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Get Your News Releases Through the Spam Filters in 11 Easy Steps

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Get Your News Releases Through the Spam Filters in 11 Easy Steps

In today's spam-filled email world, it's sometimes VERY difficult to get your news releases and PR pitches to the media person you are trying to reach. These tips hold true for personal emails, too, so even if you don't do P.R., this article offers some important email tips.

Here are a few ideas to help you be more successful in reaching your target.

1. Write the release with spam filters in mind.

There are many words that trigger spam filters these days. Learn to write alternative words, substitute zeros for Os or add * in the word to avoid the spam trap. You can find out which words are likely to be a problem in this excellent list provided by Dr. Wilson: http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt8/spamfilter_phrases.htm

2. Check your content to see what your spam filter rating is.

There are free sources to check your email. One of them is Lyris Content Checker ( http://www.lyris.com/contentchecker/), which checks it against the SpamAssassin database.

3. Send each email individually, not as a CC or BCC.

The CC function allows everyone to see who you sent your email to so you definitely don't want to do that. The reporters will get irritated when they see you have sent it to all of their competitors. As my grandmother used to say,"It's better to keep some things to yourself."

The BCC function allows you to hide the list of recipients from everyone who receives the email, but it doesn't hide it from the email programs and filters. These programs know that you are sending a BCC message to a list, and if you send it to 10 or more, it will automatically trigger the spam filter.

You can send your emails efficiently from many database programs. I use ACT! and it allows me to not only send to a group, with each email going individually, but it also keeps track of what I sent to whom.

There are also systems available, like the one I use to deliver my ezines (which comes with my 1ShoppingCart.com service), designed to send hundreds and thousands of emails all at the same time. And the best thing is, you can tailor your release to add personal details about each recipient, such as their name and the industry they cover. I use my shopping cart to deliver my newsletters, but you can also use a service like ConstantContact for this.

4. Include the recipient's name in the subject line.

When someone sends me an email that begins, "Lois,...", I pay attention. I know that this person either knows me or I have subscribed to their ezine or asked to have them communicate with me for some reason. And I NEVER report these people as spammers. If I don't want to continue receiving information from them, I politely unsubscribe or email them to take me off their list. Think about it. You respond better when someone uses your name, don't you? It's a terrific way to get someone's attention.

5. Include [News] or [Pitch] in brackets at the beginning of the subject line.

Again, you need to give the reporter an easy way to spot your news as legitimate. So tell them up front you are sending them news or a pitch and watch your email delivery rate soar.

6. Include the reporter's column or beat in the first paragraph.

A reporter is always going to pay more attention to your pitch if you are one of their faithful readers. If you start out your email with something like, "Jane, in last week's Cooking for One column, you said...", you will surely get the reporter's attention.

7. Include all your contact information

Nothing's worse than getting an email that you want to respond to immediately and having no way to contact the person except by email. Give the reporter all your phone numbers. And don't forget your physical address and website domain. Make it easy for them to contact you.

8. Never include any attachments.

Unless you've been living in a cave without Internet access, you know that attachments are the way that most worms and viruses are spread on the Net. Windows XP strips off most attachments, and most corporate entities don't allow attachments to come through their systems. They can even get you blacklisted so your emails cannot get through. So don't be stupid. Don't send attachments unless someone asks for them.

9. Provide a link to your website to download photos, graphics, graphs, bios and other background information.

Just about anything that you need to deliver to a reporter can be uploaded to your website. You can include product photos, people photos (remember to make them 300 dpi for print/ 72 dpi for online and in various sizes, so that the media can choose which size they want to use), bios, background information, sample chapters, and even an entire digital book. If the reporter wants you to send the product or a physical book, then you'll have to mail that, of course.

10. Always include a subject line, but never put "Hi" or"Hello" in the subject line, especially alone.

Emails without subject lines are usually spam, and those that say hi or hello are usually viruses, so no one is going to open them. Be thorough. Include a subject line.

11. Follow CAN-SPAM rules and allow an easy unsubscribe method to your email list.

Even if you don't include a one-click unsubscribe, you should at least include a statement that tells the reporter how they can get off the list or let you know that their beat has changed. A simple statement that says, "To get off this subscriber list, simply hit 'reply' and put 'remove' in the subject line" will suffice. And don't forget to include your name and address.

Lois Carter Fay, APR, is a 30-year veteran in the P.R. and marketing field. She now produces three marketing ezines, Brainy Tidbits, Brainy Flash, and Success Secrets of Women Entrepreneurs. All are free.

Visit http://www.MarketingIdeaShop.com or http://www.WomenMarketing.com to subscribe and claim your free special report.

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In The News:

Now that Google has gotten permission from China's Anti-Monopoly Bureau to acquire Motorola Mobility, the companies are expected to complete their merger by the middle of this week.

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Silver Peak today upgraded the software for its WAN appliance to handle automated optimization for TCP and non-TCP traffic, 512,000 simultaneous connections for 10 gigabit-per-second (Gbps) infrastructures and support for a bunch of common hypervisors.

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Version 3.4 of the Linux kernel was officially rolled out Sunday, in what maintainer Linus Torvalds called a "calm" release cycle.

Google has "a matter of weeks" to address four antitrust issues identified by European Union antitrust regulators. If Google addresses these issues the case can be solved by a so-called "commitment decision" instead of formal antitrust proceedings resulting in a fine, said JoaquAn Almunia, Vice President of the European Commission responsible for Competition Policy.

Yahoo has agreed to sell off about half of its stake in Alibaba Group back to the Chinese e-commerce giant as part of a US$7.1 billion deal, the two companies jointly announced on Monday.

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Email managers have a lot at stake. After all, the volume of global electronic messages sent via email dwarfs all other forms of electronic communication, including social networking. Since the inception of electronic mail, which, according to some Internet historians, can be traced to a small mainframe app called 'MAILBOX' from the mid-1960s, human-to-human messages have been created, transmitted and stored in electronic format. But early email administrators could hardly have envisioned the complexity of current email infrastructure and the concomitant maze of technical, security, business and regulatory challenges.

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The prospect of cyberwar means the U.S. needs to 'rethink every aspect of defense,' says one summit presenter

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HP is expected to announce a large layoff at its quarterly investors briefing on Wednesday, losing as many as 30,000 employees. But for now, the company isn't talking about its plans.

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Hewlett-Packard on Wednesday announced the OfficeJet 150 Mobile All-in-One portable printer, which the company called the world's first mobile multifunction device that can "print, copy and scan on the go."

Despite the rumors, developers are focused on making apps -- and money -- from today's Android

Apple is in talks with China Mobile, according to the carrier's chairman Xi Guohua, although an agreement is yet to be reached.

The question of whether CISPA is really necessary might arise in the wake of a Department of Defense announcement last week that as many as 1,000 defense contractors -- and possibly thousands more -- may voluntarily join an expanded program of sharing classified information on cyber threats with the federal government.

If you're a Verizon customer upset that your next smartphone contract won't include unlimited data, Sprint would like to remind you that you have an alternative.

In retaliation against Internet Service Providers (ISPs) blocking some video-sharing and torrent websites like The Pirate Bay under Indian court orders, Anonymous, the "hacktivist" organization, today took down the websites of the ruling Congress Party and the Supreme Court of India. Anonymous, which in the past has been credited with taking down the websites of the MPAA, RIAA, the FBI, the US Department of Justice and child pornographers, took down these sites in what is understood to be DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks.

The University of Kentucky says it has reshaped its business intelligence capability by adopting SAP's in-memory system, HANA.

The head of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office tells a congressional panel that the landmark reform bill signed last September is already yielding significant results, but defends litigation in tech sector as a sign of vigorous innovation.

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The specification for next-generation mobile DRAM was published, offering smartphone, tablet and ultra-thin notebook makers a 50% increase in memory performance.

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Such activity is often paid for, or sanctioned by, government agencies

AT&T Thursday launched its 4G LTE service in, New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Naples, Fla., today, which extends its high-speed network implementations to 38 markets.

Unless Microsoft allows other browser makers to call important APIs in Windows RT, it's "probably not worth it to even bother" building a version of Firefox for the new OS, a Mozilla product director said.

Felix Ehm, a member of CERN's beams control group, has always had a curious and scientific bent.

Doctors are being cautioned by hospitals they work with to avoid interacting with patients on social media, and that they reject any overtures by patients to interact on the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

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Comcast is trying out more flexible ways to implement its bandwidth caps by experimenting with tiered service options.

Apple historically has fought iPhone jailbreaking by warning customers that their device warranties will be voided if they muck around with the innards of their Apple products. Now Apple appears to be taking its disapproval of jailbreaking one step further by censoring at least some references to "jailbreak" in its U.S. iTunes store.

Zach Nelson, chief executive at NetSuite, has publicly thanked rival SAP for renewing a cloud computing license with his company, instead of using its own software.

A man from West Sussex has been sent to jail for 12 months after hacking into a private Facebook account.

Apple has apparently won control of the iphone5.com domain, according to changes in a Web record of the URL.

SSD maker RunCore's InVincible SSD can wipe your data using one of two methods: overwriting the entire disk with meaningless code or frying it with voltage.

Social media -- Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and so forth -- has become a way of life for companies and their employees to interact with the public, but beating back the fraudsters that try to prey on customers, not to mention keeping employees from spilling sensitive data, is becoming a full-time job for many.

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Actress Geena Davis, President of Argentina Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Huawei Chairman Sun Yafang have been named winners of the 2012 ITU World Telecommunication and Information Society Award for their efforts promoting information and communications technology (ICT) to empower women and girls.

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T-Mobile USA clarified its latest restructuring plans and said the changes will result in a net 350 job losses, not 900 as reported earlier.

Cisco announced yesterday three pre-tested bundles of products and services designed to cut through the confusing complexity of enterprise mobility.

Developers have discovered that users running iOS 6 have been accessing their apps.

Get Your News Releases Through the Spam Filters in 11 Easy Steps

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