We’re introducing expiring email addresses to the ResponseSource Journalist Enquiry Service. This means that the journalist’s real email address will no longer be visible in the body of ResponseSource emails. This post explains what we’ve done and why.

For Journalists

There’s no visible change in the submission process. Enter your email address in the usual way and behind the scenes we’ll generate a unique email address for each ResponseSource enquiry.  We’ll route your replies straight to your real email address. This change brings these advantages:

• Protect your contact details – when your deadline passes the unique email address will expire. You can therefore use whichever email address is most convenient for you without worrying about your favoured email address being added to mailing lists in the future.

• Respect your deadline – replies sent after the deadline will be returned to the sender so that you don’t receive information you can’t use (something we know journalists find frustrating). Knowing this should also encourage PRs to reply even more promptly to your requests.

• Close completed enquiries – many ResponseSource enquiries are “too successful”. It’s great to get loads of replies to pick from but frustrating if you’ve got a surplus or get replies when you can no longer use them. Now you can just let us know you’d like an enquiry “closed” and we’ll close it down.

For ResponseSource customers

When responding to ResponseSource journalist requests the reply-to email address in the body of the request will no longer be the journalist’s real email address but will appear in the format rs-AGPQXX@email.responsesource.com (there’s an example request below).

To reply to the journalist you’ll need to use the expiring email address.  Replies sent after an enquiry deadline will not be passed on to the submitter.  When a journalist replies to your reply, they will do so from their own email address.

We’ve made this change in response to feedback from journalists who frequently request that we ‘close’ off an enquiry after a deadline has passed. A further benefit is that journalists need not worry about the distribution of their main email address to a wide and unknown recipients list.

Not seeing the journalist’s real email address in the enquiry body may be seen as a negative by some – it can be reassuring to see the journalists using an email address with their media outlet domain in it. We do understand this and have thought very carefully about the pros and cons of making this change. Although ResponseSource cannot take responsibility for the content of enquiries or their authenticity, all ResponseSource Journalist Enquiries are individually moderated, many enquiries are rejected, and we do perform verification checks on senders before distributing enquiries.  If you have concerns about any individual user please contact us before you respond.

We always aim to make ResponseSource services as easy as possible for journalists and PR professionals to use. We hope the benefits these changes bring will help us encourage an even wider range of journalists sourcing PR contacts, experts, case studies, and other information to use ResponseSource.

Check out these expiring email address FAQs.

This is an example of a Journalist Enquiry