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How to use Agility to identify media contacts and save lists
How to use Agility to identify media contacts and save lists
Andrew Woodall avatar
Written by Andrew Woodall
Updated yesterday

Agility allows you to search for people and/or outlets, and create lists of contacts that you can use for your media outreach, either by using the contact details in the profiles or to send emails using Agility. This article explains how to use the different available fields to better target your search.

Select Discover > Discover Contacts and you will see this screen

The many available options are clearly labeled. Agility allows you to target individual contacts or the outlets that they write for; you can search for specific contacts or outlets by name, by their job role, by their own specific job title, by location and the region of their target audience, and by the subjects that they cover. The Mentioned Keyword field also enables you to search published content for journalists covering the topics important to you, by matching your search terms to their exact content.

A good place to begin is by selecting the subjects that you are interested in, and combining this with the Target Audience Region field under outlets. In this search I am targeting journalists that cover subjects related to children's clothes and write for outlets whose audience is the United States.

If I type 'children' into the subject field, I will be shown all subjects that contain that word. However, if I select browse all and type 'children', I not only see all of the subjects that match but also any other subjects that may be related to children.

Expand this brief video to see this demonstrated:

Agility is showing me that these search terms are returning 55 results.

You can apply search refinements to narrow down on media types, format, target audience and market sector. For definitions of the various categories, click here: Understanding Media & Product Types.

By selecting Top Contacts per Outlet Only, you refine your results to one contact per outlet, determined by a hierarchy of job roles performed by the people who match your search criteria. Reporter is the role at the top of the hierarchy, so if you select this you will be most likely to be shown one reporter at each outlet.

By clicking on search, we are presented with the results.

It is a good idea to save the search so that you can return to these results again and again. Every time you check the search, Agility will return up-to-date results and allow you to filter to display new and updated contacts.

By clicking on any of the results, I see their profile on the right-hand panel, which I can expand to reveal further information about them and their outlet. The blue icons alongside the profile take me to their outlet details, any of my lists they are already on, their recent coverage, and their social media feed.

The filter function indicated by the blue funnel above the results includes all of the fields on the search set-up page, and you can also filter by audience reach and status, if you're looking for new contacts. You can apply any of these filters to your search if you wish to narrow or fine-tune your results.

If you want to check whether the contacts are already on any of your lists click the dropdown menu above the contact profiles which says 'Select List(s) to add contacts to' when you hover over it. Then select the list you wish to check the contacts against. In the screenshot below, Brianne Manz has a blue tick against her profile to show me that she is on my chosen list, 'Children's Clothing'.

If I want to further filter those not on my list to show only contacts that are new to the database, I select the Status filter, New Contacts, and any date. This screenshot shows me which contacts have been added to Agility since April 30th.

To add any contact to a saved targeted list, I simply select the contacts and the orange icon to add to list(s). With 'Children's Clothing' already selected, Elizabeth Lewis will be added to that list. If no list is selected, I am presented with the option to select from all lists or create one anew.

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