AI-powered pitch generation
Writing personalized pitches for 30 journalists is tedious work. Outrigger's pitch generation uses your brand voice, campaign angle, and each journalist's recent coverage to create pitches that sound like they came from a human PR professional: because they're designed to.
How brand voice modeling works
When you set up a client in Outrigger, the brand brief and tone guidelines don't just drive citation responses: they also inform pitch generation. The AI learns:
- How formal or casual your brand communicates
- What terminology you use (and avoid)
- How you describe your differentiators
- What your spokesperson sounds like
This ensures pitches sound like they came from your brand, not from generic PR software.
What a good pitch looks like
A pitch that gets opened, read, and acted on follows this structure:
Subject line: Specific, not clickbaity. Reference their beat or a recent article.
- Good: "Original data on how AI models recommend brands: fits your AI search coverage"
- Bad: "Exciting announcement from Brand X!"
Opening line: Reference something specific they wrote. Show you read their work.
- Good: "Your piece last week on AI search trends touched on something we've been measuring..."
- Bad: "I'm reaching out because I think you'd be interested in..."
The hook: One sentence explaining what's newsworthy.
- Example format (replace placeholders only with verified findings): "We analyzed [N] AI answers and found [X]% cited [verified source or category]."
- Bad: "We just launched an exciting new platform."
The offer: What you're providing: data, expert quotes, early access, exclusive story.
The ask: One clear action. "Would you be interested in seeing the full data?"
Signature: Real person, real title, real contact info.
Generating pitches in Outrigger
For each journalist on your campaign list:
- Outrigger analyzes their last 3-5 published articles
- Identifies connection points between their coverage and your pitch
- Generates a personalized pitch that references their work and positions your story as relevant to their beat
- Presents the draft for your review and editing
The generation takes seconds per journalist. The review and personalization is where you spend your time.
The pitch review workflow
Generate
Click "Generate Pitches" on your campaign. Outrigger creates a draft for each journalist on your list.
Review
Read each pitch. Check that:
- The journalist reference is accurate (not hallucinated)
- The connection between their coverage and your story makes sense
- The tone matches your brand
- The ask is clear and reasonable
Edit
Adjust anything that feels off. Add personal touches you know about the journalist. Remove anything that sounds too salesy.
Send
Send from your email (Outrigger integrates with your email or you can copy-paste). Track opens and responses in the campaign dashboard.
Follow-up timing
If a journalist doesn't respond to your initial pitch:
- 48-72 hours later: Send one follow-up. Keep it short: "Following up on the below: happy to provide the full dataset if useful for your coverage."
- After follow-up with no response: Move on. They're not interested in this story.
- Exception: If they opened the email multiple times (tracked via email analytics), a second follow-up may be warranted after a week.
Never follow up more than twice on the same pitch. Three emails without a response damages the relationship for future campaigns.
Pitch performance tracking
Outrigger tracks pitch outcomes:
- Open rate: What percentage of journalists opened the email
- Reply rate: What percentage responded (positive or negative)
- Coverage rate: What percentage resulted in published coverage
- Average time to coverage: How long from pitch to publication
These metrics help you optimize over time. If open rates are low, your subject lines need work. If reply rates are low but open rates are high, the pitch content needs improvement.
In Outrigger
Press's pitch generation is integrated into the campaign workflow. Generate, review, send, and track: all from the campaign detail page.