Our dinner with Sarah Jossel, Deputy Beauty Editor at Glamour Magazine was overflowing with all the do’s and don’ts on how to get noticed by the editorial team of a magazine that we couldn’t leave a thing out. On the day of the dinner, Sarah had received well over 250 emails, seven of which were from brands she hadn’t even heard of. She replied to exactly ZERO! That’s the challenge each and every one of us faces.
Take note – here are her tips in all their glory:
Big No Nos
- Any email that starts ‘Dear All’
- Long emails
- Asking something not relevant to the magazine
- Starting an email too informally, e.g. Hi Babe / Hun
- Being too personal, e.g. asking what they got up to at the weekend
- Spelling names incorrectly
- Being irrelevant to the magazine
- Contacting someone at the wrong time of the year
- Subject lines that don’t correspond to an email’s content
- Omitting stockist details and prices
- Calling to ask obvious questions (get addresses from their website, and yes of course send samples in!)
Big Yeses
- Write in the house style of the magazine (i.e. how they write to their readers)
- Make it personal in a sense of what a journalist likes
- Personalised gifts are a real trend (send these in for sure!)
- Think about exposure on other channels – it’s easier to get coverage this way (think Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook etc)
- Ask a question they can answer, something simple – this increases the chance of a response
- If you haven’t heard back from them, don’t reply on the same thread (this highlights to them that they haven’t replied already!)
- If you haven’t had a reply, chances are your product is not relevant (they’re always looking for new, exciting things, and great stories to cover – they wouldn’t want to miss anything, so chances are they have read your email)
- Initiate communication with the editorial assistant rather than the editors – they all work together as a close team so this is a great route in
Hopefully all of the above will highlight how to get through the minefield of securing media coverage for your business. Good luck!
Have you seen the dinners we having coming up? No! Well, take a look here.
