Overall Satisfaction with Cision PR Software
Cision is being used at my organization in order to distribute press releases to various media outlets (local and national) as well as track any unpaid media value that we have received through various forms of publicity. It is currently being used in my department alone (marketing communications), but we use it in conjunction with other tools such as Google Analytics in order to determine the effectiveness and ROI of a publicized event such as the grand opening of our new office. The tool is essential to distributing our press releases as well as later tracking release effectiveness in the form of unpaid media value.
- In addition to tracking statistics of the latest release submission, you are able to access previously submitted releases with real time statistics. This is very useful when determining which publications are effectively reaching your intended audiences and which are consistently missing expectations.
- Impressive database of existing media publications. My company is in a very niche industry, but Cision was still able to send our releases to such publications. Even if they don't have a publication (such as a very small local newspaper) all you do is send an email to your account representative and it will be taken care of quickly.
- Amazing Customer Support! I can't tell you how many webinars I sat through and how confused I was when I first began (a con I will address). Anyways, in addition to almost daily webinars, the online chat supporters as well as phone supporters were amazing and patient.
- Ease of multi-tasking. With Cision, you can have multiple tabs open within the interface each providing different functions. This could allow you to search more potential media outlets mid-press release submission.
- Unfortunately, I had a difficult time using this product initially. I found that the interface took some time to get used to (granted this was the first PR software I had used). One feature I particularly struggled with was figuring out how exactly to distribute a press release which was one of the most important reasons my company bought this software!
- As a marketing team, we really felt more responsive to our audience.
- Because you are able to highly target which media outlets receive your releases, we were able to maximize the effectiveness of our campaigns as well as find new industry outlets we had not even heard of.
- The analytics provided by Cision on email blasts are extremely insightful especially when paired with a free website service such as Google analytics.
Cision is the only software of it's kind I have ever used.