eReleases

About eReleases

eReleases is a press-release distribution service based in Baltimore, Maryland, specializing in affordable national newswire distribution for small businesses. Founded in 1998 by Mickie Kennedy, the company, legally MEK Enterprises LLC doing business as eReleases.com, has built its reputation on a distinctive proposition: full national distribution through PR Newswire, the Cision-owned wire, at prices accessible to businesses that could never afford enterprise wire contracts on their own. Over 27 years the company says it has distributed more than 150,000 releases for over 30,000 clients, generating more than $132 million in earned media, with a model that pairs genuine wire distribution with human editors and targeted outreach to hand-selected journalists.

Founding: 1998 and the $20,000 problem

Mickie Kennedy founded eReleases.com in 1998 after watching public-relations firms charge small businesses a $20,000 minimum for a single press release. The observation that became the company's founding insight was straightforward: the high fixed costs of traditional PR, retainers, agency overhead, and enterprise wire pricing, put professional publicity out of reach for the vast majority of American businesses, even though many of them had legitimate news worth covering. Kennedy set out to close that gap by unbundling the essential service, national newswire distribution, from the agency packaging that made it expensive.

The timing was fortuitous. The late 1990s saw the commercial internet collapsing the cost of information distribution across every industry, and the press-release business was no exception. By building a lean, web-based operation focused specifically on small-business clients, eReleases could offer what the big wires offered, placement on a genuine national newswire, without the enterprise sales apparatus that drove up everyone else's prices. More than a quarter century later, the company still describes itself with the same founding logic: affordable distribution for businesses the traditional PR industry priced out.

The PR Newswire partnership

The centerpiece of eReleases' offering is its relationship with PR Newswire, now part of Cision. The company describes itself as the only full-exposure, nationwide partner of PR Newswire, meaning its clients' releases travel over the same wire infrastructure used by the world's largest corporations, reaching newsrooms, databases, and syndication endpoints across the country. For a small business, that distinction matters enormously: distribution "via PR Newswire" carries the wire's credibility and reach, as opposed to the limited pickup of budget services that merely post releases on their own websites.

This partnership model is what allows a Baltimore company with a small staff to offer genuinely national distribution. Rather than building its own wire infrastructure, eReleases functions as a specialized reseller and value-added layer on top of PR Newswire: it handles the client relationship, the editorial preparation, and the targeting, while the wire provides the distribution backbone. The economics work because eReleases aggregates the demand of thousands of small clients into wire volume that justifies preferential handling.

Services: editors, targeting, and SEO

What distinguishes eReleases from a pure reseller is the human layer it adds. Every release passes through real editors, who review and refine client copy before distribution. The company maintains a curated media database of more than a million contacts and offers targeted sends to hand-selected journalists relevant to each client's story, reporting a 94 percent delivery rate on those targeted emails. SEO support rounds out the package, ensuring releases are structured to perform in search as well as in newsrooms.

The editorial emphasis reflects Kennedy's conviction, developed over decades in the business, that distribution without craft is wasted money. A release that reaches a thousand newsrooms but gives journalists no reason to care will generate nothing; a well-constructed release sent to the right fifty reporters can generate coverage worth many times its cost. The company's educational content, including its long-running PR Fuel blog, returns to this theme constantly, advising small businesses on news judgment, timing, and the follow-up work that turns distribution into coverage.

Track record and clientele

The company's self-reported numbers sketch a substantial small-business publicity operation: more than 150,000 releases distributed, over 30,000 clients served, and upwards of $132 million in earned media generated. Its client roster includes recognizable consumer brands such as Manscaped and Squatty Potty, along with more than 40 brands that appeared on the television show Shark Tank, a natural fit given the show's celebration of scrappy, publicity-hungry entrepreneurship.

That clientele illustrates the market segment eReleases was built to serve: founder-led companies, startups, and growing small businesses for whom a single well-placed story can change the company's trajectory, but for whom a $20,000 agency minimum was never a serious option. The company's longevity suggests the segment is both large and durable; 27 years of operation spans the dot-com boom and bust, the social media revolution, and the AI era, each of which was supposed to render the press release obsolete.

Mickie Kennedy: founder and publicist

Kennedy remains the company's public face and animating force. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from George Mason University, an unusual credential in the wire-service business that helps explain the company's emphasis on the release as a written document rather than a mere distribution unit. He is a sought-after podcast guest on small-business and marketing shows and a two-time Amazon bestselling author, of Beginner's Guide to Writing Powerful Press Releases and The PR Strategy Manifesto, books that extend the company's educational mission beyond its client base.

Kennedy's public writing consistently argues that small businesses underinvest in publicity not because they lack news but because the industry taught them that publicity costs more than it does. His books and blog posts function simultaneously as genuine education and as marketing for the company's core thesis: that professional-grade distribution is available at small-business prices, and that the main thing standing between most companies and meaningful coverage is knowledge of the craft.

How the service works in practice

A typical eReleases engagement begins with the client's announcement, a product launch, a milestone, a study, an event, which the company's editors help shape into a properly structured release. The release then goes out over PR Newswire for national exposure while simultaneously being pitched to targeted journalists selected from the company's media database for relevance to the story. Clients receive reports on views, clicks, and pickup, allowing them to measure what the distribution actually produced.

The company's guidance stresses that distribution is the beginning of a campaign, not the end of one. Its educational materials walk clients through post-distribution work: checking the release as published, saving pickup links, sharing the news through owned channels, following up with interested journalists by beat, measuring outcomes rather than vanity metrics, and repurposing the coverage into ongoing marketing assets. That campaign framing, distribute, drive to a hub, follow up, measure, repurpose, is presented as what actually works in the current media environment, as opposed to the older fantasy that a wire release alone generates coverage.

The Baltimore base

eReleases operates from 5024 Campbell Blvd., Suite D, in Baltimore, Maryland 21236, with main and editorial phone lines at 800-710-5535 and 410-931-2966. The Baltimore location places it in a mid-Atlantic business corridor with easy reach to Washington's media market and New York's, while keeping operating costs well below those of a Manhattan or D.C. wire-service office. The company's hours of operation run Monday through Friday, 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time, with editors available by phone, email, and chat.

The physical modesty of the operation is part of the business model. A national wire presence does not require a national office footprint when the distribution itself happens over PR Newswire's infrastructure; what it requires is editorial staff, media relationships, and the technology to manage thousands of small clients efficiently. Baltimore provides all three at a cost structure that supports the company's affordable pricing.

Competitive landscape

eReleases competes in a press-release market stratified by price and by the reality of distribution. At the top sit the enterprise wires, PR Newswire and Business Wire, selling directly to large corporations at corporate prices. Below them stretches a crowded field of budget and independent services, from Send2Press Newswire in California to a host of online-only platforms, each arguing that its distribution is genuine and its prices fair. eReleases' distinctive claim in this crowded field is the combination of true PR Newswire distribution with small-business pricing and human editorial service, a three-part proposition few competitors can match simultaneously.

The company's 27-year survival is itself a competitive statement. The independent newswire segment has seen constant churn, with services launching, merging, and folding as technology costs shifted. eReleases has endured by staying narrowly focused on its founding segment and by maintaining the wire partnership that gives its distribution credibility, rather than chasing enterprise clients or diversifying into unrelated marketing services.

Challenges and outlook

The structural challenges facing eReleases are those facing the entire newswire industry. Newsroom employment has contracted for two decades, shrinking the population of journalists available to receive pitches; artificial intelligence has commoditized the writing assistance that once differentiated full-service providers; and social and owned media give companies direct audience access that bypasses wires entirely. Each trend pressures both the price and the perceived necessity of paid distribution.

Against those pressures, the company's enduring advantages are the credibility of genuine wire distribution, the trust built over 27 years and 150,000 releases, and the structural reality that millions of American small businesses still need an affordable path to national publicity. As AI-generated content floods the media ecosystem, the value of attributable, editor-reviewed announcements distributed over an established wire may well increase rather than decrease. For the small businesses that have always been eReleases' reason for existing, that combination of affordability and authenticity remains the company's pitch, just as it was in 1998.

Access and contact

eReleases (MEK Enterprises LLC) is headquartered at 5024 Campbell Blvd., Suite D, Baltimore, MD 21236, reachable at 800-710-5535. Small businesses and communications professionals can learn about its distribution plans, writing services, and pricing through its official website at ereleases.com.