Cision
Cision Database helps public relations firms and PR departments find print and online publishers to pitch stories. Users can access contacts by department and reach the right writer or editor for their stories.
- An extensive media-contact database
- Contact information from top-tier, regional and non-traditional publications
- Leading influencers' pitch preferences
- Editorial calendars
- Premium insights gathered by the company's global-media research team
- Similar-contact recommendations
- Influencer rankings
- A source-request database
- Cision Database is a good starting point for building media-contact lists, and its results include contacts from large media outlets, local papers and active blogs.
- The title's database contains millions of media contacts.
- Contact lists can be exported to Excel.
- Mega-users report good return-on-investment from their Cision Database expenditures.
- Information provided by Cision Database includes contacts' preferred story-pitch methods.
- Cision Database will monitor online news articles for search terms the user submits.
- Users have complained about Cision Database's capability limitations.
- Currently, this software is only available as an online tool, and that fact makes mobile users inefficient.
- Some of the contacts provided by Cision Database are people who left their media companies more than two years prior.
- One Cision Database license can cost more than an employee's annual salary.
- Searches in Cision Database can be cumbersome.
- This title's interface feels clunky to some users.
This tool gives users deep-dive information regarding press contacts. Each day, its makers update 20,000 records. The product's essentially constant data updates likely explain its enterprise-level pricing. Cision does not publish pricing for its products, but Cision Database clients report paying five-figures for one-year access. Users have also made conflicting online comments about the product's interface. Some report loving its speed, but others call it clunky. Ultimately, the decision about whether to invest in a Cision Database license likely depends upon a given company's PR budget. Deep-pocketed departments promoting brands with multi-niche reach that pitch multiple stories daily will achieve better returns on their licensing fees than outfits where less money and time are budgeted for public relations.