contentious.com

There’s so much more to managing an e-mail list than compiling a list of reporters’ e-mail addresses. Fortunately, you can make this experience much easier and more beneficial to both you and your press audience by choosing the right kind of mailing list software or service…

If you’re serious about building good relationships with journalists, avoid free services such as Yahoo Groups or klunky free software like Mailman. A good list is worth spending at least a little money on.

For the CONTENTIOUS e-mail list I use Mail-List.com, a fairly inexpensive service that offers lots of features, control, reporting, and first-class service. A more slick and costly but popular option is Lyris. And there are countless others.

Take your time choosing the right package to meet the needs of your organization and your audience.

Avoid the temptation to simply bundle the e-mail addresses you’ve collected into the BCC field of an e-mail message. Many e-mail systems interpret this as a spam tactic, which means a lot of your messages won’t be delivered.

…And of course, when you set up your list make sure it’s configured as a one-way announcement list – not a two-way discussion list.

EMPOWER JOURNALISTS TO CONTROL THEIR SUBSCRIPTIONS EASILY

Reporters’ information needs evolve rapidly. They may need to pop on and off of your list at unpredictable intervals. Or they may switch beats and need to hand off beat-specific e-mail list subscriptions to a colleague. Therefore, you must make it easy for journalists to manage their own subscriptions to your e-mail releases.

The basic functions to offer are:

• Join the list (subscribe).
• Change your address.
• Leave the list (unsubscribe).

Also, you might want to add a “suspend” option for people who need to leave the list temporarily.

If possible, use e-mail list software that automates these processes so you don’t have to process individual requests manually. Also, your software should embed a direct link for each of these options in the footer of every message you post to the list. This will take some up-front finagling to integrate list activity with your web server or database, but it will save everyone a lot of time and trouble in the long run.

Your system also should automatically send to the reporter an e-mail confirmation message of each list management action taken: “Thank you for joining our list,” “We’ve removed your address, thank you for reading our press releases,” “Your subscribed address has been changed to X,” etc.

Empowering subscribers to easily control their own subscription offers more benefits than all-around efficiency. It’s also another way to demonstrate respect for the audience.

SERIES CONCLUSION: IT’S ALL ABOUT RESPECT

Journalists profoundly appreciate respect since they generally don’t get much of it. And that, in a nutshell, is the essence of effective online media outreach. All your efforts in that field should first and foremost respect journalists’ needs and preferences. If you keep that goal in mind and contantly evaluate your efforts by that benchmark, you probably won’t make too many mistakes.

And believe it or not, journalists will recognize and appreciate your efforts. Reporters may routinely complain about inept PR professionals, but they value their working relationships with earnest and competent press officers.

We need each other. The internet has become a key medium of what is fundamentally a very human relationship. Use it wisely.

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INDEX to this series