All recipients of Pitches sent through Muck Rack are given a status. The status reflects if an email was sent, if the recipient interacted with your email or if the email was unable to be delivered because of an issue (see below) or suppression.
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Pitch Statuses Explained
Sent
Email was successfully sent to recipient.
Unsent
Email has not been sent to the recipient. Click Continue sending to send any Unsent emails.
Scheduled
Emails will be sent at the selected date and time in the future.
Opened
Recipient opened email in their email client (e.g. Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo).
Clicked
Recipient clicked hyperlinked text or an image included in the email.
Unopened
Email was successfully sent to the recipient, but it is unknown if they’ve opened the email in their email client.
Issue
Email was not successfully delivered to the recipient because the email was invalid or there was no email address available. Read more about this category in the section below.
Unsubscribed
Recipient has unsubscribed from emails sent by your organization. Learn more about unsubscribes and email suppressions.
Pitch Issues
Issues occur for a few common reasons.
If the recipient’s email was invalid and resulted in a bounceback
If there wasn’t an email address available at the time your Pitch was sent
If the recipient has requested to not receive pitches
After sending your Pitch, recipients categorized as an Issue will be personally researched by Muck Rack’s team. Our team doesn’t research issues for recipients who are Custom Contacts, but if you provide a new email address we will be happy to update it.
'This recipient has requested to not receive pitches' will appear on pitches to a profile which has requested removal from the Muck Rack database, profiles that have been claimed and hidden by the journalists, and profiles that have been claimed by the journalist and the email on that profile has been hidden from view. These profiles will not be updated with an email, as Muck Rack's Editorial team will not override these user-entered settings.
What happens after our team researches the issue?
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.
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.
If your pitch did not send as expected, and you're using Gmail
Sometimes your organization may have access rules in place that prevent our email integration provider, Nylas, from sending emails. If you encounter the above error, please have your IT administrator follow these instructions here.
Frequently asked questions about Pitch statuses
Why does my Pitch say Delivered even though I received a bounceback?
In most cases, a pitch that shows as sent/delivered in Muck Rack means that your message was indeed delivered to the recipient and there were no technical issues during sending.
However, sometimes you may receive a “bounceback” email—which is an email that is sent back to your own email address. This means that there was an issue with the recipient email itself, rather than a technical issue. (Rather, the recipient may have gotten a new email address, etc.)
Why does my Pitch say it was Opened even though I received a bounceback?
When you send a Pitch (even ones that eventually return a bounceback/undeliverable error), that Pitch still has to hit an email server somewhere during sending. That email server may automatically open emails, which will then log as an “Open” in Muck Rack.
For example: a journalist who worked at a major corporation recently switched jobs. Their email address is no longer valid but, given the security systems at large corporations, their IT team might have a firewall in place that opens all messages sent to their domain.
If you’d like to report a bounceback to Muck Rack so that we can help you find a new email address for a recipient, follow the instructions here.