HARO to Segment Email Blasts By Sector

Peter Shankman, founder of journalist-to-source matching service HARO (HelpAReporter.com) just told the audience at mediabistro’s UGCX conference how he plans to grow his $1.2 million dollar company.

“In the next month–don’t tweet this–we’re going to split HARO into sectors,” he said. Shankman plans to segment his email blasts in to areas like technology, health, and more. “What we expect to happen, is for most users to stay on the general list,” explaining that his word-of-mouth proposition, or “pimpage of HARO” is too powerful to abandon. Meaning, you want to share those queries with not only your PR clients, but with people in your network that perfectly fit a journalist’s query. For people with a day job in PR, they will also subscribe to those “urgents” to make sure they don’t miss anything in their area of expertise.

What this does for HARO is increase its advertising inventory from three email blasts a day, to a potential thirty. Shankman sees it as a way to grow the business, and to service those quirky businesses he loves, many who originally felt the benefit of HARO as a source and then turned into an advertiser.

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