PR & Outreach software is any digital solution that helps companies identify and communicate with traditional media members, social media influencers, journalists and bloggers, with the goal of improving customer outreach and brand reputation. Products in this category usually come with a built-in searchable database of relevant influencers, which allow marketers to search for and connect with people who have hundreds and thousands of followers in their niche.
These products also help marketers and influencers work together to develop and run an outreach campaign, manage workflow and comply with disclosure rules. You can also plan and manage PR campaigns, generate leads through prospecting and outreach, get more high-quality backlinks, monitor competitors, publish and distribute press releases, curate influencer-generated content and analyze the performance of an outreach campaign.
More advanced products can help with prioritizing important contacts and sending personalized outreach to them. The software can automatically save your tweets and emails and allow you to set reminders to follow-up on them.
Different types of PR & Outreach tools are available for different needs. If you simply need to identify relevant influencers in your niche, any basic product with a searchable database of influencers would suffice.
However, not all databases allow you to contact an influencer directly. Some products provide you the contact details of influencers but expect you to contact them on your own. Others make negotiating terms easier by allowing you to make bids and get counter offers from influential contacts.
You’ll also find products that assign scores to influencers on the basis of their reach, number of followers and engagement levels. More advanced products recommend the most suitable influencer for your brand based on certain criteria.
If you work with a large number of influencers across various campaigns, you need a program that allows you to organize your contacts easily. For instance, some products help you segment your contact data for each campaign. You’ll also find products that help create templates with custom fields, so that you can send personalized outreach to your contacts.
More advanced products automate the process of sending outreach emails to your contacts. Some even track the performance of your outreach emails. For instance, you can track how many contacts opened, clicked on and replied to your emails.
Another important thing to consider is how the software handles the content distribution process. For instance, you may need a product that lets you schedule posts across multiple media channels at a future date and time.
Product recommendations, vendor rankings, market overview and tips on how to select PR & Outreach software for business. Published in May 2025.
Outreach software helps businesses communicate with customers, bloggers, journalists and other stakeholders surrounding the business. It also helps with online reputation management (ORM), generating leads and prospecting. Key features include influencer re...
FREE DOWNLOAD PR-&-Outreach-Software-Buyer-Guide-2018.pdfFeature | Feature Description |
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A/B Testing | Run split tests for websites, emails, ads and more by serving different versions of the content to different users. |
API | Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are programmatic intersections with external products or platforms that allow for custom integrations with your own solutions or other solutions you are using. |
Audience Targeting | Allows for audience segmentation, generally to tailor marketing or advertising messages to target specific user groups. |
Brand Management | Tracking and promotion features for one or more brands of products. |
Calendar Management | Manage and update calendars for scheduling or consolidation of events across teams, departments or business functions. |
Click-to-Dial | Dial telephone numbers with one click. |
Contact Management | Manage large amounts of personal or business contacts in a centralized system. |
Contact Sharing | Share contacts across teams or platforms to give access to others or to migrate address books across different systems. |
Conversion Tracking | Track signups, purchases or user actions to measure the effectiveness of marketing or advertising campaigns. This is often used to optimize inbound or outbound marketing efforts and improve sales conversions through a range of online channels. |
Dashboard | Dashboards are digital interfaces commonly used to visualise data or give quick access to important features and functions of online platforms. They often serve as an overview gateway in software applications. |
Data Export | Exporting functionality can be used to streamline the migration of data sets and information across systems, platforms or applications. |
Data Import | Importing functionality allows you to use data sets from other systems or platforms to cut down on data entry requirements or to more easily migrate records from similar applications you have used in the past. |
Data Visualization | Data visualization features render a visual interpretation of data sets through the use of charts, infographics and other visual cues generally in form of a reporting dashboard. |
Email Integration | Integration with email clients or providers to create and send emails as well as view received emails within an application. |
External Integrations | Integrations with other software products or platforms to improve efficiency and compatibility across systems. |
Google Apps Integration | Integration with the G Suite, including Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Calendar, etc. |
Lead Management | Manage business leads to improve sales outreach processes or stay on top of prospect inquiries. |
Lead Scoring | Manually or automatically assign quality scores to business leads to target / segment sales outreach efforts. |
Marketing Automation | Automate marketing processes, such as outreach emails, customer engagement, chat replies through the use of chatbots and others. |
Multi-User | Supports more than just one user account and generally allows for collaboration with colleagues. |
Notifications | Includes notification support and sends you alerts with information on important events and other time sensitive instances. For example through push notifications on mobile phones or email notifications. |
Scheduling | Schedule tasks, resources, appointments, payments, communications, etc. |
Social-Media Integration | Integration support with social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and others. |
Third-Party Plugins/Add-Ons | Offers additional features or integrations built by third-party developers in form of plugins or add-ons. |
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