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E-mail etiquette: How To Get Good P.R. Exposure
August 21, 2008
Whether you are a designer or manufacturer trying to get the attention of a trade publication or a retailer trying to get the attention of your local consumer media, here’s a lesson in how to get noticed in a good way—or not—when you send press releases via e-mail.
1) Do not send large file attachments (i.e. more than 1 mb) unsolicited. The key here is “unsolicited.” It’s fine to send a huge file or attachment if you’ve been asked for it and the editor is expecting it. But if you just send out huge files routinely you risk crashing the recipients' inboxes, and that's not how you want to be noticed.
Ours is a visual industry, and it’s important to send high-quality photos of your product, but the downside is that those high-quality images tend to be large files. Some companies have tight limits on mailbox size, and large files tend to fill--or crash--recipients’ inboxes, especially when a lot of people are sending them.
A group of us editors were standing around chatting recently and virtually every one of us hit on this as our biggest pet peeve. And, at times, each of us also has gotten so frustrated that we simply hit the “delete” button on any large emails causing inbox overload—without even opening them. That doesn’t help you get your product noticed.
Luckily, it’s easy to get around this problem: simply ask if it’s ok to send unsolicited high-resolution images! Introduce yourself to the editor via email, explain your role in seeking PR exposure, and ask how they’d like to receive releases from you. Is it ok to send large attachments routinely, or would they prefer that large files be put on a CD and mailed? At JCK, unless we are asking you to beam something over right away, we always require large files to be sent on a CD.
2) If you’re going to put a personal salutation on your release, take the time to make sure you’ve got the correct recipient’s name on each one. Otherwise, save time and don’t bother with a personal salutation at all. Editors understand the mass-mailing of press releases and we’re not offended if there’s no salutation—but it doesn’t reflect well on you if we open the email and the salutation says “Dear Mary” and the recipient’s name is Joan. It looks even worse if Mary is her counterpart at a competing magazine or newspaper.
3) Make sure your release is delivered in time to make the issue deadline you’re aiming for. Print magazines can have deadlines as far out as three months from publication! Take a moment to call the department editor and ask what their deadline is. Sending a release for print in early July about a show that’s going to be held in August probably won’t make it farther than the recycle bin, so if you have a time-sensitive release, direct it to the online news editor.
4) Follow-up is good; hounding is bad. A call or quick email to see if the release was received and if any further information is needed is a nice gentle reminder. A barrage of calls or demanding when it’s going to be used will get you noticed, but not in the way you want.
5) Finally, my personal pet peeve regarding email in general: Email does not excuse one from using proper grammar and punctuation. An English sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a period (or question mark or exclamation point). In a business e-mail, words should be spelled out fully, not written in text message-ese. Writing in all capital letters is the equivalent of shouting in someone’s ear, and writing in all lowercase letters should be the sole domain of the poet ee cummings. Please do not flag your emails with “urgent” unless it truly contains a problem that must be addressed immediately to avoid dire consequences. You’ll become like the boy who cried “wolf” so often that nobody believed him when there really was a wolf on the loose.
Posted by Hedda Schupak on August 21, 2008 | Comments (9)
