ROMEO CAYABYAB

With email being a fast and cost-effective means of written communication, these days press (or media) releases are mostly submitted via email.

But like an unsolicited email, an unsolicited press release is spam, unless it meets the requirements of anti-spamming laws which include an existing relationship with the publication or its editor or you have made previous queries about sending a press release either by phone or using the publication’s online contact form.

In our 15 years in internet publishing, or eight years since we started The Filipino Australian, unsolicited emails have been a nightmare to us. On a daily basis, our mailbox is inundated with hundreds of emails which include unqualified spams and, in a number of instances, irrelevant press releases.

As a passive defence, we regularly change our contact email address to avoid being pestered with junk mails. Our online “Contact Us” pages are also installed with scripts to automatically direct messages sent from our websites’ pages to our relevant departments while at the same time hiding our email addresses so that these cannot be harvested by web bots. We also periodically issue and print “spam watching” advisories and other important notices.

For those who are sending, or planning to send, press releases via emails, here are some suggestions:

1. Unless you have an existing relationship with the publication or its editor, contact the editor of the publication before sending a press release. It is preferred that you make your queries over the phone or in writing. When making queries, ask the editor if you can also send photos and their photo specifications.

Should you use the publication’s online contact form, do not make the mistake of using the online contact form only to ask what the email address of the editor is. Although you may find that situation unusual, we do receive queries sent from our online contact form asking what our email address is. [Continue reading]