A CRM helps PR agencies better manage new business, media contacts and client work.
Rather than juggling multiple applications or managing everything through spreadsheets, a CRM lets resource-restricted small businesses work from a single platform. Centralizing workflows in this way can help you close more clients, keep better tabs on journalists and reduce manual work when running PR campaigns.
In this article, you’ll learn why PR CRM software is essential, how it integrates into your daily workflows and five of the leading platforms to consider.
Key takeaways from PR CRM Software
A PR CRM is a tool that supports public relations operations by centralizing sales processes, managing media contacts and tracking campaign performance.
It boosts productivity by automating key functions, such as creating email pitches, scheduling activities and sending follow-ups.
Choosing the right PR software helps you save time, keeps your media relations organized and improves outreach results as your agency grows.
Pipedrive’s customizable workflows and AI tools help you manage multiple PR workflows in one tool – try it free for 14 days.
Why PR agencies need CRM software
PR CRM software is a specialized customer relationship management tool that helps your agency win new work, launch outreach campaigns and build strong relationships with journalists.
A successful PR agency needs to manage campaigns for existing clients while also converting potential customers. With an all-in-one CRM solution, you can do both without switching tools.
A unified solution like Pipedrive centralizes every lead your PR agency generates into a single dashboard, letting sales reps manage and prioritize new business requests. Here’s what that looks like:
Custom pipelines let you manage work for existing clients. For example, you can create stage names that correspond with your campaign workflow, such as:
Press release drafted
Outreach sent
Follow-up required
Placement secured
Because a comprehensive CRM handles both client work and sales workflows, it eliminates the need to switch between multiple tools. It’s an ideal option for small businesses with limited resources that want to do more with less.
Here’s more information on ways CRMs help small PR firms, including real-life success stories. While the case studies aren’t PR-specific, public relations professionals can experience the same results.
Centralize sales efforts
A CRM for a PR agency tracks new clients as they move through the customer journey.
While you could use a spreadsheet or your inbox, a CRM keeps every interaction, task and note in one place. It provides everyone with access to the latest sales data, improving team collaboration.
A visual sales pipeline and predefined sales activities also encourage your PR company’s sales reps to take action to move deals forward.
Here’s what these activities look like in Pipedrive:
You can view deal progress, identify bottlenecks and prioritize follow-ups to close more prospective clients and win campaign work.
How Pipedrive helps
UK-based video production agency Interesting Content transitioned to Pipedrive from a paper-based system.
Pipedrive made it easier to track the sales process and create a permanent record of every customer interaction.
Interesting Content now has four times as many leads in the pipeline. It’s also made sales a much more predictable process, as founder and managing director Suds Singh explains:
“Pipedrive has enabled me to have instant access to that data, so it’s not just quadrupling our revenue, but ensuring that we have predictable revenue.”
Save time with automations
The right CRM can automate repetitive tasks like filling out a new client form, so staff spend more time speaking with prospective clients or pitching stories.
For example, Pipedrive can automatically create a new deal when a lead fills out an online form or start a drip marketing campaign every time a new lead gets added.
You can see more of Pipedrive’s workflow automation templates below:
The CRM can assign a sales rep and create a task to schedule a meeting. It gives you a structured sales workflow in place before your team lifts a finger.
Automated sales workflows can also send follow-up emails, schedule appointments and manage contact information.
Automation reduces the chances that your team forgets to follow up, making deals less likely to slip through the cracks. When you use it to automate campaign work – say, following up with journalists – a CRM frees up your PR team to focus on high-value activities, such as creating a pitch deck or managing brand reputation.
How Pipedrive helps
Waterproofing business Fibersals uses Pipedrive’s automations to reduce administrative work by 10% and lead qualification time by 30%.
The company uses the LeadBooster Chatbot to pre-qualify prospects on its website, score leads and move them through the sales process.
As Dominic Dutra, a partner at Fibersals, explains:
Manage media contacts
CRM software stores information about clients, journalists and influencers, helping you effortlessly manage thousands of media contacts from different industries and publications.
It keeps detailed records of every interaction, letting you quickly see when you last spoke to a journalist or how they reacted to your most recent media outreach campaign.
For example, Pipedrive customers can use the detailed contact view to see a timeline of customer engagement:
If your CRM has built-in marketing automation software, PR professionals can send personalized emails using contact data, improving the chances that journalists will pick up the story.
How Pipedrive helps
Serenis, an Italy-based mental health therapy company, uses Pipedrive to manage relations with clients and over 400 specialists.
It uses tools like Smart Docs to send proposals to therapists and eSignatures to sign contracts, features that aren’t necessarily available in other tools.
Automations also enable Serenis to send messages to therapists as they progress through the pipeline, saving the team three hours a week while enhancing the recruitment process.
Only the best CRM tools let you perform all these tasks. You can find out more about the leading platforms for PR purposes below.
5 of the best PR CRM software providers
The best PR CRM software will depend on your agency’s size, budget and needs.
To help you get started, we’ve compiled a list of the best providers of CRMs and related tools for small businesses.
PR CRM system | Features |
Pipedrive: the best all-rounder |
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Zixflow: best for multichannel outreach |
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Prowly: best for finding and managing media relationships |
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Prezly: best for creating personalized campaigns |
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Presscloud: best for AI press release distribution |
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Note: While some of these tools are general PR software platforms rather than dedicated CRMs, they still offer relevant functionality for small agency needs.
1. Pipedrive: the best all-rounder
Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM that lets PR agencies combine client acquisition and media relationship management to drive long-term growth.
The platform’s visual, customizable pipelines show all your deals, pitches and client projects in one place.
Here’s what a pipeline can look like in Pipedrive:
Imagine you’re a small PR agency with five PR pros and a two-person sales and marketing team.
You create one pipeline for reps to track new sales opportunities and another for PR professionals to manage outreach campaigns. In both cases, you can quickly access contact information, track interactions and spot bottlenecks.
Use the platform’s email marketing software, Campaigns by Pipedrive, to send and track PR campaigns to your database of journalists.
Built-in customer segmentation lets you target specific journalists based on characteristics like their beat, publication or engagement history.
Once you send an email campaign or press release, real-time reporting tools track open rates, click rates and other engagement metrics, providing you with data to improve your campaigns.
Other key Pipedrive features for PR professionals include:
AI-powered sales insights. Pipedrive’s AI-powered Sales Assistant suggests next steps, flags at-risk deals and provides personalized recommendations to help small sales teams keep their pipeline moving.
Workflow automation. Save time and eliminate busywork by automatically sending follow-up emails, scheduling meetings and assigning tasks using pre-defined triggers.
Detailed contact and client history. Keep detailed records of every customer and media contact interaction using detailed views, CRM notes and timelines.
Email outreach campaigns. Send personalized emails to journalists and bloggers at scale using Campaigns, segmentation and Pipedrive’s AI email writer.
Visual reporting dashboard. Create dedicated dashboards for stakeholders to monitor sales metrics and campaign performance at a glance.
Integrations with project management and PR software. Connect Pipedrive with tools you already use, from email marketing tools to project management software.
According to one user review:
“I absolutely love Pipedrive's intuitive setup and pipeline feature. It makes tracking leads and deals effortless, providing a clear, single pane of glass view to manage sales processes efficiently.”
Centralizing everything in Pipedrive means paying for fewer subscriptions and wasting less time switching between applications.
It’s an all-in-one tool with multiple pricing plans that helps any PR agency thrive.
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2. Zixflow: best for multichannel outreach
Zixflow is a customer engagement platform that combines customer relationship management, marketing automation and multi-channel outreach.
It can be a sensible solution if you run diverse campaigns that require you to contact journalists and bloggers using email, social media and SMS.
Rather than juggling separate tools and platforms for every communication channel, use Zixflow to reach journalists using their preferred method from one dashboard.
Zixflow’s outreach channels include:
Email
WhatsApp
SMS
Rich communication services (RCS) messages
If you’re unsure which channel is best, Zixflow’s AI automatically selects the optimal option for maximum deliverability.
Zixflow also lets you automate outreach at scale through AI workflows that send different messages on specific channels – based on predefined triggers.
For instance, you can automatically send an SMS follow-up if a journalist doesn’t get back to your initial email within three days. If they still don’t reply, you can create an additional fallback message, send another email or choose to do nothing.
Other key Zixflow features for PR professionals include:
AI-powered content creation. Generate personalized messages and email copy based on simple prompts and historical data.
Automated workflows. If a journalist engages with your email, the system can automatically add them to a follow-up sequence.
Contact management. Build and segment detailed media contact lists.
Contact validation. Use Zixflow’s AI email finder and validator to locate and verify journalist emails.
According to one user review:
“Zixflow’s email finder and validator enabled us to find and reach out to our clients. This has helped us greatly with our account-based marketing strategies.”
3. Prowly: best for finding and managing media relationships
Prowly is a partner relationship management (PRM) software solution that combines contact management, media monitoring and press release creation in one platform.
The platform has a database of over one million contacts – think of it as a small business version of Muck Rack.
Prowly supports startup agencies or new in-house PR departments that need immediate access to a large media database of verified journalists and influencers.
The expansive database is also helpful for established agencies covering new industries. If you don’t have access to contacts in that field, Prowly connects you to verified journalists, bloggers and influencers.
Instead of spending hours researching journalist contact information, you quickly build targeted media lists. Using filters like audience data, media type and location to comb through contacts and find the most relevant journalists.
Email verification ensures messages reach inboxes instead of bouncing. Built-in email analytics even provide valuable feedback on your pitch’s performance.
Other key Prowly features for PR professionals include:
A press release creator. Quickly develop a compelling story angle with Prowly’s generative AI tool.
Online newsroom. Create a digital hub for anyone looking to learn about your company.
Media monitoring. Automatically track where your releases are published and monitor engagement in real time.
Email analytics. Get valuable feedback on pitch performance by tracking which subject lines and approaches generate the most engagement.
According to one user review:
“Love how easy it is to whiz through the database and add contacts to a personalised media list. The interface is so user-friendly and the various automation features take care of some of the heavy lifting involved with link building for you - personalizing and maximizing your outreach couldn’t be simpler.”
4. Prezly: best for creating personalized campaigns
Prezly is a PR management platform that prioritizes building genuine relationships with journalists over mass outreach.
Its comprehensive pitching toolkit lets you create, personalize, send and track emails without leaving the platform.
Suppose you want to reach 50 journalists with relevant messages simultaneously.
Start by using Prezly’s editor to create a mobile-friendly, SEO-optimized template that embeds rich media like videos, images and your press release. Then, personalize your message with information you have about each journalist.
Prezly lets you schedule mass campaigns in one go and identifies inactive email addresses before you hit send.
It then tracks open and click-through rates in real time and lets you organize contacts by engagement, so you can prioritize journalists accordingly.
Other key Prezly features for PR professionals include:
Automated workflows. Collect journalist details using online forms, then automatically add them to your CRM.
Media monitoring. Track new mentions automatically or integrate external tools to see who’s covering your stories.
Press release distribution. Create mobile-friendly, SEO-optimized stories with images, videos, buttons and attachments.
Track performance. Use built-in analytics to monitor newsroom performance and log earned media coverage.
According to one user review:
“I love that Prezly allows us to ditch our Excel spreadsheets. Organizing our contacts is easy to track and store without a messy spreadsheet. Our clients love that they are able to contact us and provide feedback or get general help. The designs are modern and attractive.”
5. Presscloud: best for AI press release distribution
Presscloud is an AI-powered public relations platform that helps agencies and businesses create, distribute and track press releases while centralizing media relationships.
It’s a fit for small PR teams that want to save time owing to a range of AI-powered tools and features.
The Presscloud AI Generator quickly creates press releases based on your website data, previous articles and other sources.
You provide basic information about the story. Then edit, refine and personalize the draft before hitting send.
Here’s what the tool looks like:
Presscloud’s AI press release creator then automates the outreach.
Imagine your small PR team is rushing to get a last-minute press release out by the end of the day.
Presscloud’s AI will automatically find hundreds of relevant journalists. It suggests contacts based on factors such as medium, keywords, sentiment, country and recently written articles.
Other key Presscloud features for PR professionals include:
Media database. Use Presscloud’s database of over 75,000 journalists to find contacts across newspapers, radio, television and trade magazines.
Real-time press alerts. Stay abreast of developing stories with instant email notifications about your company or a competitor.
Multi-client newsrooms. Create separate online newsrooms that showcase press releases and media kits specific to each brand you work with.
Contact information. Use Presscloud’s AI to fill in missing contact information like job titles and current media outlets.
According to one user review:
“It provides entrepreneurs with an excellent solution for effectively marketing their press releases. [Presscloud] is an exceptional platform that effectively and effortlessly distributes press releases to a wide audience.”
What to look for in PR CRM software
When choosing a PR CRM, select one with features that simplify your work and help you achieve results quickly.
Here are five key things to look for:
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With the right CRM system, you’ll be able to simplify your sales efforts, make your team more productive and keep clients happy throughout the customer journey.
Final thoughts
The right PR CRM software solution helps small businesses upgrade from spreadsheets and inboxes to a centralized system that manages every sale, relationship and outreach campaign.
The best CRM for your business depends on your budget, size and the functionality you need. Just ensure it’s versatile enough to cater to your sales, marketing and PR teams.
Try Pipedrive free for 14 days to see how its customizable pipelines, workflow automation and AI features can improve your PR team’s productivity and performance.
