How to run a PR pipeline with email in Trello
Set up a Trello board to manage incoming PR opportunities so that your team can respond quickly to requests and grow your brand’s visibility in the media.
Getting your business featured in the media is one of the best ways to build brand awareness, establish authority, and drive engagement. Whether you’re responding to journalist requests, monitoring mentions, or building relationships with media contacts, managing these opportunities effectively can give your brand the competitive edge. Especially in the PR industry, where speed is the name of the game!
A PR pipeline can help your team keep organized by tracking media opportunities, managing responses, and making sure you stay on top of follow-ups. Trello, combined with the Email for Trello Power-Up, makes it easy to centralize incoming PR opportunities and streamline the process – without the cost of dedicated PR software.
What is a PR pipeline?
PR (public relations) is the process of managing the public perception of your brand. This usually involves responding to press requests, monitoring brand mentions, and proactively nurturing relationships with people like journalists and influencers.
A PR pipeline is a structured system that helps your team identify, manage, and capitalize on opportunities for media exposure.
How can building a PR pipeline in Trello help my team?
Stay alert to PR opportunities. Monitor industry alerts and journalist requests.
Manage high volumes of opportunities. Keep track of incoming media tips, requests, and leads.
Respond quickly. In an industy where speed is rewarded, your team can act fast on time-sensitive opportunities.
Save on subscriptions. Trello is a flexible and cost-effective solution compared to paid social listening tools like Mention.com, Meltwater, Mentionlytics, or Hootsuite.
Work cross-functionally. If your business already uses Trello, integrating PR tracking makes collaboration across teams seamless.
💡 TIP Set up a Trello board for every team! Find out more about using Trello for all aspects of your business, from sales and CRM to project management and accounting.
How to set up a PR pipeline with Email for Trello
1. Identify opportunities you want to track based on your goals
Tailor your pipeline to your team’s goals, whether that’s getting your business in the media, or building community around your brand.
Goal: Get your business in the media
If your primary goal is securing press coverage, there are several mailing lists and RSS feeds (ranging from free to paid) that are dedicated to helping businesses find PR opportunities. Some of these include:
SourceBottle, specifically their “be a source” email
Once you’ve signed up for the services that best suit your business, you can consolidate the incoming opportunities in Trello. We recommend signing up for these services with a dedicated PR email address (like pr@example.com), so that you can manage PR as a separate workflow.
Goal: Build a community around your brand
If you want to track brand mentions and engage in online conversations, set up monitoring where your company or brand is likely to get mentioned. For example:
Working with these opportunities in Trello helps your team respond to mentions quickly and actively participate in your brand’s organically evolving narrative.
2. Direct information to your Trello board
Instead of trying to work with a jumble of alerts, newsletters and inquiries in your regular inbox, the Email for Trello Power-Up turns incoming PR emails into Trello cards, so that your team can collaborate on replying to opportunities.
Here’s how it works:
Connect your PR inbox. Connect your email address (like pr@example.com) directly to Trello. New emails come in as Trello cards, ready for your team to reply.
Direct contact forms to your Trello board. If you have a contact or media enquiry form on your website, make sure the responses are coming straight to the same Trello board! Have a look at our tutorial to connect Google Forms to Trello, as well as other common website forms (like Squarespace and Typeform).
Collaborate with your team. With all your PR emails and to-dos one place, your team can manage opportunities and collaborate on PR strategy with colleagues – without ever leaving Trello.
💡 TIP If you’re looking to aggregate mentions from around the web, check out our tutorial for using RSS feeds and Zapier to create a brand mention monitoring board in Trello.
3. Organize your Trello workflow
Structure your Trello board and lists to represent the stages in your PR process, so that your whole team can see ongoing opportunities at a glance. Here’s how it might look:
Incoming: Media opportunities land here as new Trello cards.
Replied: Move cards here once you’ve responded to an opportunity.
Follow-Up / Watching: Manage your follow-ups and keep an eye on promising conversations so that nothing falls through the cracks.
Published Mentions: Celebrate your PR wins! (Tip: Discover 4 fun ways to add a celebration moment to your Trello workflow.)
For Reference: Keep a list of templates and past requests at hand, so that your team can reference them quickly at any time.
For example, the Pet Cuts mention monitoring board receives emails into the ‘Incoming’ list, then organizes them into ‘Marketing opportunity’, ‘Replied / Watching’ and ‘For reference’, according to what needs to be done.
4. Make the most of Trello features
Optimize and organize your PR workflow with Trello’s powerful built-in features. For example:
Assign team members. Handle incoming PR requests quickly and efficiently by automatically assigning new cards to your team in a turn-based round-robin.
Prioritize with labels. Tag opportunities by urgency, media type, or topic. Find out more about how to manage urgent requests with a triage board in Trello.
Make the most of automation to streamline your workflow:
Never miss a follow-up! Automatically set due dates for your Trello cards.
Automatically sort cards by due date so that your team can focus on the urgent stuff first.
Keep your PR pipeline free from clutter. Deal with high volumes of email by automatically archiving cards after a certain amount of time.
For more inspiration, take a look at these 10+ automations to try in Trello.
💡 BONUS While this guide focuses on managing incoming opportunities, you can also use Trello for proactive outreach like tracking pitches, planning press releases, and building media contacts. Find out more about managing your contacts and relationships with Email for Trello’s CRM features.
Organize your PR pipeline with Trello
Trello is a powerful, cost-effective way to manage your PR pipeline. With the Email for Trello Power-Up, your team can centralize incoming opportunities, respond quickly and strategically, and maximize your brand exposure.
