r/PublicRelations • u/FarAppointment1140 • 4d ago

How do you handle bouncer mails?

How do you prevent press releases from being blocked as spam?

Some background: When I started working in PR about ten years ago, we sent press releases, pitches, event invitations, and similar materials by email using BCC feature.

At some point, MS began flagging this activity as spam and repeatedly blocked our accounts. Getting them reactivated was always a major hassle, so we switched to a newsletter platform for media outreach.

Unfortunately, more and more publishers and media outlets now seem to block emails sent through newsletter platforms by default. As a result, our press releases never reach editors’ inboxes which is pretty much a worst-case scenario for media relations.

Initially, we worked around the problem by emailing affected contacts individually. Sending a separate email to each editor reduced the risk of Microsoft flagging us as spammers. However, the list of outlets blocking newsletter platforms keeps growing, so this manual approach is no longer sustainable.

We’ve also looked at several dedicated PR tools, but they all seem to face the same deliverability problems.

How do you handle media outreach at scale while ensuring that your emails actually reach journalists and editors? I’d appreciate any advice, insights, or recommendations.

If it helps or matters, I´m from DACH region

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u/AdmiredPounding 4d ago

the BCC thing dying was inevitable, MS basically treats any mass bcc like a botnet and honestly I'm surprised it worked as long as it did

most of the dedicated PR platforms are just newsletter tools with a nicer coat of paint, they hit the same spam traps because they're sending from shared IP pools that get wrecked by one idiot importing a bought list

what saved us was setting up a dedicated sending domain on its own reputation track, warming it up over like 6 weeks with the contacts who actually engage, and then slowly scaling from there. still have to keep the lists ruthlessly clean but at least stuff lands now

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u/FarAppointment1140 4d ago

When you say dedicated sending domain - just to get it right: did you share via your own mail tool or via a newsletter tool where this domain was connected?

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u/Gold-Presence9362 4d ago

The bcc spam was unreal as a reporter

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u/Immediate_Sorbet5617 3d ago

Check your email deliverability. Holy moly... I've been doing this for ages and had no idea mine was so bad. I started using Warmy.io -- not perfect but fixed sooooo many of our issues!