The International Rescue Committee responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises, helping to restore health, safety, education, economic well being, and power to people devastated by conflict and disaster. Founded in 1933 at the call of Albert Einstein, the IRC is at work in over 40 countries and 26 U.S. cities helping people to survive, reclaim control of their future and strengthen their communities.

Media Research and List Building

I did a deep dive of a ton of other tools before we committed to Muck Rack, and it was by far the easiest to search and find really targeted journalists. A lot of the issues we work on at IRC are extremely niche, so we knew we needed a platform with an excellent search capability, and Muck Rack has that.

One thing that is unique to Muck Rack is the way it pulls in a journalist’s Twitter account right into their profile. At a glance, you can quickly see everything a reporter has written lately and what they’re tweeting about. It really helps you to know if this journalist will be interested in your story before you pitch them.

Being able to see a journalist’s recent articles on their profile is a real value-add. When you run a search, someone’s beat might be listed as health because that’s how the journalist describes themselves, but when you read their recent articles you can discover they primarily cover vaccines only, not all of health. It helps you tailor and personalize your pitching strategy.

My team has read Muck Rack’s State of PR Survey and we all know that personalized pitches are the only way to go now. Blasting a press release to 10,000 people who aren’t going to write about you is not an effective use of your time. Instead, we can spend a few minutes doing the research in Muck Rack and pick a few key journalists to contact.

At IRC, we typically send multiple press releases each week, so there’s a lot happening. The great thing about Muck Rack is we are able to tailor each release to an individualized media list. For example, when we pitched a release about a new case of COVID-19 in a camp in Syria, we created a very specific list of the journalists covering that type of story in that specific region.

We’re also able to use Muck Rack to keep track of our “tried and true” contacts in a media list. The job change notification in Muck Rack is great. It makes it so much easier to keep track of the reporters you know, and really tailor your communication with them.

In-Platform Pitching

The pitching capabilities within Muck Rack have helped us to streamline our PR efforts and adjust our processes for success. Knowing which journalists have opened your email or clicked on a link within it is a helpful tool. When we see a journalist always opens our emails but hasn’t replied, we have an idea that they probably do care about our pitch, and we can adjust our strategy from there. Likewise, if they never open emails from us, it’s clear their beat doesn’t quite align with our messaging.

I recently used Muck Rack to send out a press release about how ICE has been continuing to operate deportation flights from COVID-19 hotspot areas in the U.S. to Latin America, essentially functioning as the ultimate coronavirus super-spreader. Through the in-platform pitching in Muck Rack, we sent the pitch to MSNBC and the BBC, and both responded enthusiastically to the story. MSNBC ended up featuring the story on one of their morning shows, even showing the graphic I created and supplied them. It was a huge win for us.

Muck Rack Alerts 

The option to receive daily email alerts for key topics and search terms is great! I personally receive alerts every day for Latin America and U.S. media, as well as alerts for our competitors. We compile detailed quarterly reports on our share of voice. Not only do the Muck Rack Alerts help me to stay on top of that, they also give me insight into what journalists were focused on within a given time frame.

1. How did you track your team’s journalist relationship history before using Muck Rack?

We started using Muck Rack about nine or 10 months into my time at the IRC. Before that, we did all of our media research by hand in Excel. Trying to use static spreadsheets for living relationships just doesn’t make any sense. These are real people and their lives change constantly. You need something that can keep up with those changes.

Additionally, a static spreadsheet doesn’t provide enough information into the background of your relationship with each journalist on your list. If you’re only peeking it over every few months, it can be really confusing. When was it that I last contacted them? What did it result in? Where do they work now? It’s simply not sustainable.

2. In addition to results, what other benefits have you experienced from Muck Rack perhaps in terms of teamwork and collaboration?

One of the biggest benefits to using Muck Rack in my opinion is the user interface itself. I’ve used a lot of tools throughout my career as a communications professional, and can say with confidence that Muck Rack is just easier. My entire team agrees—the first day they logged in, they noted it was easier than any other platform we’ve used.

3. How would you describe your team’s new workflow on Muck Rack in three words?

Easy, efficient and insightful

4. What has your experience been like working with Muck Rack’s customer success team?

A lot of other legacy software platforms don’t actually have people working for them that have been in PR, journalism or production, and they don’t understand it when you say you need to find a contact really quickly. That’s one thing that really sets Muck Rack apart—when Muck Rack did a demo, the representative explained that almost every single person at the company has a journalism background—that was a game changer. I don’t need to explain to the Muck Rack team why I need help quickly, or why I might be asking for a podcast producer’s email. . They get where I’m coming from. With a lot of the other tools, when you ask a question, they don’t get back to you for several days, but Muck Rack understands how important timing is in PR.

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

I know exactly what it would be like, because I did it for a while. Our work was slower, and a lot less efficient. My work was also not as insightful either. We had little visibility into who was opening our emails and whether they cared about what we had to say. I knew a lot less about the journalists I care about prior to Muck Rack. I didn’t know the depth of what they were writing about, what they care about or what they tweet about. My relationships weren’t as strong until switching over.

6. If you had to explain how your team works on Muck Rack to someone in a tweet, what would you say?

Muck Rack is a game-changing PR and Comms tool that helps @RESCUEorg build & maintain crucial relationships with journalists and producers, personalize pitches on our breaking-news releases & coordinate across our team digitally.