Being a podcast host comes with a lot of responsibility—including deciding who will be on your show. While ideally, you’ll reach out to the perfect guests that align just right with your show, there will come a time when you receive pitches that aren’t a good fit.
This means you’ll have to start rejecting podcast pitches—because if you just ignore them, they won’t stop coming in, but it also doesn’t help anyone in the podcaster/pitchee relationship.
In the past, I was fine with ignoring podcast pitches, but now I’m on a mission to changing the way we handle them so that everyone is always improving (from pitches to research before the pitch).
Who Is A Good Fit for Your Podcast?
Before you start your podcast or at least accepting guests, it’s important to understand who your audience wants to hear from and the topics you’ll be covering. When you do that, it’ll create a clear line for why you’re saying no to a potential podcast guest.
Determine Why You’re Rejecting a Pitch
Now that you’ve determined who’s a good fit for your podcast, you’re clearly able to decide who you’ll be rejecting as podcast guests. This could be due to a topic not aligning, a conflict of interest with a company you partner with, or even if it’s a bad pitch.
Why do I think it’s important to respond with these particular reasons? Podcast guests can grow so much if we take the time to share feedback. If they’re not right for your audience or pitch you with a topic that has nothing to do with your niche, then they didn’t do thorough research. Maybe they didn’t actually pitch you well—this is a big red flag that their either brand new and need guidance or that no one has ever told them they need to better craft their pitch.
Additionally, you could be going through a season where you’ve pre-recorded too many shows and don’t have the room for additional interviews or you’re simply not accepting applications at the time.
No matter the situation, I believe it’s important to give them a reason.
Sending Podcast Pitch Rejection Emails
Figuring out how to write rejection emails can be tough—especially when you’re still trying to maintain a sense of empathy with the potential guest. I took the hard work out of it for you and created Podcast Pitch Rejection Email Templates for this very reason!
In this pack of podcast pitch rejection email templates, you’ll have templates for sayin you’re not taking applications to telling someone they’ve provided a bad pitch (in a kind way) to letting a guest know post-interview that you can’t air their show. The following templates are included in this template pack:
- An Automated Response for Pitches
- “Not Accepting Applications” Response Template
- “Not a Good Fit” Response Template
- “Not at This Time” Response Template
- “That’s a Bad Pitch” Response Template
- “Your Interview Wasn’t a Good Fit” Response Template
- Bonus: The DM Responder (For Getting Pitches Out of Your DMs and Into Your Inbox)
I hope you’ll consider giving solid feedback, sharing why, and simply responding to podcast pitches, even when that means you’re rejecting them!
