3 ways to make your fundraising pitches shine

The opinions expressed by entrepreneurs contributors are their own.

Funding cycle stories are critical to a startup's success, especially during an economic downturn. They show the world that there is confidence in the longevity of the company, as investors believe the company is likely to succeed and generate returns. These announcements also generate excitement and additional emotional investment in the business. However, with reporter response rates declining quarter over quarter, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get company news out, especially for funding.

To determine what will make journalists more likely to open and respond to a pitch, my company, Propel, analyzed approximately 3,500 funding proposals and found three key pieces of information to use in the next pitch strategy. your business:

Related: Five Ways to Raise Funds to Launch Your Own Startup

1. Use short, catchy subject lines

Journalists want to know exactly what they're going to find when they open a pitch email, and it's no different when it comes to funding announcements. In fact, of all the data, we found that fundraising pitches with subject lines no longer than nine words were opened the most often, with a 7% response rate. That's huge, especially since the industry average response rate for all presentation types is just 3.35%.

One reason is that journalists are inundated with pitches, so the sooner they understand a pitch, the better. Many journalists also check pitch emails on their phones, and with limited space for so many characters in the subject line, PR professionals need to be able to quickly and briefly tell the story from of the subject line. I recommend putting the company name and funding amount in the subject line so the reporter knows what they are going to read.

Related: 7 Headline Writing Formats That Get Journalists to Read Your Pitch

2. Don't make the pitch an epic novel

The adage "short and sweet" also applies to the body of the pitch. We found that placements between 50 and 149 words had the best response rates at 15%. However, for some reason, we've found that most PR professionals send funding proposals between 500 and 1,000 words in length. For context, this is the length of 2-4 word double-spaced pages!

Journalists don't have the time or energy to read a novel about the company that gets funding. Instead, a PR professional should provide enough background information about the company and the budget to interest a reporter in the story, with the ultimate goal of getting them to request the press release. That way they won't be intimidated by a wall of text.

Related: Why Your Marketing Team Should Be a Journalist

3. Pitch Friday, mid-week release

It turns out that the day of the week you pitch a fundraising story to a reporter is just as important as the length of the pitch or subject line. To that end, we found that the days with the most responses from journalists to fundraising pitches occurred on Wednesdays, with 24% re...