Welcome to your go-to guide to sending a Press Release within Media Relations. This article will walk you through the following:

If you'd like to learn more about all the features within Media Relations, check out our get started article here. This includes features such as searching for journalists, managing your media lists and newswires.

Before sending a release, make sure you have saved the journalists you'd like to reach out to within a media list.

Follow the steps outlined below on how to send a press release:

If you are presented with a pop-up to 'Set Up Email', you will first need to add your email address as an approved sender before composing your release. Learn more in this article here.

1. Select your Template. The dropdown list will include templates your team has previously saved, learn more about saving outreach templates below.

2. Select your email sender. If your desired sending address isn't on the list please refer to the 'Set Up Email' details above.

3. Add your media lists. This can be done via the dropdown list on the side or by typing in the name. You can also add email addresses directly.

4. Format your release. We recommend writing this in a Word document first and then copy/paste into this window. You can even duplicate this release later to use the same formatting again for future releases.

If you'd like assistance in formatting your press release template or design, please reach out to our team via Live Chat.

5. Send yourself a preview

6. Once you've completed editing the release, follow the distribution buttons in the bottom right to either Send later by selecting a schedule date and time or Send now

Check out this short video overview of how to use Media Relations Outreach:

Make the layout of your release stand out and match your company's branding by saving templates.

To format the template content, utilize the toolbar at the top of the editing field to adjust your formatting features.

Protip: If you have an existing release template in an editable format such as a Word doc, you can copy and paste all the images and formatting features in Meltwater.

When reviewing a journalist's contact card, select the email icon in the top right to load the Compose Email window to kick off a message to them.

We offer the rich text editor to format text to better get the message to contacts. Add images/logos, bold, italicize, underline, hyperlink and list to your heart's content. Use the HTML button on the far right of the editor to take customization to the next level.

To ensure that your email is ready-to-go, you will have the ability to send a test email to yourself before sending it to the contact.

When using the Mail Merge

function to address a journalist by name, please note that the first name does not appear in the preview of outreach emails. The recipient portion of the preview will show [FIRST NAME APPEARS HERE], and once you send the final version to the journalist or media list, it will appear with their name first.

These features are available on the Outreach tab within Media Relations, direct link here (link will only work if you have access).

Once you've started formatting your release, if you're not ready to send it the Send Later button in the bottom right corner allows you to save it as a draft or schedule for a later release.

Draft distributions can be opened by any of your colleagues who are also Meltwater users and used as a template design to be duplicated in the future. Within the list of all releases on the Outreach page, Drafts can be identified via the Status column or using the filter dropdown menu above the tick all checkbox.

Within Send Later, Schedule your release based on your timezone by selecting a send date on the calendar and the time.

Drafts and sent releases can be deleted from the list of all releases. When hovering over the distribution, select the drop-down menu icon and select Delete. This action will remove the record of the release from your view, please note that there isn't an option to revoke sent distributions from journalist's email inbox.

To prevent spam and increase your email open rate, we've set up some outbound requirements that will increase your overall outreach effectiveness. We have included in-app messaging on your Outreach page to let you know how many recipients you can send distributions to in a day.

💡 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.