How to use Custom Variables

Personalize your pitches efficiently and effectively

Personalizing your pitches is a guaranteed way to increase open and response rates, as no journalist wants to receive a generic, irrelevant pitch. The only problem: personalization takes time! Standard variables such as first name and publication can only take you so far, so we created Custom Variables (custom placeholders), where you can assign your unique values to contacts within media lists. By using custom variables, along with Propel's generate drafts feature, your pitching can be both efficient and effective. 

How to use custom variables

1. After creating a pitching initiative, click on the Custom Variables icon on the pitching list.
   
   
                       
2. Click the "Add Custom field" button in the upper left corner. Then, fill in the field name, type, and whether it is required.
   
   Example: If I was pitching a list of journalists about their publication ranked in the Best Place to Work list, the fields might look something like this:
   
   
   
   
3. You can also edit or delete the existing custom fields created for the pitching list.
                                        
4.  Now that you've created the custom variable for this media list. You can add journalists and assign their custom variables in a few ways:
   1. If you already have contacts in your list, you can input value for custom variables by clicking the 3 dots on the contact card and then the Custom Variables icon.
      
      
                          
   2. If you want to import a CSV of contacts, simply add a column into your CSV. The header name should be the same "Custom Field Name" you entered in Step 2. Then, each cell should be the variable that corresponds with the journalist in that row.
      
      
      
      
5. Once you've associated all of your contacts with their custom variables, you can start pitching! While preparing your pitch, you can access the custom variable(s) for this pitching initiative at the bottom of the variables list.
   
   
   
   

Note: No limit exists on the number of custom variables created for each pitch.

Happy Pitching!