PR agencies: one record for every client

A public relations agency needs one record per client with its spokespeople, approved messages, pending sign-offs, work in progress and what has been invoiced, so whoever handles an urgent request does not have to rebuild the context. That is the job of a CRM for public relations. Media monitoring, journalist discovery and press release distribution stay in the tools the agency already uses for them.

Picture a Tuesday at seven in the evening. One of the agency's clients needs a statement about an issue that broke on social media that afternoon. The account executive is on a flight. Her colleague opens the inbox and finds three versions of the client's position on the topic, cannot tell which one was approved or who signed it off, and the client's communications director's number is on the executive's phone. The statement goes out late, even though the team worked fast.

What a public relations client record holds

In AgentticCRM, each client has a record in Clients and contacts that opens on a summary and leads to everything else. For a public relations agency, the useful parts are these:

• The client's contacts with their role: the spokesperson, the person who approves messages, the person who signs invoices. That way the Tuesday colleague knows whom to call.
• The person at the agency who runs the account.
• Internal notes, dated and signed, that never leave the team. That is where it says, for example, that the client prefers not to comment on labor issues.
• The record's files, such as the contract or the minutes from planning meetings.
• Follow-up reminders that notify you when their date arrives.

The record also shows the client's proposals, projects, tasks and invoices, plus its profitability: invoiced, collected and outstanding.

Approved messages that do not get lost between versions

A client's official position on a topic changes over time, and with three versions in the inbox nobody knows which one counts. In Documents, the team writes key messages in the organization space, in one folder per client shared with the people or roles who should see it.

Several people edit at once, and the document saves versions on its own: when it is created, when it is imported and every 30 minutes while it is being edited. If someone changed something that was not approved, you open the history, read the earlier version in full and restore it. Restoring first saves the current content as another version, so nothing is lost.

So the client can review a text without logging into anything, the document can be shared through a read-only public link. If the link reaches the wrong person, you regenerate it or revoke it.

Client sign-offs as tasks with an owner

Many campaigns stall waiting for something from the client: approval of a statement, a spokesperson's confirmation, an announcement date. In projects, that wait becomes a task assigned to a person at the client. They get a notice in their portal and an email with a link to confirm it, even without an account. When they respond, the task closes.

Task comments belong to the team by default, and in the Client portal the client sees the progress you marked as visible, their proposals, their invoices and the tasks you assigned to them.

Retainers and extra work on the same account

Many public relations agencies work on a monthly retainer and also get requests that were not included, like the Tuesday statement. The retainer can be issued as a recurring invoice, and the extra request can be opened as a separate project or as a billable task with its hourly rate. The client sees what was included and what is billed separately, and the agency knows how much work the fee covers. How to log and invoice those hours is covered in billable hours in agencies.

What stays outside the CRM

AgentticCRM organizes the account, the work, the sign-offs and the invoicing. It does not do media monitoring, find journalists, distribute press releases or run social listening. The page for public relations agencies spells out that boundary. If your team already works with certain journalists, you can save them as contacts, but the media database stays in its own tool.

For an agency, what gets lost most when someone leaves or is away is the context of each client. Why it pays to get it out of people's heads is the subject of client context belongs in the CRM.

Frequently asked questions

Can the client see our internal notes?

No. Notes on the client record never leave the team, and task comments are internal unless, on a project task, you choose to show one to the client.

Can the client approve something without a portal account?

Yes. When you assign them a task in a project, they receive an email with a link to confirm it even without a Client portal account.

Can we run the retainer and special projects for the same client?

Yes. One account can hold the recurring service, separate projects, documents, invoices and future opportunities.