Quick answer: the address matters as much as the pitch. Hosting-platform emails (the anchor.fm and Acast addresses in many RSS feeds) got 0 replies from 343 pitches. Shared inboxes such as info@ got answers, but pitches to a host's personal email booked at twice their rate. And cold pitches to household-name shows almost never booked, whatever the address.
This analysis covers 18,404 podcast pitches that 186 Podseeker customers sent from their own mailboxes, first analyzed April 29 to October 15, 2026, with outcomes as of October 30, 2026. Each pitch is grouped by the first address it was sent to. "Got an answer" means the show replied with a decision: interested, declined, or booked. That's stricter than the "conversation" measure in our State of Podcast Pitching 2026 report, which also counts replies that went quiet, so the rates here are lower.
Results by Type of Email
| Who the pitch went to | Pitches | Got an answer | Booked, compared with the average |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personal email (Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud…) | 4,028 | 12.4% | 1.6× |
| Named address on the show's own domain | 8,704 | 10.7% | 0.9× |
| General inbox (info@, hello@, contact@…) | 3,726 | 13.3% | 0.8× |
| Service desk (support@, sales@…) | 541 | 11.5% | 0.7× |
| Booking inbox (booking@, guests@, podcast@, press@…) | 1,059 | 7.7% | 0.5× |
| Hosting-platform email (anchor.fm, Acast, Spotify…) | 343 | 0.0% | none |
Most bookings come within days (a median of 3.7 days in our outreach benchmarks), but some take two months or more, so pitches from September and October may still book and these figures could rise slightly. Booking rates are shown relative to the average across all six groups, so they compare addresses without restating our booking benchmarks.
Hosting-Platform Emails Don't Reach Anyone
Many podcast RSS feeds list an address that belongs to the hosting platform, not the show: an anchor.fm (Spotify for Creators) alias, an Acast relay, a Spotify feed address. They look like the show's email, and they're often the only one in the feed.
Of 343 pitches sent to them, none got an answer, and 44.0% bounced. That's why Podseeker labels them Low-quality email on the podcast page and never puts them in a pitch. When a show only has one of these, find the host or producer instead.
Inboxes Answer, Hosts Book
General inboxes like info@ and hello@ got answers about as often as personal emails: 13.3% against 12.4%. But personal emails booked at 3.4% of pitches, against 1.7% for general inboxes: twice as often. Personal addresses also bounced least of any type.
Shared inboxes are busy. With AI-written outreach and spam growing, someone answers, but it's often not the person who decides who comes on the show. A host's own address reaches the decision-maker.
We checked whether this only happens because personal emails belong to smaller shows. It doesn't. Personal emails and general inboxes went to the same mix of show sizes, and personal emails booked more often at every listener level under 10,000 (pitches sent by August 31):
| Listeners per episode | Personal email | General inbox | Named address on the show's domain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 100 | 7.8% | 3.6% | 3.5% |
| 100 to 1,000 | 4.0% | 2.4% | 2.6% |
| 1,000 to 10,000 | 2.6% | 1.0% | 1.6% |
These are the same listener ranges as Podseeker's search filters.
Booking Inboxes Answer Least
Addresses such as booking@, guests@, and press@ sound like the right place to pitch, but they got the fewest answers of any real address: 7.7%. They belong mostly to larger shows, which receive more pitches than they can answer. They're still better than nothing; a named host or producer is better.
Household-Name Shows Need an Introduction
Of 756 pitches to shows with 100,000 or more listeners per episode, none sent by August 31 had booked by October 30, whatever the address. Shows at that size book through relationships: an agent, a mutual guest, a producer someone knows. A database can give you the contact, but you or your client will need an in.
Mid-sized and niche shows are different. Their hosts read their own email, their listeners are engaged, and they book guests from cold pitches. Shows with low booking difficulty booked at several times the rate of high-difficulty ones in this data. That's where a tool like Podseeker does its best work: see how to find mid-sized podcasts to pitch.
What to Do With This
- Skip hosting-platform emails. If the only address is an anchor.fm, Acast, or Spotify one, look for the host or producer instead.
- Prefer a person to an inbox. A host's or producer's own email books about twice as often as info@.
- Use a general inbox as a fallback, not a dead end. It gets answers; ask who handles guest bookings.
- Contact the host on social, too. Email isn't the only way in. A message on the show's or the host's social profile reaches the person directly, and often lands where a shared inbox doesn't.
- Match the show to the client. Pitch mid-sized and niche shows cold; save household names for when you have an introduction.
In Podseeker: it's not just emails. Podseeker is a podcast database built to get your clients booked. Booking difficulty and listener filters find the mid-sized and niche shows that book from cold pitches. Each podcast page lists host and producer contacts with each person's role, plus the show's social profiles so you can reach the host directly, and labels hosting-platform emails as low quality so they never reach a pitch. When a show has no direct email, Find the host and producer searches for one. Podseeker is $99 a month with 3 seats and a 3-day free trial.
Frequently Asked Questions
What email should I use to pitch a podcast?
The host's or producer's own email. In Podseeker's data from 18,404 pitches, personal emails booked at twice the rate of general inboxes such as info@, even for shows of the same size. The host's social profiles are a second direct route.
Is the email in a podcast's RSS feed the host's email?
Not always. It belongs to whoever set up the feed, which may be a producer, a network, or the hosting platform. Hosting-platform addresses such as anchor.fm and Acast relays got 0 replies from 343 pitches.
Should I pitch info@ or hello@ addresses?
As a fallback. General inboxes got answers from 13.3% of pitches, but booked at half the rate of personal emails. Ask who handles guest bookings if you get a reply.
Can I cold pitch a big podcast?
You can, but expect little. Of 756 pitches to shows with 100,000 or more listeners per episode, none sent by August 31 had booked by October 30. Large shows book through introductions; mid-sized and niche shows book from cold pitches.
How We Got These Numbers
- Pitches: 18,404 first emails that Podseeker customers sent from their own Gmail or Outlook, combined across 186 customers; no customer's or show's results are published.
- Window: threads first analyzed April 29 to October 15, 2026; outcomes as of October 30, 2026.
- Outcomes: "got an answer" = interested, declined, or booked. Booked = an evidenced booking.
- Email type: the first address each pitch went to. Three pitches to no-reply addresses are left out of the table.
- Show size: the listener-per-episode estimate and booking difficulty on each show's Podseeker page.
See how Podseeker checks podcasts and contacts.
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