Link
https://www.marketcircle.com/daylite/
Specifications
Daylite is business productivity software that includes tools for managing and tracking contacts, schedules, tasks, projects, emails, notes, and more.
Data summaries and interactive graphs help clients see business patterns and trends. Local copies of all information are automatically stored and synced on Apple platforms (Mac, iPhone, and iPad) so data can be accessed without an Internet connection.
Cost
Licenses for the latest version (Daylite 5) are $299 per user. Free 30-day trials and discounts for three or more licenses and for education and nonprofit companies are available.
Ownership
Marketcircle
User
Tony DeFazio, SVP of PR at DDCworks, has been using Daylite for about two years.
How do you use it?
Daylite is relationship management software that we use as an electronic Rolodex. We primarily leverage it to house all the critical information for 50,000 media contacts.
We start with Cision for raw information. We download that information and qualify it for beat reporters. Then we load all of that qualified information into Daylite and organize it like a traditional media list by categories, industries, and beats.
It’s a more finely tuned system than the traditional approach of using raw data from media subscription databases because every Daylite contact we use is qualified on a real-time basis.
The application itself is a very simple application. You just click the icon and open it up. There’s a dashboard on the left side with all the specific tasks and functions. Our account executives can click a group they have created and a screen pops up with all the media contacts in that group. We can also send email blasts to all contacts.
Daylite creates an automatic chronicle for each communication with a reporter, be it an email or a telephone call, which is incredibly powerful for media relations.
It operates like a traditional CRM so the information is available to all of our account executives whenever and wherever they need it. You don’t have to log on or out as a user for someone else to benefit from updates – all of the same information is available to everyone all the time.
Daylite allows us to produce reports on demand. You can run reports on set periods of time and it automatically captures all the activity data – calls, emails, and notes. Then you can export the data into a Word document and send it to clients.
The program is specific to the Mac platform. Because it’s an iOS application, we can use all the data and functionality of Daylite on our iPhones.
We used our IT consultant Springboard, which is a certified Daylite programming instructor, to set up the software for us and customize it to our media relations needs. They’re basically on call, so if any technical problems arise we submit a ticket to Springboard.
You can also contact Daylite directly on a toll-free number if you want and they, too, are pretty responsive.
How does it serve your business needs?
A heavy proportion of the PR work we do is focused on media relations – local, regional, and national. Building relationships with reporters is key so you know the best way to fulfill their needs.
Daylite allows us to build a very robust and specific database of information with influential media contacts.
It is an extremely valuable asset for our clients, particularly the ones in financial services that do big merger and acquisition deals and need to be on national broadcast media on demand. Daylite allows our agency to have those contacts at our disposal when news is happening.
We don’t need to do extensive research to build a new media list because it’s already there in Daylite, and updated information is available to all account executives on the fly.
We have a large financial services client that has a particular focus on the real estate sector. The crème de la crème of media coverage for this client is the property report in The Wall Street Journal.
On a number of occasions, we’ve been able to place either exclusive stories or feature stories in the property report with a specific reporter because we have detailed information on his needs and wants. There have been occasions when a deal has broken late in the evening, and we know exactly how to reach this reporter after hours because we’ve chronicled his preferences in Daylite. That access and immediacy is really important to our clients.
How does it integrate with your existing infrastructure from an IT standpoint?
It’s an application you download.
Because it allows us to do so much inside a single application, it reduces the RAM we’re using on our iMacs. That’s useful from a networking standpoint because we don’t have to run multiple applications.
What are the main benefits?
Having extensive information chronicled over time about the specific requirements of media.
The ability to access the information all the time whenever we want and where ever we want – on mobile devices, laptops, desktops – and make that available for clients.
What are the main drawbacks?
It’s only available on Mac operating systems.
What would you like to see improved/added?
There’s a small formatting issue I’d like to see improved. When we pull up groups of media, it presents the information with the media contact’s name first. I would like to have the company name first in the group format because it makes it easier to organize.
Competitor
Salesforce Sales Cloud: CRM application for managing accounts, contacts, opportunities, and more. It includes Chatter, a real-time collaboration tool.
