How to Track Who Reads Your Press Kit
PR outreach is a numbers game played blind: twenty personalized pitches, twenty attached press kits, and then a silence that could mean anything. Follow up with everyone and you're spam; follow up with no one and you miss the journalist who was halfway through writing your story.
Per-journalist links end the blindness. The kit itself reports who read the story, who grabbed the assets, and who came back to check a number — which is exactly the priority order for your launch-week calls.
One kit, one link per journalist
Upload the kit privately and mint a link per pitch — the personalization you already do in the email, extended to the document:
curl -X POST https://apdf.io/api/docs/145ed-3ee8a-956a7/links \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $API_TOKEN" -H "Accept: application/json" \
--data-urlencode "name=Anja Brandt — TechPost" \
--data-urlencode "email=anja.brandt@techpost.example"Putting the outlet in the link name keeps the roster readable when the list grows — and for a big campaign, the bulk links script turns your media CSV into the full set.
Read the room before launch day
Three days into the embargo window, the sessions are your media forecast:
curl -s "https://apdf.io/api/docs/145ed-3ee8a-956a7/analytics/sessions" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $API_TOKEN" -H "Accept: application/json" |
jq -r '.data[] | "\(.recipient.name): \(.pages_viewed)/5 · \(.total_duration_ms)ms · dl:\(.downloads) · \(.created_at)"'
Tom Weiler — Handelsblatt: 1/5 · 8000ms · dl:0 · 2026-07-22 18:20:30
Anja Brandt — TechPost: 2/5 · 65000ms · dl:0 · 2026-07-22 16:30:30
Sarah Nguyen — Gründerszene: 3/5 · 77000ms · dl:0 · 2026-07-21 09:48:30
Milo Keller — StartupWire: 2/5 · 35000ms · dl:0 · 2026-07-20 14:12:30
Anja Brandt — TechPost: 5/5 · 160000ms · dl:1 · 2026-07-20 11:05:30- Anja is writing. Day one: the whole kit, 2m40s, and she downloaded the asset pack — nobody grabs logos for fun. Day three: back on the fact sheet, 40 seconds — she's verifying numbers for a draft.
- Sarah is warm — story and fact sheet, careful pace. A gentle nudge with an angle might tip her.
- Milo skimmed, Tom glanced — polite curiosity, not coverage. Don't spend launch morning here.
- Rita never opened — the pitch didn't land, not the kit. Different subject line, maybe different day.
Spend launch week where it counts
The roster converts straight into a call order: Anja gets the founder-interview offer today — while she's drafting, not after she's filed. Sarah gets the tailored angle. Milo and Tom get the launch-day group note. Rita gets a fresh pitch next week. Twenty minutes of follow-up, all of it aimed.
Want the “Anja is back on the fact sheet” moment as it happens? A re-open alert pings you live (Pro), instead of tomorrow's roster check.
Keep the embargo enforceable
An embargoed attachment is a promise; an embargoed link is a policy. If plans change — the date slips, an outlet burns you — individual links die on command while everyone else keeps reading, and the kit itself can be revoked entirely the day the campaign ends. The revocation tutorial covers the whole lifecycle.
Where to go from here
The same outreach mechanics, sharpened.
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