How to distribute press release

Once you have written a new press release, your next task is distribution. The best channel for this is email. This briefer guide will cover the format and some tips for the actual distribution.

Send the entire press release

While when pitching your app, it is best to send just a couple of sentences, press releases are best to send in their entirety. If the journalist is interested, they can get the entire thing without opening a webpage or similar.

With ImpressKit, you can copy the entire press release to the clipboard with a single button from the “Distribute” page that is available for every published press release.

Distribute page enhances your press release with “View online” link for cases when it doesn’t display best in the receiver’s email client and all the press kit links at the end of the press releases. Thanks to this, you will never forget to attach anything important.

Email template

I would recommend following the convention of prefixing the title with [Press Release] in the email subject.

You can then have a short generic greeting followed by the press release content.

Timing

When sending out a press release, you should think at least a bit about the timing. Avoid crowded days, like WWDC or other Apple events. It does not make sense to compete for attention with such huge events.

As for the days of the week, it makes sense to avoid weekends and Fridays. Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be a consensus. If you know where a particular journalist resides, you can try to time the email, so it arrives during their “expected” working hours.

I don’t stress too much about timing, only about not competing with the significant events.

Mass emails are fine

With press releases, they are typically sent to multiple contacts at once. So you don’t have to personalize the email. If you have contacts that already covered your app previously, you can send a personalized press release to those.

If you are sending the press release to multiple recipients, use the BCC feature of the email and send it to yourself. This way, the recipients are hidden.