What Is Media Contacts?

Media Contacts is a lightweight CRM for tracking journalists, editors, and media contacts relevant to your industry. Contacts are discovered automatically through PR Intelligence scans (competitor backlinks, brand mentions, newsjacking) or added manually. Over time, your contact list grows into a valuable network for link building and media coverage.

URL: /pr/contacts/

Available on: Starter, Professional, and Enterprise plans.

How Contacts Are Discovered

Automatic Discovery

Contacts are added to your CRM automatically when:

Media Intelligence scans extract journalist/author information from competitor backlink sources
Newsjacking Radar identifies journalists covering trending stories in your industry
Brand Mention scans find authors who mentioned your brand

Manual Addition

Add contacts manually by clicking "Add Contact" and entering:

Name
Email
Publication
Topics they cover
Notes

Contact Details

Each media contact tracks:

Field	Description
Name	Journalist or editor name
Email	Contact email
Publication	Where they write
Topics	Subject areas they cover
Relationship Status	Cold, Warm, Hot, or Connected
Outreach History	Previous emails sent and their outcomes
Source	How the contact was discovered
Notes	Your private notes about the contact

Relationship Status

Track how well you know each contact:

Status	Description
Cold	No prior interaction. Discovered through scans.
Warm	You've reached out at least once.
Hot	Active conversation or recent response.
Connected	Established relationship. They know you.

Update status manually as your relationship evolves.

Using Media Contacts with Outreach

When generating outreach drafts from any PR Intelligence module, ILLIXIS checks your Media Contacts CRM:

If you already have a contact at the target publication, the outreach references your relationship
Contact outreach history prevents duplicate emails
Warm/Hot contacts can receive more direct pitches

Best Practices

Do:

Update relationship status after interactions
Add notes about what topics interest each journalist
Review your contact list periodically for stale entries
Use the CRM to track all outreach (not just ILLIXIS-generated emails)

Don't:

Email contacts too frequently (respect their time)
Store contacts outside ILLIXIS (centralize for consistency)
Ignore relationship building (the CRM works best as relationships grow)

Searching and Filtering

The Media Contacts page supports:

Search by name, email, or publication
Filter by relationship status (Cold, Warm, Hot, Connected)
Filter by publication
Sort by name, publication, or last contact date

Troubleshooting

No Contacts Appearing

Contacts are added through scans. Run a Media Intelligence or Newsjacking scan first.
Not all scans discover contacts (depends on extractable information)
Add high-priority contacts manually while the automatic list builds

Duplicate Contacts

ILLIXIS de-duplicates by email address
If duplicates appear with different email addresses, merge them manually by keeping the preferred entry and deleting the other

Related Features

PR Intelligence Hub - Overview of all PR features
Media Intelligence - Competitor backlink analysis (discovers contacts)
Newsjacking Radar - Trending stories (discovers contacts)
Authority Builder - Journalist query response

Need help? Contact support or check the ILLIXIS Help Center.

Media Contacts