As a wellness pioneer, Life Time is reshaping the way consumers approach their health by integrating where we play, work and live—all with the primary objective of helping people lead healthy, happy lives. With more than 150 destinations in 41 major markets across the U.S. and Canada, Life Time operates luxury athletic resorts, owns and produces iconic athletic events and is expanding its brand through Life Time Work premium coworking spaces and Life Time Living high-end leased residences. For more information visit lifetime.life.

Media Research

We have fitness clubs in many markets throughout the U.S. and Canada, so it was important for us to find a software that enabled us to easily create dedicated lists for each market, in addition to national media. Muck Rack has allowed us to do that, really breaking out our media lists to fit specific boxes.

We still make sure we’re investing a good amount of time into media research, but Muck Rack has taken away the manual labor of drilling down into specific searches. If I search “Houston Nutrition,” I know I can find the right journalist to suit my needs.

Here’s an example: We operate three clubs in Canada, located just outside of Toronto. Historically, this has always been a harder market for us to break into because they just work a little bit differently. Before Muck Rack, we struggled getting coverage in Canada. Finding the right contacts was difficult, and there was no easy way to see a journalist’s recent articles and understand what they are covering in the moment.

With Muck Rack, it’s incredibly helpful to have all of that information in one place, especially when time is of the essence. I don’t have a ton of time to do research on my own. Having it all within the platform has been vital to me. After running searches for relevant journalists through Muck Rack, I secured a few different pieces almost right away in the Canadian market.

In terms of relationship building, Muck Rack has been very helpful. I can easily monitor our top contacts and ping them if there’s a new story that’s interesting. It’s also helped me to interact with reporters on Twitter a lot more.

Muck Rack Alerts 

The added bonus of Muck Rack was the Muck Rack Alerts system. It is truly the cherry on top for me—they’ve been great!

The system for alerts we have set up currently has been working really well. We have a “fitness exercise” alert set up to help us keep a pulse on the industry. We also have a national folder of writers that sends me an alert email every morning with what they’ve published over the last 24 hours. It’s helpful to see what those journalists are up to, so I can make sure I’m on their radar.

We also have Muck Rack Alerts set up for our competitors, which can provide some really useful nuggets. It’s nice to see when, for example, a competitor got a really nice piece published by someone we’ve never heard of or reached out to before. We can save that contact information for later and invite that reporter into our spaces.

Team Collaboration 

One of the best things about Muck Rack is that it functions in a way that helps with team collaboration rather than hindering it.

When looking up a journalist in Muck Rack, it’s easy to see who the “contact owner” from my team is. If I see a team member’s name there, I know I should reach out to them first before pitching someone. With the number of pitches we’re sending out every week, this is vital. You need to know before you reach out that another team member may have already pitched them to avoid duplicate efforts.

We also really like the ability to BCC Muck Rack on emails we send to journalists and have them automatically uploaded into the journalist’s profile.

1. What other benefits have you experienced from Muck Rack?

Our ability to build strong and quality relationships with members of the media has definitely improved since switching to Muck Rack, thanks to the Search and Alerts features. That’s been a big one for me.

I also took the free PR and social media courses available through Muck Rack—those were really good! It was something I could do on the weekends whenever I had time, and I found that they were really valuable. That was definitely an added bonus—I didn’t expect that to come along with the platform.

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

We would spend more time building media lists, that’s for sure. And that would mean more time spent on background and research and less time spent actually pitching and landing stories. We’ve definitely landed more stores since we started using Muck Rack.

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

If you’re a public relations professional who values relationships and keeping up to date on the pulse of conversations, @muckrack is the tool for you.

4. How would you describe your team’s experience using Muck Rack in three words?

Informative, helpful and efficient

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

Do it! I can’t say it any more simply than that.

Muck Rack is really user-friendly in comparison to other tools in my experience. It’s the most efficient, easiest to use and it keeps me the most informed.