How to Pitch in Muck Rack
Pitches on Muck Rack transform how you send personalized emails in bulk, track metrics about your outreach, and organize your company's relationship history with every journalist.
Learn More in Muck Rack Academy
You can learn all about sending Pitches in Muck Rack by taking the Muck Rack Essentials course in Muck Rack Academy.
Send a Pitch With Muck Rack
Watch the video or follow the steps below to learn how to send a Pitch using Muck Rack.
Go to Relationships > Pitches.
Select the Create New button in the top right-hand corner.
Follow the Pitch Workflow outlined in each section below.
Setup
Enter a name for your pitch.
NOTE: This will not be the subject of the email sent to your recipients, but for you to identify the pitch within Muck Rack.
Select any other settings that are applicable to your pitch:
Select Next step in the bottom right-hand corner.
Recipients
Select the Add Recipients button.
Search for Media Lists, People, and Newsdesks using the search bar and select to add to your Recipient list.
If you cannot locate a contact you need, select + New Custom Contact to create a new Custom Contact and add them to your Recipient list.
Once happy with your list, select the Add to pitch button at the bottom.
Review your list and remove recipients if desired.
Example: You can use the Last Pitched date to sort and filter recipients based on when they last received communication from your team. This can ensure you don't follow up with reporters too soon.
Select the Next step button in the bottom right-hand corner to proceed.
Compose
Compose your Pitch by entering a Subject line and Pitch content. The [first name] merge tag will pull from the contact's data and input their first name into the greeting.
Learn More About Pitch Formatting & Attachments
This article covers the main steps of the Pitching workflow in Muck Rack. For more details on how you can format your pitch and add attachments, visit our Pitch Formatting & Attachments article.
Personalize
When it comes to Pitching Best Practices, the best thing you can do is ensure you personalize as many pitches as possible. When is a pitch considered personalized? When it is tailored specifically to the journalist or media contact in a way that demonstrates an understanding of their interests, beat, past work, or audience.
You can personalize each Pitch from the template you created in the previous step.
Select the Personalize button to edit the pitch for an individual contact.
Tailor your pitch to that contact by adding a personalized message.
Select the Save personalization button at the bottom.
NOTE: A personalized Pitch will have a Personalized tag next to the contact name.
Review & Send
Review your pitch and edit any details as needed. Then either schedule the pitch to be sent at a later date or select Send Now.
Add Contacts to a Pitch
Add Contacts to a Pitch From a Media List
Sending a pitch through an existing Media List is an alternative process for sending pitches. You can use this method to send new and existing Pitches.
Go to Relationships > Media Lists and select a Media List.
From your selected Media List, select the Send Pitch drop-down in the top right-hand corner to add your entire Media List to a pitch or select specific contacts then the Add to Pitch button in the action bar that appears to add only those contacts. You can select an existing pitch or create a new one.
The pitch will populate contacts from the Media List as your recipients. You can select Add Recipients to add additional contacts or remove contacts individually or in bulk from this page.
Schedule Pitches to Send Later
If you want to prepare a pitch for later, you can schedule pitches to be sent on a specific date at a specific time.
Navigate to the Review and Send step within an existing pitch.
Select the Schedule for Later button at the bottom.
Select a date for the pitch to be sent.
Select Schedule Pitch at the bottom right of the screen.
Edit or Cancel a Scheduled Pitch
Go to Relationships > Pitches.
Select the Scheduled tab.
Select the Pitch you'd like to reschedule and make changes as needed in the Review and Send section under Choose when to send this Pitch.
To cancel the scheduled pitch, select Cancel next to the currently scheduled date.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Question | Answer |
How quickly will my pitch send? | The speed of sending your pitch depends on how you've set up email delivery through Muck Rack. Sending time depends on several factors including the number of recipients, spam-detection systems, and more.
If your organization frequently sends pitches to many recipients, it's advisable to contact our team to explore alternative sending methods.
Regardless of the sending method, it's not recommended to send pitches to several hundred recipients simultaneously. |
When pitching through Muck Rack, can I CC or BCC someone who does not have a Muck Rack account? | Not at this time, however, this is a functionality we are exploring. |
What happens if a new email address is found for a recipient? | Muck Rack’s team will update the status for the recipient from Issue to Unsent. This allows you to choose if you’d like to send the pitch to the recipient or if you’d prefer to remove them from the Pitch.
To send the Pitch to any recipients who were changed from Issue to Unsent, click the Continue sending button from your Pitch. |
What happens if a new email address is not found for a recipient? | Muck Rack’s team will leave the status of the recipient as an Issue and update the recipient’s Issue status. The issue status can be viewed by selecting the Issues filter from your Pitch, or clicking the row for a recipient included in your Pitch. |
Where are past pitches stored? | You can view your previously sent pitches by navigating to Relationships > Pitches. The Pitches page will show you all your pitches, including those in draft status. |
How do I view follow-up pitches? | To view your pitch follow-ups, navigate to the Pitches page by selecting Relationships > Pitches.
There are 2 ways to view follow-ups:
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When is a pitch considered personalized? | In terms of best practices, a pitch is considered personalized when it is tailored specifically to the journalist or media contact in a way that demonstrates an understanding of their interests, beat, past work, or audience.
In the platform, a pitch is marked as "Personalized" whenever the email message has been altered from the template you created during the Compose step and then saved. |
Additional Resources
Learn more about Pitching via these helpful resources:
Resource | Description |
Case Studies | Read about how some of our customers have leveraged Pitching in Muck Rack: |
Best Practice Guides | Check out our downloadable ebooks for tips on Pitching: |
Academy Courses, Webinars, and Videos | See Muck Rack Academy's catalog for more opportunities to learn about Coverage Reports and how they can be used. |
Get Help
For additional help, contact support by choosing the chat icon in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen and selecting Messages > Send us a message.
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