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Embryo is an award-winning digital marketing agency based in Manchester, offering multi-channel services from Digital PR, Paid Social, PPC, SEO to Affiliates.
With a number of clients currently on-board for Digital PR services, Embryo utilises BuzzStream as its dominant outreach platform – at all points of executing a PR strategy – to ensure client success.
Below, Alice Walker-Gibbons, Digital PR Lead at Embryo, explains how the Digital PR team uses BuzzStream as their outreach tool throughout all phases of executing the PR strategy.
From onboarding a client and identifying quick-win opportunities to campaign outreach and continuous reactive and reputation management for clients, see how BuzzStream helps teams manage the execution of multiple streams of PR activity at once.
And, the results? Embryo generated 70 pieces of coverage across five clients in the Home and Garden sector in just one quarter with BuzzStream.
Read on to find out detailed examples of how they achieved it – and how.
Using Existing Content and Templates for Reactive Outreach
Earlier in the year, we drafted a story on ‘How to get rid of ants in your patio’ for our paving and decking client London Stone.
While the piece was originally drafted and outreached in May, we spotted a reactive opportunity to repurpose the piece in August in light of ‘Flying Ant Day.’
As part of our media monitoring time, we spotted Flying Ant Day was being picked up across the National and Regional titles so we quickly cloned the existing template in BuzzStream and tweaked it in line with the reactive angle.
This meant we were able to push the new angle out quickly and capitalise on the news agenda.
Managing 3 Streams of PR Activity With Folders
For one of our clients in the home sector, our holistic strategy includes three workstreams of activity including reactive and proactive stories and creative campaigns.
To manage each stream of activity effectively, we utilise the folder functions to keep these organised as well as leaning on other features such as the embedded email chain history to ensure we’re diversifying the journalist pool for each stream of content.
Email Tracking and Interaction History to Capitalise on Warm Leads
Here’s an example of a journalist from Country Living requesting further commentary off the back of our initial outreach for an interior client.
We take a considered approach to outreach, making sure to monitor the visibility of communications with journalists across the team, to help protect any live opportunities.
Email tracking is a great way to monitor warm leads and report these back to the client.
To ensure warm leads are protected and not lost in the stream of other pitches, the interaction history means that the wider team can also see if a journalist has replied.
How Did We Set Ourselves Up for Success With BuzzStream?
Here are the steps we took to set ourselves up for success.
Step 1: Onboarding a Client
When it comes to onboarding a new client, we look to identify quick-win opportunities whilst ideation and strategy takes place to ensure the account gets off to a strong start.
Identify Quick-Wins
As we see more video content and social news reporters in the media, auditing a client’s organic social channels for potential expert-led pieces or viral products to push out could be a good place to start. Alternatively, make the most of blog content and adapt it into press-friendly formats.
When it comes to landing these in the media, BuzzStream allows the option to copy contacts from one project to another – making it great for streamlining the media list build process for clients in a similar space.
Create Folders for Each Client and Project
We always make the most out of core functions on BuzzStream, such as folders and sub-folders, for an organised outreach approach.
To get clients setup and manage multiple streams of PR activity at once, the use of project folders and sub-folders enables each client, campaign, story or reactive comment to sit in its own project, helping to organise different activities more clearly.
Here’s an example of how we’ve split out proactive stories for our client London Stone, using the folders function.
Step 2: Take a Proactive Approach to Outreach
Once we have set the strategy and ideation has taken place, executing planned ‘proactive’ content month-to-month begins, tapping into key focus areas for your client.
BuzzStream offers a range of features to help you manage the success of this activity.
Keep an Eye on Email Opens
BuzzStream offers the ability to track email opens, helping you to understand not only the engagement rate of your content with journalists but also when they typically engage.
These insights can also be used to identify the best performing subject lines, helping to provide in-depth reporting on outreach activity to clients – as well as providing insight for future outreach.
Use the filter function to organise the outreach list based on last opened to identify contacts you haven’t yet engaged with the content. This will enable you to quickly identify the journalists to send a brand-new subject line.
A/B Test Subject Lines
We know personalisation cuts through over blanket emails when it comes to outreach efforts and the data available in the platform helps make informed decisions when it comes to follow-ups.
Duplicate templates to A/B test subject lines to help see the messaging that lands most with the media. This can help inform further outreach and follow-up subject lines too.
Here’s an example of how we A/B tested subject lines for a piece on ‘Creating the perfect reading nook’ for interior client Dowsing & Reynolds.
Step 3: Managing Creative Campaign Outreach
To support proactive content, we lean on bigger creative campaigns to help drive brand awareness and build further touchpoints of trust with our clients target audience.
To help balance press office, proactive stories and campaign outreach projects, BuzzStream has a number of features that can help ensure each workstream is working efficiently.
Assign Journalists Out to Different Members of the Outreach Team
When it comes to managing bigger media lists and outreach processes for creative campaigns, the ability to assign contacts to team members makes managing this process so much easier.
Here, you can select contacts and assign them to multiple team members, helping to manage collaboration on projects – and encourage ownership among the team.
Streamline the Outreach Process With the Filter Function
Utilising the ‘filter’ option in each project means you can also quickly filter a project to view only the contacts you are assigned to, helping to make bigger outreach campaigns easier to manage – and avoid duplication of outreach to journalists across the team.
Here’s an example of using the filter view to see only contacts assigned to one user in an outreach list.
Step 4: Maintaining and Building Journalist Relationships
Every PR is likely to relate to the fear of sending multiple emails to one contact in a short time – especially if you’re an agency that has a roster of clients across similar sectors.
And, with the pool of journalists getting slimmer, it’s important to get pitches relevant and valuable for each contact, in order to build a good relationship.
BuzzStream hosts all interactions and email chains directly in the platform, for all users to see. Plus, you can add notes to each contact. Add in notes on any journalist feedback, topics they tend to cover, how they like to be pitched to etc to help ensure each pitch is relevant and tailored to their beat.
Step 5: Press Office Management for Continuous Success
Templates and outreach lists are stored in BuzzStream, meaning work can quickly be reworked and pushed out.
Make the Most of Templates and Outreach Lists
This is particularly great for those clients who have built up a bank of content, meaning templates can quickly be tweaked and pushed out for reactive opportunities, helping lead to a consistent stream of results.
Final Thoughts
As the PR landscape continues to grow and is overwhelmed with more PR’s than journalists in the space, personalised and tailored outreach will be what continues to get cut-through.
BuzzStream offers a range of functions and tools to help deliver on this approach, leading to consistent success across a range of our clients in sectors such as automotive, home and interiors, B2B, travel and more.
Alice Walker-Gibbons
I'm Alice - Digital PR Lead at Embryo. With 3 years experience across both traditional and digital PR, I devise and execute PR strategies across a range of clients and sectors including including fashion, home & interiors, retail, travel, tech, tourism, and food and beverage.Disclaimer: The author's views are entirely their own, and don't necessarily reflect the opinions of BuzzStream.
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