Meltwater provides a media contact database of more than 400,000 journalists and 100,000 publications to help you identify members of the media that could be relevant for you to develop a relationship with. We also let you upload your own contacts to make it easier to maintain existing relationships.

Learn about how you and other Meltwater customers will be impacted by journalists who unsubscribe from receiving emails - an action that you and your team should view as a red flag.

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Journalists are a key stakeholder in the media relations ecosystem. We are committed to protecting their interests, including their right to privacy, as well as protection against bad actors (e.g. PR spam). All emails sent from our product, therefore, include an unsubscribe link in the footer. This is a non-negotiable aspect of using our platform to perform outreach to the media, and we will not remove the footer upon request.

When a journalist unsubscribes from an email you sent, it’s a clear sign that you have failed to provide value or be relevant. This is feedback that you and your team need to act on.

Learn more about The Importance of Targeting and the Role of Media Lists.

Journalists are presented with three options in the unsubscribe workflow:

Regardless of which option the journalist chooses, you and your team will no longer be able to email them. If the person chooses options 2 or 3, there is a more dramatic impact on our entire customer base, and we want to avoid that at all costs.

Option 2 - the contact unsubscribes from “all Meltwater customers”. None of our customers will be able to email the contact, though their profile will remain in our database.

Option 3 - “remove me from your database”. We will delete the journalist’s profile completely from our database so they are no longer searchable or in lists and none of our customers will be able to email the journalist.

Journalists that have unsubscribed using option 1 will have an Unsubscribed badge next to their names. See example below:

If you use your own email client or another product for email distribution, you will likely export your media list(s) from our product. In the exported CSV file we include a column to let you know if the contact is OK to contact. If No, the journalist has made an explicit request not to be contacted.

If any of the people you have uploaded to our product have previously unsubscribed from receiving emails from Meltwater customers or asked to be removed completely from our database, you will not be able to email them and exports will show No in the OK to contact? field.

The best way to avoid unsubscribes is to ensure that you always deliver value to journalists when you reach out. This requires thoughtful targeting and emails that deliver tailored value propositions to each journalist. When a journalist unsubscribes, it’s a clear signal that you have failed to deliver value and compromised the relationship.

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