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Guest Outreach Pipeline Planner

Works out how many guest pitches a podcast has to send each week to keep its calendar full, given your reply, acceptance and no-show rates.

Your numbers

Results update as you type.

Your estimate

Pitches to send per month...
Pitches to send per week...
Confirmed guests needed per month...
Pitch to recorded episode rate...

Estimates only. Assumptions are listed below, and you can change every input.

Empty slots on a podcast calendar rarely come from a lack of good guests. They come from not sending enough pitches early enough. Reply rates are low, some people who reply say no, and a few who say yes cancel the week of the recording. If you only start pitching when the calendar looks thin, you are already late.

This planner runs your target episode count backwards through the funnel. It divides the episodes that need a guest by the share of confirmed guests who actually show up, then by your acceptance rate, then by your reply rate, to get the number of pitches you need to send per month and per week. Every rate is an input, so you can use your own history instead of someone else's benchmark.

How to use this tool

  1. Enter how many episodes you publish per month and what share of them need an outside guest.
  2. Fill in your reply rate, your acceptance rate among replies, and how often confirmed guests drop out. Pull these from your last 20 or 30 pitches if you can.
  3. Read the pitches per week figure and put that many into your outreach routine, starting well before the slots you are trying to fill.

What the math assumes

  • The funnel is treated as three independent stages: reply, accept, then show up. Real behavior overlaps, so treat the result as a planning number, not a promise.
  • Rates are applied as averages; a bad month can need far more pitches than the average suggests.
  • Pitches per month are rounded up to the next whole pitch, and confirmations needed are rounded up too.
  • Pitches per week are pitches per month multiplied by 12 and divided by 52.
  • Cancellations are counted as lost episodes; the tool does not model rescheduling a dropped guest into a later slot.

Frequently asked questions

What if I do not know my reply rate?

Go back through your last batch of pitches and count how many got any answer at all. Even 15 or 20 pitches will give you a usable starting rate, and you can update it as you learn more.

Why does a 10% no-show rate change the pitch count so much?

Because every lost guest has to be replaced by a fresh pitch that runs through the whole funnel again. A dropout at the end of the funnel costs more pitches than a no at the start.

How far ahead should I be pitching?

The tool does not set lead time for you, but a good rule is to pitch for a slot at least as far ahead as your typical reply plus scheduling delay. If it takes three weeks from first message to confirmed date, pitch at least three weeks out.

Link to this toolhttps://guestflowr.com/tools/guest-outreach-pipeline/

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