If you are well familiar with Meltwater's Media Relations product, you've probably imported or created private journalist contact records in the platform. Creating private contact profiles is beneficial when you know Meltwater does not presently have the contact in the database.
However, because Meltwater regularly updates and adds new contacts to the database, it is valuable to use those public records when suitable. If you have a great many private contacts, this advanced and administrative feature is for you.
Benefits of using Meltwater's Public Database Records:
Public contact profiles are linked to published content
Public contact profiles are reviewed by Meltwater's Media Research team when signals indicate that important information on that profile might have changed. Meltwater updates profiles when it is determined that such information is out of date.
As our client, you are not required to be the 'data controller' with Meltwater's contact database records, whereas, for privately imported contacts, you are the 'data controller.'
In the spirit of making our platform easier to use and to assist in data management, we've released the ability to cross-check your private contacts with our database and merge matches that are found.
This article will cover:
Running a Profile Matching Job from a Media List
The first step to extracting private-public profile matches is to run a matching job from a media list of interest. To get started, follow these steps:
Click the Media Relations drop-down in the left-hand navigation bar
Select Media Lists
In the Media Lists tab, click on a media list you know has a number of privately created or imported contact profiles
Once on a Media Lists's details page, click Actions
Select Match private and public profiles
You'll be informed via email and in-app alert if matches are found for your media list.
Click Review matches to be directly navigated to the match review workflow
Alternatively, you can navigate to review all of your matching jobs by selecting the Media Relations in the left-hand navigation bar
Click Media Lists
Select Actions
Select Match private and public profiles
Running a Profile Matching Job with a Contact Import
If you're importing a CSV file with a number of contact profiles to be added to Meltwater, you have the option of running a profile matching job when those profiles are imported. When you use this feature, we will use the public matches in lieu of a privately imported record. The benefits of using these public matches are described above.
To get started, follow these steps:
Click the Media Relations drop-down in the left-hand navigation bar
Select Media Lists
Select Actions
Click Import journalists from CSV list
In the contact import workflow, ensure that Contact matching is turned on
Once you've selected a file to upload and any applicable media lists to which to add the new contacts, click Add contacts.
You'll be informed via email and in-app alert if matches are found for your import.
Click Review matches to be directly navigated to the match review workflow.
Alternatively, you can navigate to review all of your matching jobs by selecting the Media Relations drop-down in the left-hand navigation bar
Select Media Lists
Click Actions
Select Match private and public profiles
Reviewing and Merging Public Profile Matches Discovered in a Matching Job
Once you've run a matching job, either from a media list or during the contact import workflow, you will want to review all applicable matches and determine whether to merge those records. If you have not run a matching job, review the above sections in this article to learn how to do that before moving forward.
Navigating to the Review Matches Page
Navigate to the Media Relations drop-down in the left-hand navigation bar
Select Media Lists
Click Actions
Click Match private and public profiles
In the table, you'll see all of the matching jobs you have run on lists or imported files
Click into one of the matching jobs to continue to the review page. From this table, you can individually or bulk delete outstanding jobs you no longer wish to review
For each job, you will see in a table a top-line summary of the matches that were found between your private contacts and Meltwater's public contact database. You can easily toggle between matching jobs using the drop-down menu on the left side of the toolbar
Either individually or bulk merge directly from the table, or click on a matched profile to review the information for your private record, Meltwater's record, and the proposed merged profile
On the Review details page, you will see three previews of the contact profile. The left one is your private record, the right one is Meltwater's record, and the middle one is the merged record. You will notice that any Media Lists, additional email addresses, or phone numbers on your private record will be added to the merged profile.
Click Merge this profile if you would like to use the merged profile moving forward
The Merged profile preview will be used instead of the private contact profile, and the private contact profile will be deleted.
Notes and Limitations
We've built this feature to help you get the most out of your experience in Media Relations. However, there are limitations to specify. Namely:
When you merge private and public profiles, we're only able to persist the following information present on your private record:
Email addresses
Phone numbers
Media Lists
Open Rates
Saved notes on the profile
We're matching based on exact match on the email address and slight spelling variations on contact name.
💡 Tip
Need more help? Feel free to reach out to us via Live Chat or check out our Customer Community.
Find answers and get help from Meltwater Support and Community Experts.