Why Personalised Pitches Are Mostly Nonsense (And What We Find Works)

“Hyper-personalised outreach.”
“Handcrafted emails for every journalist.”
“Bespoke pitching at scale.”

If you’ve ever commissioned or worked on a digital PR or link building campaign, you’ve probably heard something similar to those phrases before – usually served with a side of inflated expectations and a generous helping of “premium service” spin.

The idea of personalised pitches sounds great, but most of the time, they’re a bit of a myth. This article isn’t intended as a rant, but more of a reality check – for clients, in-house teams, and yes, some of our peers in the industry too – on why “personalised pitches” are mostly nonsense (and what to do about it).

Where the Myth Comes From

The idea of handcrafted, one-to-one media pitches sounds great, and feels like it should work. Clients like the sound of it because it feels exclusive, premium, and thoughtful. Agencies often sell it because it makes outreach sound more valuable.

But the truth is, most “personalised pitches”…aren’t.

It’s 2025, so let’s not pretend link building agencies are crafting one-of-a-kind messages for every journalist they contact. As premium as this might sound, it’s not sustainable.

Tools like Pitchbox, Ninja Outreach and Mailchimp exist to make outreach manageable at scale. Agencies are using them, and it’s fine to acknowledge that.

But the truth is, most so-called “personalised” pitches are just templates with a few swapped-out fields. That’s not inherently the problem, though. The problem is pretending they’re anything more than that.

What “Personalised” Looks Like

Here’s the sort of email template we know gets used. We’ve highlighted the variables so you can spot them.

(For the record, we’ve made the names and details up – this isn’t based on any real person, publication, or company.)

What’s Wrong With That?

You might read the above and think “that’s a great email” – and in truth, it’s not an inherently “bad” way of pitching. If you take out the variables, you could use this email in every campaign you run, without issue.

Even though it’s a template, the details in the above email are personalised, and in many cases, pitches like this will work…sometimes.

But now put yourself in the recipient’s shoes.

Journalists are busy. They don’t have time for long intros about how much you admire their work (which they know you didn’t read). They know you don’t care about their weekend, and unless something’s gone terribly wrong, they probably already know their job title.

This is all extraneous fluff, and the more it piles on, the more the pitch starts to blend in with the thousands of others pouring into their inbox.

Like most of us, journalists can sniff out templated language from a mile off. They’ve seen the same phrasing, the same flattery, the same three-stat sandwich a hundred times by 9:30am. And when it all blurs together, an email like the one above is far more likely to be skimmed, or worse, skipped.

“Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”

The ability to insert a journalist’s first name, job title, or publication into an email isn’t personalisation – it’s mail merge. But, somewhere along the line, this basic automation got dressed up as a premium service.

Agencies leaned into it. Custom fields were added, and before long, if you had a spreadsheet of information and a few curly brackets, you had a marketable “bespoke outreach strategy.”

Realistically, however, being able to include a journalist’s pet’s name in an outreach email doesn’t make it more personalised…but it does make it weird.

“Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”.

We’ve found, time and time again, that relevance, brevity, and timing outperform fluff dressed as familiarity.

What’s The Alternative?

While there are some exceptions to the rule, many journalists want little more than a punchy, informative subject line, a clearly relevant story, and the option to ignore the email without guilt.

In this, some of our best-performing pitch emails have been written in as little as 50 words – and if the content’s good, that’s often all you need.

Here’s one we sent out recently:

The piece of content was pasted beneath the signature, meaning Jen could quickly skim through and see if it would, indeed, be of interest to her readers.

Clean, fluff-free and respectful of time – but also, quietly packed with everything that was needed.

• A reason for the pitch being made (summer’s arrival)
• A nod to the important people (the audience)
• An invitation to engage in further conversation
• An offer of added value (images for the piece)

It’s true that the email doesn’t go into any detail (this is a particularly short example), but the benefit of brevity is that the bold title of the content that followed – and the first paragraph – were placed immediately in view, rather than presenting a swamp of paragraphs to scroll through first.

This approach lets the content do the talking, rather than relying on a lengthy email justifying the reasons for sending it.

The email doesn’t “flex” that we know their job title or the publication they write for – it leads with a quiet confidence that we already know our email has been sent to the right person.
You could argue the case for having some “key stats” included as a hook; In some cases, this might strengthen the pitch. By not including them, however, you’re not showing your hand too early or risking highlighting the wrong areas, giving the journalist a reason to read on, and your article – the important bit – more chance to shine.

For the record, the journalist that received the above email published the content almost immediately upon receipt.

When Personalisation Does Work

To be clear: we’re not saying templated personalisation has no place in outreach, and we do sometimes use this approach. When it’s used well, it can be an efficient and effective way of covering ground, particularly for:

• Regional stories, where you may need to highlight different statistics or points in both the pitch email and press release, depending on the region you’re pitching to.
• Sector-specific hooks, where certain outlets might benefit from seeing different angles or information from the same campaign

The key element here is that we don’t rely on it every time. It’s not always needed – and it’s not a substitute for editorial judgement.

Where real personalisation happens (that is, no templates or mail merges) is when we’ve got a story that’s genuinely relevant to one specific journalist – either because they’ve written about it before, or our content adds something new to a story they’re already following.

In these cases, we’re more likely to pick up the phone in the first instance. It might be 2025, but there’s still no substitute for taking the time to personally call a journalist for a chat. They may not always pick up, but when they do, it can (and has) lead to great opportunities for relationship development.

A Side-Note on Follow-Ups

We know, through lived experience, that a gentle follow-up email can rescue a missed opportunity. But too many follow-ups can cross into the territory of “annoyance” – having an adverse effect.

At Brick, we usually follow up once – twice if we’re sure of the story’s strength and relevance. We respect our client’s need for links, but we also respect the inboxes – and sanity – of those we’re pitching to.

The Brick Digital Definition of Personalised Pitches

In our minds, personalisation doesn’t come from correctly referencing someone’s job title, publication, or the last article they wrote. It comes from understanding who you’re pitching to, and more importantly, why the story you’re sharing is worth their time.

True personalisation – and our overall philosophy for successful off-page content – means thinking like an editor. It means asking:

• Is this story genuinely useful for their readers?
• Does it offer something new, surprising, or timely?
• Would I open this if I were them?

It’s about fostering editorial alignment, rather than artificial intimacy. When a story meets the moment, the email doesn’t need to try so hard, and your pitch is more likely to earn attention naturally.

That’s the version of personalisation we aim for: considered, not cosmetic. Purposeful, not performative.

A Final Word On Getting Results

However outreach is approached, there are a few core things we feel an email should always aim to hit.

• Sent to the right person. Obvious, but often overlooked.
• Lead with a hook. Why should they take note?
• Keep it short. Journalists don’t need backstory, client origin stories, or a faux pleasantry about their weekend.
• Make it easy to say yes. Get in. Give the hook. Give them what they need.

Get out.

This lets the content speak for itself. If it’s good, they’ll run it. If it’s not, no amount of personalisation is going to change their mind.

The myth of personalisation in digital PR is just that – a myth. We’ve found that effective outreach isn’t about faking intimacy, but about earning attention with the right story, at the right time, told clearly, concisely and with confidence.