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After using Muck Rack, Director of PR and Media Relations Alicia Aldrich says:

Media Lists and In-Platform Pitching

We’ve used different media database tools in the past, and found that the process of building media lists was never an easy one. More often than not we would run searches to find relevant reporters and find journalists with outdated information. We’d pitch them thinking they were at one media outlet only to discover they had transitioned publications or beats. It really slowed us down and forced us to redo our work frequently.

Muck Rack has a much more current and robust media database that is updated regularly. The tool’s Job Updates feature tracks when journalists change beats, roles, or publications so my team is up-to-date on the latest media moves as they happen around the country. If anything is ever outdated, the customer service team responds immediately to make the updates. Since switching, our media list building process has become much easier and efficient.

Now that we have our media lists built within Muck Rack’s platform, it has become a very simple and intuitive process for us to use the in-platform pitching tools.

Our PR team drafts tailored pitches to each reporter we’re reaching out to within a given campaign, ensuring that our outreach is specific to their beat, as well as current and relevant. Through Muck Rack, we’re able to schedule our emails to be sent on a specific day and time to ensure reporters are receiving our pitches at the right time, not when they’re busy trying to hit a deadline.

We also have the ability to track and optimize the effectiveness of our PR campaigns by leveraging the tool’s in-platform metrics, like email “open” and “click” rates. Without Muck Rack, we wouldn’t be able to track any of that engagement, and those data-driven insights really help to inform everything we do.

Media Monitoring

All of our PR team members use the email alert function within Muck Rack to stay on top of our brand mentions in the media. It’s a really useful tool for getting in-the-moment alerts if one of our spokespeople was quoted or if a story we pitched finally landed.

We also use Muck Rack Alerts for competitor analysis and tracking. If we see competitor coverage, it could mean there’s a new opportunity for us to share our company information, research and expert advice with that journalist.

Educational Webinars

One of the benefits we didn’t initially expect to get with Muck Rack is the opportunity for continued education. Our entire team takes advantage of the webinars offered, citing them as extremely helpful. There are a lot of virtual seminars available out there, but you don’t always know what to expect. Muck Rack consistently brings on quality experts that have valuable insights and actionable advice to share.

1. In addition to results, what other benefits have you experienced from Muck Rack?

One tool we leverage a lot is the notes feature. If there is a journalist on there that does not wish to be contacted for any reason, that’s good information to know up front. We want to honor that. 

We also appreciate Muck Rack Trends. We’re able to track trends in real time and develop an appropriate pitch strategy using insights from that tool.

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

Efficient, smarter, organized

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

@muckrack has allowed our team to scale our media relations strategy to new heights with its up-to-date media database, relationship management feature, and pitch tracking data insights.

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

Muck Rack’s customer success team treats us as we ourselves would wish to be treated. They are always quick, responsive and go above and beyond to find the answers to our questions or solutions to any issues we may have.

5. What part of media relations ate up the most time before Muck Rack?

Other media database tools had outdated information on where reporters worked and what their current beat was, so the media list building process wasn’t efficient or helpful; it actually slowed our team down quite a bit.