Do you have trouble getting featured on high-authority sites? Are your response rates so low that you pretend 3% is actually good? If so, it's time to stop guessing and learn what really works in link outreach.
In This Episode
In this unique debate-style webinar, Pitchbox co-founder Alex Gophstein and Head of Customer Success Kevin Dillon (with over 23 years of combined experience at Pitchbox) evaluate which link outreach tactics and email outreach tactics are truly effective in 2025 and which are overrated.
With thousands of campaigns and millions of outreach emails analyzed, Alex and Kevin share their expert insights on what actually moves the needle for successful link building outreach campaigns and how to implement the most effective link building strategies 2025 has demanded.
Q&A Highlights From Our Webinar
1. Ideal email warm-up duration
With thousands of campaigns and millions of outreach emails analyzed, Alex and Kevin share their expert insights on what actually moves the needle for successful link building outreach campaigns and how to implement the most effective link building strategies 2025 has demanded.
2. Creating effective personas
Testing different names and personas revealed significant impact on link building response rates across different industries. In our controlled tests:
- Female personas received 22% higher response rates in education and nonprofit sectors
- Male personas performed 9% better in technology and finance
- The biggest factor wasn't gender but perceived authority and relevance to the subject matter
3. CTA recommendations
Direct requests that invite engagement consistently outperform vague or passive CTAs. The most effective approach in our testing was a two-step outreach email CTA that:
- Asks a specific question about the recipient's content
- Follows with a clear but non-pressuring suggestion for collaboration
4. Adding images to emails
Our testing confirms that images can be effective in moderation, but attachments significantly harm deliverability. Campaigns with 1-2 properly formatted inline images saw 11% higher engagement, but those with attachments experienced 28% lower inbox placement rates.
Best practice: If you need to share substantial visual content, include a single teaser image and link to a landing page with the full gallery or resources. This is particularly important when considering how to avoid spam filters in outreach emails.
About the Presenters
Alex Gophstein
Co-founder of Pitchbox with 13+ years of experience working with thousands of customers on link outreach tactics and email outreach tactics. Alex has personally helped develop outreach systems that have generated over 500,000 backlinks for Pitchbox customers, and his link building strategies 2025 have been adopted by 7 of the top 10 SEO agencies worldwide.
Kevin Dillon
Head of Customer Success at Pitchbox with 11+ years of experience across virtually every industry, analyzing thousands of outreach campaigns. Kevin's data-driven approach to link building outreach has helped clients increase link building response rates by an average of 217%, and he's reviewed more outreach email templates than anyone else in the industry.