Who’s the real culprit here?

Following on from my last post on how journalists are becoming increasingly frustrated at the levels of PR Spam they receive, we now dig a little deeper to find out who the real culprits of this mega spam are.

Whilst it’s true that if you are in the media it comes with the territory but what we’re talking about is a level and frequency of PR spam that is doing nobody any favours.  And whilst it’s also true that ultimate responsibility for sending spam is down to the person who hits the ‘send’ button, we must also not overlook the role that the PR software industry has to play in the whole process.  (Yes, that’s us)

Unlike most of our competitors, we don’t create media lists ourselves.  Instead, we prefer to partner with providers of lists so clients have more control over their contacts (we partner with PR Newswire and Gorkana, two of the more responsible and accurate list providers). However, barely a day goes by without us getting an enquiry from someone asking us if they can get media lists from us and how much they cost.

This is because many PRs see lists as a quick and easy (and lazy!) way to get a release out and get at least some coverage to show their boss (or client).  Maintaining a proper CRM, analysing click-through rates and providing a proper opt-in/opt-out process or (heaven forbid!) actually creating a journalist-friendly media centre all seems too much like hard work.

When we explain we don’t offer a media database only solution, it tends to be a case of ‘oh never mind, I just want a database [so I can send out my email to 1000 people]’.

What’s happened recently is that media lists are becoming cheaper due to two main factors

1)    the outsourcing of the management of these lists to places with cheaper labour costs
2)    (far more worrying) the use of bots to scrape profile information from the web (badly) to create automated ‘profiles’ of journalists and bloggers based on the content they write for their online publications and blogs.  This can also include LinkedIn and other online personal profiles.

This means that more junior and part-time PR people can get their hands on them without having the rest of the PR skillset that’s needed to make the right use of what can be a very powerful tool.  And as a result, the level of PR spam has increased.

Many of our clients are large companies with large PR teams so we’ve seen how, in the hands of an experienced PR practitioner, lists can be a really useful instrument in a PR’s toolbox.

In the case of some list providers it’s also very difficult for journalist/bloggers to remove themselves from the central list, having instead to go to each sender individually.

Sadly it’s also often the case of quantity not quality when it comes to shopping for media databases (from the perspective of someone who speaks to people wanting to buy such lists).  “How many contacts do you have for topic X in country Y?”  “oh, never mind then, that other provider said they had 2,000.”  Oh dear.

What can be done?

Seeing the frustration that still exists is quite disheartening.  Where technology should be used to ease communications between PRs and the media (and this is certainly our philosophy) in many cases, it’s only serving to exacerbate the problem by making it even easier for PRs to continue their bad habits.

A lot of what needs to be done rests with the PRs themselves. What I want to do here is list a few suggestions from the perspective of a web technology provider:

Integrate your email distribution strategy with your website/media centre!

This makes it much easier to:

1)    Let journalists/bloggers opt-in themselves. If you get coverage for something you’ve done quite often other journalists and/or bloggers will read it and may want to know more about what you are doing in the future.  Providing RSS, the ability to subscribe via email, or receiving updates via twitter, means the journalist is in control of how and what information they receive from you.

2)   Let journalists/bloggers opt out. Every email sent should have an automated process for the journalist to modify what kind of information they want to receive or remove themselves entirely.  Having a manual unsubscribe process also makes more work the PR, so automate if you can.

3)    Allow the journalist to see what profile you have for them. If you integrate parts of your CRM with your website when you distribute an email, the journalist can see for themselves what you think they are interested in.  If the journalist is able to easily clarify what information they want this will make both your lives easier.

4)   Track what journalists are doing with the information you send them. Technology exists now that let’s you see whether journalists are opening your emails and even what they are clicking on.  If you’re repeatedly sending out emails that have very low open rates or you’re sending releases to journalists that never open what you’re sending them you’re probably doing something wrong!

Fran Molley says “I applaud PR companies that keep good databases and target their releases more effectively. CRM technology is so easy & cheap these days, I don’t understand why it isn’t a fundamental part of every PR’s toolkit.”  Well, Fran, neither do we!  Point people our way and we’ll sort them out 

If any journalists or PRs reading this have ideas for how a PR software provider like us can help in this we’d love to hear your thoughts.

Alistair