PR agencies often book podcast guests through hours of manual research and copy-paste pitches. A pipeline finds matching shows, personalizes each pitch from recent episodes and tracks replies on an outreach board, typically landing around 14 bookings a month.
Typical results
18%
Pitch reply rate, up from 5%
9 hrs/wk
Research time saved per publicist
100%
Pitches referencing a recent episode
Figures reflect typical results for this kind of automation.
The challenge
Podcast outreach was the agency's most requested service and its least profitable: publicists spent ten hours a week hunting for relevant shows, then sent generic pitches that hosts ignored. Reply rates hovered around 5%, follow-ups slipped through inboxes, and clients asking where their bookings stood got a shrug and a scramble through email threads.
Before and after
Guest bookings per month
3.5×Weekly podcast research per publicist
−90%Pitch reply rate
3.6×The automation
We built a discovery pipeline that scans podcast directories against each client's expertise profile — topics, audience, and language — and shortlists shows worth pitching. For every match, an OpenAI step reads recent episode summaries and drafts a pitch that references a specific episode and proposes an angle the show hasn't covered. Sent pitches, replies, and follow-ups flow into a dedicated outreach board, and confirmed bookings create calendar holds and a prep brief automatically.
How it works
- 01
Show discovery
The pipeline scans podcast directories against each client's expertise profile and shortlists relevant shows.
- 02
Episode homework
AI reads the show's recent episode summaries and finds an angle it hasn't covered.
- 03
Personalized pitch
A pitch referencing a specific recent episode goes out under the publicist's name.
- 04
Board tracking
Replies, follow-ups, and negotiations move across a dedicated outreach board automatically.
- 05
Booking locked
Confirmed spots create calendar holds and a prep brief for the client.
Starts from
- Podcast discovery
- Client expertise profiles
Delivers
- Personalized pitches
- Outreach board
- Confirmed bookings
The impact
Guest bookings climbed from four a month to fourteen across the client roster, with pitch reply rates up from 5% to 18%. Publicists spend an hour a week supervising the board instead of ten researching, and every client now sees a live pipeline of pitched, replied, and booked shows.
Questions about this automation
How does the AI personalize each podcast pitch?
For every shortlisted show, an OpenAI step reads summaries of recent episodes and compares them with the client's expertise profile. It drafts a pitch that mentions a specific recent episode and proposes an angle the show hasn't covered yet. The publicist reviews the draft, and it goes out under the publicist's own name.
Where are replies and follow-ups tracked?
Sent pitches, host replies and scheduled follow-ups move across a dedicated outreach board automatically, with each show as one card. When a host confirms, the flow creates a calendar hold and a prep brief for the expert, so publicists and their clients can see what is pitched, replied and booked at any time.
What information does the agency provide for each expert?
Each expert gets a profile listing topics, target audience, language and a short bio. The discovery step scans podcast directories against that profile to build the shortlist of shows. Profiles can be updated at any time, and the next discovery run picks up the changes. It is a multi-step build, usually rolled out in stages.