Freelancer emails have low open rates but the highest reply rates, especially Gmail, at 4.88%. National news outlets dominate outreach but have lower engagement due to inbox saturation. Australian and UK journalists reply more often - local relevance and exclusivity increase success. US Read more

Emails under 300 words get the highest open and reply rates—brevity significantly boosts engagement. Including full press releases or long intros may lower pitch effectiveness; link out to details instead. Focus on journalist relevance—tailor pitches to their beat, not just broad verticals. Read more

Follow-up emails boost reply rates by 85%, especially in Education, Entertainment, and Tech campaigns. First follow-up is most impactful—subsequent replies drop by 66%. Best timing is within 1 day of the original pitch; reply rates peak early. Industry matters—Travel and Fashion see Read more

Most replies come fast: 57% of link-building replies and 69.4% of digital PR replies happen within 6 hours. Average response times are 12.85 hours for link builders, 11.4 hours for digital PRs. Education, Fashion & Beauty had the fastest link building reply times. Fashion & Read more

Massive campaigns (1001–5000 emails) received less than 3.5 links per campaign—70% fewer than 51-100 spots. Only 1 in 3 emails in digital PR gets opened — the average open rate was 33.79%. Open rates dropped from 35.42% (1–50 emails) to 29.76% (1001–5000 emails) — a 16% decline. Read more

Only 38% of the emails found were correct after we cross-checked manually. 62% were either wrong (34%) or marked (28%) “not found.” Of the wrong email addresses, 59% will never receive a bounce notification, even though the messages never reach the recipient. Of the tools that gave confidence Read more

Major publishers suing OpenAI include The NYT, Tribune, and CBC, raising concerns about content visibility in AI results. AI training models and LLM rankings remain opaque, so adjusting digital PR tactics now is premature. Links and media mentions still drive Google rankings, even if excluded Read more

 Interest in "digital PR" has surged 34% globally since 2020, with major spikes in the UK and US.  Top challenges in 2025 include measuring impact and campaign ideation, with 72% saying it’s harder than last year.  Data-led content and expert commentary dominate digital PR tactics, used Read more

April 23, 2025 Update: I've updated this post to reflect all publisher partnerships with AI companies as of April 23, 2025. OpenAI and Microsoft have been busy. LLMs used by OpenAI and Google are heavily curated datasets. Ziff Davis’ study shows that heavily curated datasets contain a higher Read more

With interest in “digital PR” growing almost 30% in the past few years, we wanted to put together a snapshot of today's industry, looking at tactics, challenges, tools, and much more. We interviewed over 150 digital PR professionals worldwide between November and December 2024 to give you Read more