Email Distributions
After you have set the date for your press release or news release, you can start setting your email distributions. Distributions are emails you send to a wide list of contacts or to several contact lists. These contacts may vary from journalists and influencers for a press release distribution, to stakeholders, friends and customers of your company for a news release distribution.
Step 1: Write a one line description for your distribution
Make sure to give your distribution a description so that you don't forget what its's all about!
Distributions step one - name
Step 2: Select your contacts
Who are you writing your email to? The list of contacts you send these emails to can be from just one contact up to a longer list of a few hundred contacts. We always encourage you to keep your press release distributions as targeted as possible, so as long as the email you send is really relevant to its recipients, the amount of recipients don't matter. In order to find the right contacts use the search box or filter out a specific segment.
Distributions step two - select contacts
Step 3: Write your email
After you have selected the right contacts, you can start composing a message that will get them excited about your message. Try to keep it to the point, recipients won't be patient to find out what your message is all about. Choose a snappy subject line and make sure you set the correct sender email address.
You can add {{variables}} to your email. With variables you can insert information about your message and your contacts into your email. You might want to open your email saying "Dear {{first_name}}" or "To keep it short: {{summary}}". Please note that when your contact doesn't have a first name, we will insert nothing at all.
If you'd like to see what your actual email will look like, you can use the Preview email button or send the email to yourself or someone else with Send test email.
Distributions step three - write email
Step 4: Select a send date
There will be two options on when to send your emails: When my campaign is published and Schedule a Time. Choosing the first option will send the emails directly after the campaign is published. Choosing the second option will automatically send the emails at the selected time (as long as they've been added to the timeline, of course). If the emails are sent out before the campaign has been published this means that contacts receiving these emails will be led to your message under embargo.
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Distributions send at (1)
After your message gets published it is still possible to send out a press release distribution. Your options then will be to send them immediately, or send them at a specific time. This comes in handy if you'd like to send a follow-up with further information to contacts that opened your email.
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Distributions - step 4 - send time (after publish)
Step 5: Review your distribution
Before you set your distribution, make sure that everything is set the way you intended. After you have added your distribution to the timeline nothing will be triggered until you have confirmed your campaign, so you can edit your distribution before that happens.
Distribution - step 5 - confirm
Awesome!
That's all for now, we'll update this article as Distributions evolve. Make sure to let us know if you run into any issues or if you have feedback hello@pr.co!