Established in 2002, Isagenix International believes that everyone deserves to experience a healthy, joyful, and abundant life. The global wellbeing company artfully crafts more than 175 effective products and offers a supportive community for its more than 550,000 customers worldwide. Isagenix shares its products through a network of independent distributors in 26 markets: the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, South Korea, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland. The private family-owned company has its world headquarters in Gilbert, Arizona.

Media Research

Keeping on top of journalist job changes is key to having accurate, usable media lists. Muck Rack’s Media Database makes it easy to keep them up to date.

The tool we used before Muck Rack didn’t update its database as often as we would have liked. Oftentimes I would go in to pull a contact, only to find that the person was no longer there. We knew we needed something that updated in real time.

Muck Rack’s database takes all of the burden of manual research off of my plate so I can focus on pitching. For example, there was a reporter I’ve been pitching at a local business newspaper. I recently found out he is no longer there thanks to a Muck Rack job change alert. Knowing that in advance saves me a lot of time.

Additionally, if I know of a change that needs to be made to a reporter’s profile, I can send it to the Muck Rack team and get it updated very quickly. Where the other platforms take days to make changes, with Muck Rack, it happens within minutes.

One of our goals is to research new and different media outlets and journalists, and the various filtering options in Muck Rack’s search are really helpful for that. It’s also great to be able to see the stories they’ve published recently to determine if they’re a good fit.

In-Platform Pitching

Pitching through the Muck Rack platform is very intuitive. We take personalizing pitches seriously, so being able to customize each pitch before we send it really sold me on the product.

Prior to Muck Rack, customizing targeted pitches for a group of people meant manually creating separate emails for every contact. Now, with Muck Rack, I can create a base message and very easily customize it for every person in my list, saving a ton of time.

I also love that I can see who opens my pitches and clicks on links. It really helps to see who is interested in what you’re sending, and who you should follow up with. It makes my follow-up process much stronger.

Coverage Reports

The Coverage Reports within Muck Rack are really great for tracking and sharing ROI.

I have a few different reports set up: one that is more general for overall coverage that we’re automatically adding articles to, another that is for our industry outlet coverage that we manually add articles to and another for our CSR coverage.

I really like that I can easily track overall coverage, as well as break things down further into niches. It makes reporting a breeze.

A few months ago somebody in our C-suite asked for all of the coverage we had on a specific topic. I was able to quickly create a report for him and export a PDF with all the key metrics right at the top. If I tried to do that on my own without Muck Rack, it would have taken significantly longer and not looked nearly as well put-together. To me, that immediately proves the value of what Muck Rack provides to us.

We appreciate that Muck Rack looks at a variety of different metrics. Traditional ad value isn’t always a reliable measurement, and tracking journalist shares was something we weren’t able to do with our other service. You may not see shares for every article you land, but it’s nice when you have a great, positive piece and see that it’s getting shared. On the other hand, if a negative article comes out, you can easily see if it’s gaining any sort of traction, which is helpful information to know.

One other metric I’ve been tracking recently that Muck Rack offers is domain authority. If your company is concerned with SEO and you’re trying to get your name out there, you can see which articles are on sites where domain authority is higher. We recently had some media hits with high domain authority, which was helpful to know.

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

We used to track journalist contact information in an Excel spreadsheet and another tool, and I would track relationship history such as who I’d heard back from and their preferences within Word documents set up for specific pitches. Now, everyone we’re pitching is in Muck Rack and is updated automatically, and we can make relationship history notes right on a media contact’s page so everyone can access them if needed.

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

It’s been top-notch! I can get help in real time through the chat, as opposed to having to send an email and waiting to hear back. You feel like you have a 24/7 helpline. Every once in a while there are small things here and there that I find that need to be updated, and someone from the Muck Rack team always makes the updates very quickly.

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

I would be less efficient. It would take so much longer to create media lists and pitch journalists. I also think that our efforts would be less strategic, as far as identifying the right reporters to connect with and personalizing pitches.

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

I use @muckrack so I can be more strategic and save time on a variety of PR tasks, two things that are critical when you have a small team.

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

I would highly recommend giving Muck Rack a try if you’re able to and budget permits. It’s robust and has a lot of great features. I am loving it so far and haven’t even used all the features yet.