How to Keep Your Press Releases Out of the Spam Folder

A few years ago, Winnipeg Free Press humour columnist Doug Speirs became fed up with the barrage of pointless press releases that daily fill his inbox.

In a column titled “Could you make those news releases any less funny?”, Doug noted that “almost every day, as regular as clockwork, news releases about incredibly obscure things in incredibly obscure places are emailed to my computer by public relations companies I've never heard of.”

Why do they send this stuff to him?

“Simple,” he stated. “I'm on the top-secret, computerized list of select journalists, a group whose membership is strictly limited to people who are currently alive.”

Normally, he deletes these e-mails without reading them. “But not today. Today, I'm all over them.”

What followed was a funny column about how Doug called these companies to see why they thought Winnipeggers should be interested in their products. You can read his column here.  

Of course, these businesses didn’t actually send Doug those press releases; they hired PR companies to do it for them.

If you are doing communications for non-profit organizations, you know about these PR companies.

Not a month goes by that I don't get a couple of e-mails from them saying they can help me reach thousands of journalists.

It's true;they can reach that many journalists. The only problem is that most of them have no interest in my press releases.

I have first-hand experience this as the freelance Faith Page columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press. 

Like Doug, my name is also on that secret list of writers who are alive.

I don’t get as many junk press releases as he does, but the ones that come my way get the same treatment: I promptly delete them.

But getting your press release deleted, or just being made fun of, is better than what happened to over 300 people who sent junk press releases to Chris Anderson of Wired magazine in 2007.

In a post titled “Sorry PR People, You're Blocked,” Anderson said “I’ve had it. I get more than 300 emails a day and my problem isn't spam, it's PR people.”

“Lazy flacks send press releases to the Editor in Chief of Wired because they can't be bothered to find out who on my staff, if anyone, might actually be interested in what they're pitching.”

He posted this warning: “I only want two kinds of email: those from people I know, and those from people who have taken the time to find out what I'm interested in and composed a note meant to appeal to that. Everything else gets banned on first abuse.”

Not only that; Anderson posted the e-mail addresses of all offending people, organizations and PR firms who had sent him misdirected press releases in the previous 30 days.

“If their address gets harvested by spammers by being published here, so be it—turnabout is fair play,” he stated.

What followed was a list of over 300 e-mail addresses. 

When it comes to media relations, nothing turns off a reporter more than getting junk from people who should know better. 

If it’s worth my time to read, then it’s worth your time to find out what I write about.

It's a good media relations strategy, and a simple courtesy. It might even help you make the news.