Skip to main content

Media lists or contacts: which to use in a campaign

Media lists hold journalists from the JournoFinder database. Contacts hold your own people. Both can go in one email campaign.

Written by Veronica Fletcher

You can add people to an email campaign from your media lists, your contacts, or both. Available on: all paid plans. Not included in the 7-day free trial.

A campaign is an email and its follow-ups sent to a set of people. A media list is a saved list of journalists from the JournoFinder database. A contact is a person you added yourself, by hand or from a CSV file. A CSV file is a spreadsheet saved as plain text with commas between columns. Use a media list for journalists you found in JournoFinder. Use contacts for people who are not in the JournoFinder database.

Media lists and contacts compared

This table lists the differences between media lists and contacts.

Media lists

Contacts

Who is in it

Journalists from the JournoFinder database

People you add yourself

Where you manage them

Media Lists in the sidebar

The Contacts tab in Outreach

How you add people

From Journalist Search and the other searches

Add contact or Import CSV

How you group people

One media list per group

Tags. A tag is a label you give contacts, for example a client name.

Which email address is used

JournoFinder picks the best address for each journalist. Some journalists need you to choose one.

The contact's primary address

Time zone for sending

The journalist's own time zone, when JournoFinder knows it

The time zone set on the campaign's Launch step. This is your own time zone unless you change it.

Block one person from all campaigns

Add their address to the blocklist in Outreach > Settings > Blocklist. The blocklist is a list of addresses your campaigns never email.

The Do not contact setting on the contact

Where you add them to a campaign

Media lists on the Recipients step

Your contacts on the Recipients step

Media lists and contacts stay separate

You cannot add a contact to a media list. A journalist on a media list does not become a contact. You can only use them together in a campaign.

A campaign holds up to 500 recipients, from media lists and contacts together. A recipient is a person in a campaign.

If the same person is on a media list and in your contacts, JournoFinder does not match them. They can end up in the campaign twice. Click Review recipients before you launch to check the full list.

When to use a media list

Use a media list when:

  • You found the journalists with JournoFinder search.

  • You want JournoFinder to pick the best email address for each journalist.

  • You want emails to arrive in each journalist's own working hours.

To add a media list to a campaign:

  1. On the campaign's Recipients step, click Media lists.

  2. Click Add next to the list. The button changes to Added.

When to use contacts

Use contacts when:

  • The people are not in the JournoFinder database.

  • You already have their email addresses, for example in a spreadsheet.

  • You want to block one person from every campaign with Do not contact.

To send to a group of contacts, give them all the same tag. Then add the whole tag to the campaign:

  1. On the campaign's Recipients step, click Your contacts.

  2. Click Tags.

  3. Click Add next to the tag. The button changes to Added.

The campaign gets the contacts that have the tag at that moment. Contacts you tag later are not added. Contacts marked do not contact are skipped. Contacts with no email address are added but are not sent to.

Related articles

Did this answer your question?