With 27 agencies worldwide, Sopexa is the only international marketing agency solely dedicated to the food & drink industry. Their global roster of clients includes consumer brands, commodity boards, institutions and governments.

Building media lists

Muck Rack’s media list building feature has been incredibly useful for our team.

Using Muck Rack, we can build much more precise and targeted media lists. We love that Muck Rack’s media list view shows not only the reporter’s name, but also a snapshot of their profile, including tweets and bylines, so it’s easy to determine if we should reach out to them or not. It gives us better judgement, especially when we’re looking at a bigger media list.

We love that the search function can include any keywords, instead of fixed categories or industries, as it helps us build more precisely targeted media lists.

For example, we recently worked with a client on a press event during a festival in Portland. We were able to search for journalists who had recently tweeted that they were going to the festival, so we knew to invite them even though they weren’t based in Portland.

Search

Recently, clients told us they’d be in Miami for an event and wanted to create opportunities to meet with wine journalists based there. Miami is a secondary market for wine, so we didn’t already have a strong list of contacts.

We used Muck Rack’s geographic filter to search for journalists talking about wine in Miami and discovered a great group of journalists for our outreach.

Because the wine world in the media is pretty small, we sometimes run out of ideas of who to reach out to. Muck Rack has been helpful in bringing new blood into our media list: journalists’ profiles on Muck Rack include all the information you would need to judge whether they are a good target for your pitch or event, including of course location and publication, but also recent bylines, tweets and twitter followers.

This allows us to quickly find both influencers and journalists who might have recently talked or written about wine, even if their usual beats don’t include wine.

Alerts

We love Muck Rack Alerts! Muck Rack’s customer success team has been very helpful in getting our Alerts set up. For example, it’s helpful to have an expert optimize and decide whether it’s better to use the word ‘and’ or ‘or’, or even to exclude specific keywords. The team is incredibly well-versed.

We also set up Alerts based on journalists who attend our client events or receive specific client samples. It helps us tie their articles directly to our work and better measure our direct impact on a client’s press coverage.

1. What would your job be like if you didn’t have Muck Rack?

We’d spend way more time researching journalists in individual publications or looking for their social profiles manually. We wouldn’t have one simple place to find all the information we’re seeking. With Muck Rack, everything we need is in one profile.

2. What would you tell other companies considering using Muck Rack?

Muck Rack is a young platform with big plans to grow in different areas. As a customer, it’s been useful to see that progress. It’s interesting to see that Muck Rack is always improving and becoming more user-friendly.

For example, our team is especially excited about Muck Rack’s in-platform pitching tool. We started using the beta version and it’s already been a game-changer for our pitching strategy, as it allows us to see exactly who’s opened our pitch and when, helping us fine-tune both our follow-ups and future pitches. It also automatically alerts Muck Rack’s team of any bounce backs, so they can find alternative contact information and continue to make the platform’s information as accurate as possible.

3. How has PR changed in the past several years? How has Muck Rack helped you keep up?

Public relations has changed so much in the past several years. Publications have less budget and more and more journalists are freelancers, which makes it hard to keep track of which outlets they are writing for. Muck Rack profiles do this work for us as they compile a journalist’s information, recent articles and tweets all in one place.

4. How would you describe your experience with Muck Rack in three words?

Ever-evolving, user-friendly, customer-focused

5. Besides media results, what other benefits have you experienced using Muck Rack?

We’ve experienced an incredible amount of time saved on both media monitoring and reporting. Muck Rack systemizes the process.