Digital PR is a tool that helps companies expand their audience, increase brand awareness, and drive engagement. Whatever industry you work in, growing an online presence should be an important part of the marketing strategy for any company.
Prioritising a digital PR strategy can help brands secure coverage in high-quality publications including mentions and links from relevant and authoritative sites.
In this article, we’ll look into some of the latest digital PR statistics, including email open rates, average number of links per campaign, and even journalists’ views on digital PR strategies.
Key statistics
- The global public relations market is estimated at $114.1 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach $144.28 billion by 2028.
- 49% of journalists say they rarely respond to the pitches they receive, and only 8% say they always respond to pitches.
- Around half (50.9%) of digital PRs say they work the most closely with SEO teams, while only 14.5% work the closest with traditional PR teams.
- The majority (87%) of journalists prefer to receive pitches via email.
- Journalists open an average of 45.3% of the pitches they receive and respond to an average of 3.15%.
- Three-quarters (73%) of journalists say that 75% of the pitches they receive are not relevant or valuable to them.
- The majority (65.2%) of news placements are published within three days of the initial pitch being sent.
- 50% of digital PR professionals said that measuring the impact of their campaigns was one of their biggest challenges.
- 73% of links earned through digital PR campaigns are follow links which are more likely to have an impact on search engine rankings than nofollow links.
Digital PR market size
While market size figures on digital PR specifically are not available, the global public relations market is expected to grow from $106.93 billion in 2023 to $114.1 billion in 2024 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.7%. It is predicted that by 2028, the global public relations market will be worth $144.28 billion.
PR email pitch and response statistics
Let’s take a look at some statistics on PR email pitches, how journalists respond to them, and the most successful types of email pitches.
The average response rate to PR pitches is 3.15%
Data based on 425,000 PR pitches sent to journalists in Q4 of 2023 shows that the average response rate from journalists was 3.15%, meaning roughly 13,000 of these pitches received a response.
Of the pitches that received a response at all, 70% were responded to within the same day they were sent, and 59.4% received a response within four hours. 83.2% of pitches that got a response received it no later than the next day.
The majority of news placements are published within three days of the initial pitch being sent (65.2% of published articles).
Tuesday is the most popular day for journalist engagement
Monday is the most common day for PRs to send out pitches with 24.7% of pitches being sent on a Monday. However, journalists opened the most pitches (25.4%) and responded to the most pitches (35.7%) on Tuesdays. Fridays see the least activity when it comes to sending, opening, and responding to PR pitches.
Half of journalists rarely respond to pitches
One survey found that 49% of journalists rarely respond to the pitches they receive, and only 8% said they always respond.
Types of pitches journalists engage with the most
There are a number of factors that make PR pitches more likely to receive a response. A short subject length of between 1 and 5 words has a 3.88% response rate, and a pitch body length of 51-150 words has a response rate of 7.13%.
How do journalists pick up stories?
Sourcing new and interesting stories is a key part of a journalist’s work, but how do most journalists prefer to find new stories?
87% of journalists prefer to receive pitches via email
The vast majority (87%) of journalists say they prefer receiving pitches through email, with 4% or less of journalists choosing any other platform as their preferred way to receive pitches.
Two-thirds (67%) of journalists use social media to source stories
Journalists use social media for a number of reasons, with the most common being to publish or promote their content. However, 67% of journalists also use social media to source information and stories, while 55% use it for networking.
Most journalists do not find value in 75% of pitches
Almost three-quarters (73%) of journalists said they only consider around 25% of pitches they receive to be relevant and valuable.
Digital PR behaviors journalists hate
At work, we can all deal with people we don’t get on with, or whose methods we disagree with, but what would make a journalist block a PR for good?
Three-quarters (77%) would block a PR for sending multiple irrelevant pitches
The most common reason journalists block PRs is sending too many irrelevant pitches, with three-quarters (77%) saying they would block someone for doing this. Other top behaviours that can get a PR blocked by a journalist include giving inaccurate or unsourced information (62%) and sending too many marketing-heavy pitches (55%).
Email open rates for PR campaigns
The average email open rate in the PR industry is 38.89%, which is on the higher end compared to other industries like finance (26.5%), and technology (29.1%).
What qualifies as a ‘good’ email open rate will vary depending on the industry, but typically a 20% open rate or higher can be classed as good.
Another study found that journalists opened 45.3% of the digital PR pitches they received in Q4 of 2023, a drop compared to 48.3% in Q3 of 2023.
Number of links by digital PR campaign
The aim of a digital PR campaign is to generate media coverage and online mentions about a particular brand and to build links to the brand’s website. While links are not the only measure of a successful campaign, they do provide a trackable metric that can help us understand whether a campaign has performed well. But how many links can a digital PR campaign expect to generate?
The following data is based on digital PR campaigns run by the team here at Root Digital. The most common number of backlinks achieved by a digital PR campaign is between 101 and 500, with 20.8% of our campaigns generating links within this range.
Average authority of links to digital PR campaigns
In addition to looking at the number of links built by digital PR campaigns, it’s also important to assess the quality and authority of these links. Using ahrefs’ Domain Rating (DR) metric which ranges from 1-100, we can get an idea of the authority of the links built to our clients’ campaigns.
The highest proportion (44.4%) of links earned by digital PR campaigns are from sites with DRs between 71 and 100, and (64.7%) of linking domains have a DR of 51 or more.
Just 9.6% of digital PR links are from domains with DRs below 10, while roughly a quarter (25.6%) of linking domains have DRs between 11 and 50.
73% of links earned through digital PR are follow links
Based on our data from over 400 links built to digital PR campaigns, the majority of links earned (73%) are follow links, while 27% are nofollow links.
Follow links help search engine crawlers find and index websites, passing link equity to the page they are linking to, whereas nofollow links don’t pass authority. For this reason, follow links have a positive impact on a website’s ability to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), while nofollow links have little impact.
Digital PR links vs other link building strategies
We analysed over 900 different links to find the difference in Domain Rating and organic traffic for links earned by digital PR campaigns and other types of link building.
The link building strategy that earns links with the highest average DR is PR requests with an average DR of 67.5. These are requests put out by journalists and writers asking experts to comment on particular topics, typically in exchange for exposure in the publication the journalist writes for. The average monthly organic traffic for PR request links is 3.2 million.
Although links from digital PR campaigns have the lowest average domain rating at 27.5, these campaigns typically earn many more links than the other strategies and are more likely to be syndicated across publications like local new sites.
| Link Type | Average Domain Rating | Organic Traffic |
| Digital PR Campaign | 27.5 | 630,938 |
| Guest Post | 46.9 | 6,605,899 |
| PR Request | 67.5 | 3,218,875 |
| Paid Links | 53 | 207,901 |
AI and digital PR
Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT have made huge progress in recent years, enabling marketers to develop new ideas, create content, and even find journalists to contact.
Two-thirds (65%) of communications teams now use generative AI either regularly or infrequently, and 27% are considering starting to use it.
57% of PRs use generative AI to craft pitches
The most common use of generative AI tools in the digital PR world is crafting pitches, with 57% of those who use AI saying they use it to create the perfect campaign pitch. Other common uses of AI for digital PR professionals include writing social copy and writing press releases (both 48%).
Alongside this, workers in the PR industry also cited AI tools as the fourth-most important skill that companies should focus on in the next five years, with 31% choosing it as a top skill to focus on.
Challenges digital PR and communications pros face
When it comes to measuring campaigns, there are a number of challenges digital PR and communications professionals experience. Let’s take a look at some of the most common challenges for PR and comms teams
50% find measuring impact to be a challenge
The most common challenge among PR and comms teams is the inability to measure their own impact effectively, with 50% of professionals citing this as a difficulty they experience. Other common challenges included securing the appropriate budgets for their campaigns (48%) and needing better alignment with other internal departments at their company (47%).
49% find it difficult to align metrics with revenue or other KPIs
Digital PR and comms professionals were also asked about the top challenges they faced when measuring their campaigns’ success.
The most common measurement-related challenge was aligning metrics with revenue or other important business KPIs. For example, if a digital PR campaign earns 50 pieces of coverage in authoritative publications, how does this impact the company’s revenue?
Similarly, a quarter (24%) said they found it challenging to prove the value of digital PR to high-level company executives.
In addition, comms professionals were asked to rank their company’s ability to carry out certain activities. 40% said their company’s ability to demonstrate the ROI of earned media was less than satisfactory.
Digital PR and traditional PR
Although the goals of digital PR and traditional PR have some similarities, there are fundamental differences between the two.
Digital PR is concerned with online content, aiming to earn backlinks from online publications that help increase site traffic and search engine rankings. 69% of digital PRs say they primarily publish stories online, with 19% posting mostly in printed publications.
On the other hand, traditional PR involves building a brand’s public image offline, using traditional media coverage like newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio.
Let’s take a look at some statistics on the differences between digital and traditional PR.
Digital PRs work most closely with SEOs (50.9%)
When asked which teams they work most closely with, either in-house or client-side, around half (50.9%) of digital PRs said they work with SEO teams the most. Digital PR is wholly online-based and intended to generate links and boost site traffic, so it’s no surprise that it works hand-in-hand with SEO.
Coming second after SEO is marketing teams, with 22% of digital PRs saying they work the closest with marketing. Only 14.5% said they work the most closely with traditional PR teams, demonstrating the differences in goals and day-to-day activities between them.
Monthly contract sizes for digital PR can be half as much as traditional PR
Typically, the cost of digital PR is lower than the cost of traditional PR, but it depends on the goals and tactics a client wants to implement into their strategy. Often traditional PR can require more man-power and collaboration across different departments and client stakeholders. Larger brands running multiple campaigns can also see higher costs when it comes to traditional PR.
The average monthly contract size for digital PRs is between $5,000 and $10,000, whereas you could expect to pay between $10,000 and $14,500 per month for traditional PR.
Summary
So there you have it, there are many ways that a solid digital PR strategy can boost brand awareness and engagement. But there are things to look out for when it comes to crafting pitches, dealing with journalists, and measuring your success. Consider some of these digital PR statistics the next time you’re pitching a story or coming up with ideas for your next campaign.
