This is good advice, although I would also caution that every journalist has different habits. Some journalists will only publish news that's under embargo, others will only publish news that's happening that day. Some want assets included right in the email, some won't open it if they see there are attachments. After working on hundreds of campaigns, we believe that this embargo strategy is the most effective. Per your advice, this is why we also recommend reaching back out right when the the embargo lifts with the full media kit.
The insight here into TechCrunch is too true unfortunately. It's every startup's dream to be in TechCrunch, but we see publications like VentureBeat have much better engagement.
This is true, and we provide that advice in the blog post we link to under the Embargo Strategy section:
"Can journalists break embargoes? Yes, some journalists notoriously will not honor embargoes. There’s an easy solution though — only include information in the pitch email that you would be ok with a journalist publishing. Once they agree to the embargo, you can share the rest of the story."
However, we've worked on hundreds of campaigns under embargo, and a journalist has never broken one. With early-stage startups, you can't really afford to be cagey with your news, as response rate will be so low anyway. You have to provide the lede upfront to get journalists interested in the first place.
> we've worked on hundreds of campaigns under embargo, and a journalist has never broken one
My point is that they are not breaking the embargo by publishing the contents of your initial email.
Whatever you send in the initial email is decidedly not embargoed. Totally get that the risk can be worth it, but you're implying in this post that the information is actually under embargo when sent before explicit agreement.
I can see that point, although I would argue that if you include the language "We’re asking for an embargo on any stories" in the email, the vast majority of journalists will treat the contents of the email as under embargo. It's an unenforceable honor code, and most people don't want to get into semantic debates about what exactly is under embargo. But yes, the embargo does not go into effect until the journalists explicitly agrees to it, and that includes the contents of the email. Again, we believe this is the right advice for early-stage startups in order to garner journalist attention.
(To expand on our process from David's answer): We believe that the modern PR agency system is broken. In the new digital media landscape, journalists rely less on traditional "relationships," as the news cycle moves increasingly quickly and journalists are expected to write upwards of five articles a day. This means they need more stories and sources, and they need them in a simple and straightforward process.
We're leveraging software to make the process more efficient and transparent for both companies and journalists. We've built a proprietary database that allows us to figure out what journalists are actually interested in, and to improve our targeting through matching algorithms compared to the traditional "spray and pray" model of many PR firms. We've also built an internal CRM that allows us to send out personalized pitches and easily monitor journalist engagement across campaigns.
For customers, we've built a dashboard that means that PR is no longer a "black box." Customers can follow the progress of outreach campaigns, from the timeline to advanced journalist engagement analytics like open rate and the the time they've spent on the media brief. They can also receive inbound media opportunities from sources like Help a Reporter Out and follow journalists who have engaged in their campaigns.
1) As long as there hasn't been any public notice of your funding (from your VC's blog, an errant mention in a a round-up article, or even a tweet), you can make the announcement when it's most advantageous. Journalists don't care about when the actual round was closed as much as that it hasn't been covered yet.
That being said, if it did happen a while ago and a journalist happens to connect the dots and ask why you waited so long to announce, you should have a good reason prepared. We've never seen it be an issue.
2) You definitely should try! It just means there's less of a guarantee the news will be covered. We've seen funding announcements of as little as $500k get covered. In these cases though, it helps to have another piece of news to include: a substantial product release, a notable new advisor, a major partnership, etc.
The insight here into TechCrunch is too true unfortunately. It's every startup's dream to be in TechCrunch, but we see publications like VentureBeat have much better engagement.