How to Master AI and Personalization in PR

Journalists are overwhelmed by PR pitches to the extent that even the most dedicated struggle to keep up. While AI and other technologies have made outreach faster than ever, the sheer volume of content now means most PR messages aren’t even seen, let alone acted on.

Smart, AI-driven personalization could be a way to cut through the noise and get your brand the attention it deserves.

When you speak to someone as an individual and reflect their interests and needs, your chances of a response increase significantly. In fact, the German newsroom, Press Gazette, found that AI-driven personalization resulted in a 50-80% increase in click-through rates (CTRs). When viewers saw content directly related to their interests, they were clearly intrigued. 

While it isn’t realistic to manually personalize thousands of pitches, it certainly is possible to personalize at scale with AI. Machine learning algorithms can easily recognize patterns in journalist behavior and optimize outreach accordingly.

Read on for an insider’s perspective on how to reach the right people with a bit of help from your favorite AI tools.

The power of AI and personalization in Public Relations

Artificial Intelligence has its faults. If you have asked your AI tool to tell a good joke, write deep poetry, or draw hands, you know what we mean. But when it comes to digital PR, the technology has redefined what’s possible. One clear example is data-driven personalization.

You wouldn’t approach a Buzzfeed listicle writer the same way you’d engage a Financial Times journalist, even if the goal is to share the same news or invite them to the same event. Each requires a distinct, tailored approach. AI-powered PR tools can now help you tailor your messages to journalists’ beats or interests, the appropriate tone of voice, geographical location, and more.  

Human oversight is, of course, essential at every step. When done carefully, AI-driven personalized PR campaigns save you time. What’s more, it can get you the media coverage you need.

Research backs this up: Propel PRM has, for example, observed that journalist response rates are at their highest levels ever (3.43%). This increase, they believe, is because savvy public relations professionals now incorporate Artificial intelligence and machine learning into their workflows to create more targeted, relevant outreach.

5-step guide to AI personalization

If you’re on the hunt for practical ways to approach AI and personalization in public relations, you’d want to bookmark this step-by-step guide.  

1. Define your brand, then train your AI tools

Before you use AI for your digital PR campaigns and for content creation, it’s essential to establish a clear, distinctive brand identity, along with well-defined brand guidelines. This is a step you can’t entirely hand off to AI, because even the most advanced AI tools can’t fix a brand foundation that doesn’t feel genuinely human.

Once you’ve nailed down your identity and guidelines, you can train your generative AI tools on them. This empowers your AI sidekicks to generate messages, pitches, and content that sound exactly like you and not like a generic robot. 

If you want to pitch to a specific journalist, AI can scan their past work to identify their typical tone and help to adjust your messages accordingly. Are they an online writer known for witty wordplay, or a business columnist with an authoritative, formal voice? Do they tend to write with a sense of empathy, urgency, or enthusiasm? 

While you shouldn’t drastically alter your core brand voice, AI can help you refine your approach when it comes to content creation to increase your chances of a successful pitch. 

2. Use AI to help find press contacts

AI can’t magically produce the perfect media list, but it can significantly narrow down your search during the research phase. When combined with media monitoring, AI tools find which journalists cover topics related to your brand.

By applying sentiment analysis to past articles, these tools can also reveal a journalist’s stance or emotional tone—helping you avoid, for example, pitching a sustainability story to someone consistently skeptical of greenwashing claims.

Try questions like: 

• Which types of journalists would be interested in a story about [designer pajamas for ferrets]? 
• Which top publications cover [clothing for pets] in [Europe]?” 

(For this particular query, ChatGPT gave us a handy list that covered everyone from Modern Dog to Vogue, with suggested angles for each publication.)

3. Personalize your pitches with AI

Once you’ve generated a list of publications and contacts, you can tap into the power of AI to personalize your pitches. 

Use AI tools specifically designed for sentiment analysis, for example, to scan and summarize your media contacts’ latest articles for themes, preferred topics, and tone. Some advanced AI media monitoring tools show details of journalists' recent work, social media posts, and how they engage. 

4. Generate a first draft with AI

Generative AI changes the game for busy PR workers, copywriters, and content creators. We’ve seen first hand how it helps PR professionals get over the “fear of the blank page” and generate solid first drafts.

New to this process? Simply input the details you’ve gathered about the journalist and publication, your story angle, any relevant news or data, the overall tone and approach of your pitch, and voilà, you’ll have a first draft in seconds thanks to AI algorithms.

If you use AI for press release writing, keep in mind that it’s best used for rough drafts only. Whatever you do, don’t send AI-generated content directly to your media contacts. Most journalists and savvy readers will immediately pick up its tell-tale signs. 

Rewrite the draft in your own voice and ensure all details and facts are 100% accurate before you press “send.”

5. Automate your follow-ups with AI

It can be a full-time job to keep track of who has responded to your pitches. And if your follow-up messages become too pushy or frequent, you risk being relegated to the spam folder.

People are busy and inboxes are full. So, even the best journalist might have missed your email or forgot to reply. 

Modern AI-powered PR tools can significantly reduce the manual work required to keep track. For example, you can schedule automatic follow-up emails if you don’t get a response to your first pitch. You can add personal details in every follow-up. For example, use a journalist’s name or comment on their latest work. This helps avoid generic messages that people ignore.

Some tools work with specific triggers, such as whether an email has been opened or not. If your contact opened the email but never responded, they might need a gentle nudge to respond. If the email was never opened, try a different subject line or a completely different approach.

Remember to keep track of the follow-up settings in your automated PR workflows and to test everything properly.

AI-driven public relations: Always keep humans in the loop

Used wisely, AI can significantly boost your pitch open rates and responses. It can save time and make space in your day for more interesting, creative tasks. 

That being said, AI personalization presents several challenges and risks. If you rely too heavily on the tech, it can result in impersonal or tone-deaf outreach, which may harm your media relationships and responses.

AI-generated text still doesn’t always sound human, nor is it always accurate. Most journalists will immediately tune out if they get a whiff of the bland, generic language of purely AI-generated content. If the facts are wrong, your brand’s reputation is in trouble.

The key is to strike a balance between the efficiency of AI and human creativity and intuition. 

PR personalization at scale is possible with PR.co

If you’re keen to put AI-powered PR tools and personalization to the test, PR.co’s AI Assist feature is a great first stop. 

The tool allows you to add your preferred tone, style, and language choices. Based on this input, AI Assist can draft press releases, pitches, and newsroom updates that sound on-brand and natural. Ultimately, the tool saves you time and keeps your PR content professional, personal, and consistent, all while helping you increase your chances of securing media coverage that matters.

If you’d like to see PR.co and AI Assist in action, let’s chat.