PR project management software: 6 tools for your agency

PR projects are complex, fast-moving, and often unpredictable. To meet your goals, you need to work in a different way than teams that use repeatable workflows and fixed project timelines. 

But if you search for PR project management software online, you’ll be inundated with tools for marketers or generic project management solutions. These are standard platforms that aren’t designed for PR teams. That means they’re usually:

• Inflexible, which doesn’t sit well with a PR team’s reliance on news cycles, compressed timelines, and clients with highly individual preferences 
• Opaque, lacking features for providing visibility on the team’s future tasks and the way media relationships and publication schedules might play out 
• Siloed, with delays in communication that can derail entire campaigns, and very few features to coordinate subteams like media, client, creative, and strategy. 

So, for this post, we’ve tracked down six project management tools that can actually fit PR teams’ workflows and use cases. Together, these tools can manage all the work that goes into building relationships, monitoring mentions, analyzing performance, and managing the creation and distribution of documents like press releases.

The first solution on the list is our platform, Wrike, which offers full-service project management software that’s ideal for PR agencies. Wrike tailors your workflows and workspaces to the intricacies of your team and your client’s requirements, and lets you monitor projects in real time. 

Later in the post, I’ll also cover PR tools to use alongside Wrike to manage other aspects of your projects – like media monitoring, analytics, and press release distribution. 

Key features of project management software for PR teams

PR agencies need a range of features in their project management software — everything from project or client dashboards and document creation and sharing tools to team calendars, analytics features, and more.

And while every agency and project is different, the ideal PR project management software should be scalable, automated, and collaborative. 

Scalability is vital because PR teams manage large volumes of data, especially in agencies with multiple clients. As teams grow, their software needs to handle increased workloads without slowing down. True scalability also means integrating more of your team’s tools into a single shared project management platform. 

Automation is another essential part of a PR team’s work management, especially in an industry where situations can change quickly. Automations keep your projects current, for example, by alerting your team when a campaign is picked up by a publication so they can start monitoring and responding. If your project management system isn’t displaying the latest data, your team’s response time is slower, and you can’t make the most informed decisions for your clients. 

Finally, team collaboration features can make or break a PR project management tool. PR projects move quickly, so teams need to communicate efficiently, too. Look for platforms that centralize discussions around your project planning, enable you to collaborate on writing and editing your documents, and notify team members as soon as a new task or update arrives in their inbox. 

When your project management platform fulfills these requirements, you’re in a strong position to streamline your processes, improve communication with your team and your stakeholders, and prove the value you’re bringing to your clients. 

6 PR project management software platforms 

Now that you know what to look for, let’s explore six tools to optimize the way your PR team handles project work: 

1. Wrike, an all-in-one project management platform with all the essential features PR teams need to plan, execute, and monitor their work 
2. BuzzStream, a PR CRM that lets teams build targeted lists and manage relationships with their contacts 
3. Prezly, a CRM with an emphasis on press releases and an online newsroom to gather and publish a team’s latest posts 
4. Brand24, a social listening platform with features to help with reputation management 
5. CoverageBook, a tool to measure performance and generate branded reports or presentation slides to display key metrics to clients 
6. BrandPush, a tool to increase the chances of press releases being picked up by big-name media outlets 

This list covers both tools for task management and project oversight, and tools that handle a specific aspect of PR or agency management.

Let’s get started with Wrike and how our software can be adapted to a PR team’s needs. 

1. Wrike: All-in-one project management for PR teams 

Wrike is a scalable, automated, collaborative work management platform that can be completely tailored to your PR team’s workflows and client management needs. 

Centralize all your PR processes 

When your PR team moves into Wrike, you can create a custom workspace that reflects the work you regularly undertake. This can include: 

• Templates for common PR tasks: These can accelerate the document workflows you use to draft pitches, launch products, or navigate approval stages for new content. You can rely on one of our pre-built options, use Wrike’s blueprint feature, or set up a custom item with a designated workflow. 
• Separate boards for each project or client: For example, if your agency works with multiple clients, you can create a new dashboard for each one. These dashboards filter your project progress data, and you can easily adjust permissions to keep an individual client in the loop while protecting sensitive data from other projects and still allowing your agency staff to jump from account to account.
• Multiple overviews of your project progress: Choose an agile, Trello-style Kanban board to show the approval status of documents you’re developing for a new campaign, or an interactive Gantt chart to show the critical path to the end of your project. These views help you see your work from more angles and make better resource management decisions for the rest of your project. 
• Integrations with the other tools your team uses: These include CRMs like Salesforce, collaborative tools like Google Docs, Google Drive, and Zapier, messaging platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams, and invoicing platforms like QuickBooks. These integrations close gaps in your processes, making your workflows and communications more efficient. 

With this level of customization, you can use Wrike as the central source of truth for your internal PR team or agency. Crucially, your workspace can be a true reflection of the tools you use and the way you approach your tasks, your resource allocation strategy, and the relationships you build with your clients. 

Best of all, whether you’re part of a small team or an enterprise, a Wrike workspace grows with you. If you take on more clients or more complex projects, simply add more boards and project folders to continue to organize your work. 

Even when your processes start to overlap, and your team’s timelines and calendars become more challenging to manage, Wrike includes features to track projects and prioritize your work. 

These include: 

• Drag and drop task dependencies, so your Gantt chart timeline adjusts automatically if a task is added or rescheduled
• Built-in time tracking functionality for an accurate view of your team’s capacity for new tasks and your billable hours
• User-friendly risk reporting features to alert you to a project in danger of missing a milestone and help you respond

Even when you scale up, these features make it easier to manage busy periods and overlapping campaigns without tasks slipping through the cracks. 

Wrike makes it quicker and easier to find things. You don’t have to turn things into a full-blown meeting, and you can operate more asynchronously. When someone asks where this document is, we know it’s in the task.

PT Umphress, Global Director of Digital Marketing Operations, Blue Yonder

Use automation to work more responsively

When your PR team works in Wrike, they can implement automations at every level to enhance their project overview and to work more efficiently. 

Wrike’s automations can be game-changing for teams, but these advanced features are also extremely easy to use. Our workflow automations are based on simple when/then rules — when one change is made to a task, then a sequence of status changes, notifications, or routing follows automatically.

PR teams can use Wrike’s automation features in several key areas.

• Custom workflow automations: Keep up the momentum behind your tasks with seamless automations. For example, when a creative team moves a document from “Drafting” to “Review,” Wrike automatically notifies the reviewer and sends them the latest version of the file. 
• Automated communications and reminders: You can also use Wrike’s triggers to send automated notifications to team members, for example, when a milestone is approaching and key tasks are still pending. This eliminates the need to chase approvals or search for status updates across external communication channels. This automation even extends beyond your team to outside stakeholders and clients. For example, when an item moves to “Ready for client review,” Wrike can trigger an email, send them the file, and note their feedback — all without leaving the platform. 
• Automated overviews: If a work item changes status in one overview (for example, a team member marks a task complete in their individual dashboard), the item updates across the Wrike workspace. Then, whether you view the task in your team’s Table view, Kanban board, calendar, or portfolio dashboard that shows all your ongoing projects, you’ll be able to see the very latest information. 
• Automated workflows across external tools: Wrike’s automations also connect the external tools that form an essential part of your team’s workflow. In a document workflow, for example, Wrike can sync files from cloud storage or trigger actions in other platforms to reduce manual handoffs and update the other teams or departments your PR specialists work with. 
• Automated reporting: Wrike’s automated reporting software keeps teams updated without the need to compile spreadsheets manually. With a series of custom fields, these reports can show everything from task statuses to the impact of your campaigns. You can even schedule reports to send the latest insights to your managers or clients to keep them in the loop without scheduling a sit-down meeting. 

In PR, time is often of the essence, and proving your results is everything. In both these scenarios, automation can improve your team’s approach and help improve both your campaign planning and your results. 

I just clicked the button in Wrike and watched everyone’s jaws drop as it instantly did the work that probably would have taken me a couple of hours, right before their eyes.

James Ball, Vice President of Project Management at Jellyfish

Collaborate effectively across your agency

Wrike makes it easier for PR teams to collaborate internally, across departments, and with their clients. 

Within teams, PR teams specialists can discuss their work using tools like: 

• Comments and comment summaries attached to project task cards.
• @mentions to notify team members instantly, for example, when they need to answer a question about a design asset or a point of feedback. 
• A full task history for all the work you undertake, which quickly answers questions about who has responsibility for each stage of the workflow, who approved a task, or who last communicated with the client. 

With these tools, teams have reported reducing the number of internal emails they send by 90% or more, as well as significantly speeding up approval workflows. 

Wrike also supports cross-team collaboration. 

Within an agency or a large company, teams can share tasks, subtasks, workflows, dashboards, and project folders across departments simply by adjusting the access roles. Our innovative cross-tagging feature allows items to appear in multiple spaces within Wrike, which eliminates the need for teams to request and send project assets like planning documents, invoices, or timesheets by email. 

And when it comes to communication with clients, Wrike streamlines all the core processes of sharing files, gathering feedback, and managing different versions of PR campaign assets. 

Many teams will invite a client to join their Wrike workspace, where they can instantly view the latest progress on their initiatives and add comments to tasks. Alternatively, if a client prefers to work outside of Wrike, you can email them from within the platform and record their responses on your task cards for your team to reference. Again, this eliminates the need to switch between tools, giving everyone visibility into the status of campaigns and deliverables.

2. BuzzStream for media and influencer targeting 

BuzzStream is an outreach CRM that helps PR and marketing teams build qualified lists, send personalized emails, and optimize their outreach ROI. 

The features this platform offers aim to help teams focus on messaging that builds relationships with media and influencers. By using the tool to track metrics like open rates and responses, they can make smarter decisions about who to reach out to and which leads to pursue. 

One of the niches BuzzStream focuses on is digital PR. Here, the tool filters CRM data to make targeted lists of journalists, bloggers, or influencers, which are based on when and how they’ve previously interacted with the company or client online. In the next stages of relationship building, BuzzStream offers a campaign management dashboard for a bird’s-eye view of key details like relationship stage, followers, and most recent activity for each contact. 

BuzzStream pricing: 

• Starter plan: $24 per month for one user and 1,000 contacts 
• Growth plan: $124 per month for three users and 25,000 contacts 
• Professional plan: $299 per month for six users and 100,000 contacts 
• Custom pricing available for enterprise teams starting at $999 per month. Contact the customer support team for more information  

3. Prezly for PR CRM 

Prezly is another CRM designed for PR teams – especially those who regularly write and send press releases. Within the tool, teams can create and segment lists based on a journalist’s opens, clicks, or covers, as well as the topics each journalist is most interested in. It then helps them to personalize outreach, build relationships, and increase responses. 

Once the stories are out there, Prezly helps PR teams track their media mentions and respond quickly to the coverage they’re receiving. This tool also supports an online newsroom where the company’s announcements can be added to a media channel. This increases their visibility online and makes it easier for journalists to find, reference, and share the latest stories. These newsroom stories can also be embedded directly in the emails the team sends out. 

Prezly pricing 

• Essential plan: $100 per month for up to 5,000 contacts when billed annually 
• Standard plan: $300 per month for up to 10,000 contacts 
• Custom enterprise pricing available 

4. Brand24 for media monitoring 

Brand24 is a social listening tool that helps PR teams measure brand awareness, discover customer insights, analyze their competitors, and protect their brand’s reputation. The platform uses AI-powered tools to give teams complete access to their online mentions, which can support forecasting and help them get ahead of crises as they start to develop. 

For PR teams, this tool offers either a live, ongoing view of the brand’s mentions or the option to receive daily or weekly updates (plus “Storm Alerts” for situations that need immediate attention). It also includes a “Context Analysis” feature, which monitors an entire industry or product category so PR teams can plan their next moves. 

This platform also includes an automated report creation feature to measure PR coverage. Instead of manually compiling reports, Brand24 can quickly create PDFs to summarize the results of a team’s PR efforts in a customizable timeframe.   

Brand24 pricing: 

• Individual plan: $149 per month for 3 keywords when billed annually
• Team plan: $249 per month for 7 keywords 
• Pro plan: $299 per month for 12 keywords 
• Business plan: $499 per month for 25 keywords 
• Enterprise plans available from $999 

5. CoverageBook for PR analytics 

CoverageBook is a PR reporting tool designed to generate attractive, branded reports for an agency’s PR clients. To use the tool, teams copy links to online articles, print clippings, audio/video files, and posts into CoverageBook, and the software collects data on how many views and engagements those items of content have received. Teams then choose which screenshots and metrics they want to highlight in the report, and the software generates either a report to share online, a PDF, or a CSV. 

The reports a team can generate with CoverageBook are accessible and attractive, which can go a long way in terms of building relationships with clients who might not want to engage with spreadsheet-like reports of metrics they’re unfamiliar with. It can also help reduce a team’s workload when it comes to preparing pitches or presentations, as the same reports can be used as slides.

Coverage Book pricing

• Bronze plan: $99 per month for five users and 100 clips
• Bronze Plus plan: $169 per month for 10 users and 200 clips
• Silver plan: $299 per month for 50 users and 400 clips
• Gold plan: $599 per month for 100 users and 1,200 clips
• Custom enterprise pricing available  

6. BrandPush for press releases 

BrandPush is a tool that aims to build authority and secure more coverage for a PR agency’s clients by pushing their press releases directly to online publications. BrandPush is also used by many small businesses that would otherwise struggle to gain traction in the media. 

This tool provides templates and guidelines to companies crafting press releases, though there is also the option for BrandPush to write and optimize the press release on their behalf. Once the content is pushed, agencies receive a detailed online report with live links and SEO statistics on the story’s performance. These reports show, for example, how many publications a story has appeared in (with live links to the sites) and how many followers and monthly readers the news sites where the story was published have. 

BrandPush pricing (excluding writing packages): 

• Access package: $195 
• Growth package: $265 
• Authority package: $595 
• Ultimate package: $795  

Choose Wrike as your PR project management software

When your goal is to manage your PR agency more efficiently while delivering exceptional results for your clients, Wrike is the only project management software you need. 

With Wrike, you can optimize and track progress on every project you run. With tools like project dashboards, custom workflows, and automated reporting and analytics, you can also gain insights that help build lasting relationships with your clients and prove the results of your work. 

FAQs

How does PR project management software differ from marketing project management software? 

PR project management software and marketing project management software differ in terms of their main focus and the workflows they’re built around. PR project management software is centered on earned media and reputation management, and includes dashboards and workflows to support pitching, press release creation, relationship management, and crisis management. Marketing project management software is geared toward the more repetitive and predictable work of planning and executing campaigns and monitoring their results. 

What are the benefits of PR project management software? 

PR project management software helps PR teams work more efficiently by centralizing their tasks, timelines, and communications in a tool that’s designed for the workflows they use. It improves visibility and accountability by tracking metrics like pitch status, media coverage, reach, and sentiment. This makes it easier to measure the impact of a campaign and to make decisions as teams respond to time-sensitive situations. 

What is the best PR project management software? 

The best PR project management software is Wrike, an all-in-one platform that centralizes project planning, execution, monitoring, and collaboration. Wrike includes customizable dashboards and workflows for PR teams and can be integrated with many of the key tools PR teams use to track mentions, nurture relationships with the media, and manage their reputation online. 

What is the most useful tool for PR professionals? 

The most useful tools for PR professionals give a live, in-depth view of their ongoing task lists, which can be viewed by team members and external stakeholders. Wrike is a great example of a project management tool that does this. Other useful software platforms include those that track metrics to prove the success of projects and campaigns (like Brand24 for social listening) and CRM tools that help target and personalize pitches — including both BuzzStream and Prezly.