Three ways to find recipients -- saved Contact Group, media-database Search, Smart Match. Safety toggles default on.
Send Self Test before you send. Review & Send queues the batch; manage it from the Mail Dashboard.
Metrics: opens and downloads. Two signals, both feed ProofScore.