PR CRM — Attio Workflows

PR CRM — Attio Workflow Guide

Attio is the team’s day-to-day surface for contact + campaign tracking. Supabase is the master database underneath; Attio is a polished mirror you actually click around in. Every change you make in Attio syncs back to Supabase via webhook, and every send/open/reply/bounce reported by Smartlead flows into Attio in real time.

This guide covers how to use Attio to its full potential for per-campaign tracking, daily triage, and relationship management.

The data model in plain English

Three objects in Attio matter for PR work:

Object	What it is	What lives there
People	Every contact in the database (~13K). Mix of journalists, producers, influencers, editors.	Name, email(s), outlet, role, segment, beat, market(s), pitch_status, snoozed_until, last_contacted_at, last_replied_at, bounce_count, verified, social handles, notes
Campaigns	One record per pitch you’ve sent (or are sending).	Name, status, start_date, segment_filter_summary, smartlead_campaign_id, sent_count, open_count, reply_count, bounce_count, members
Markets	Hierarchical geography (countries → states → cities).	Name, type, parent market

The two relationships you care about:

People ↔ Campaigns (bidirectional): every campaign has a members list of people; every person has an Associated campaigns list. Adding someone to one side automatically reflects on the other.
People ↔ Markets (multi-reference): a person can be tagged with multiple markets (Miami, Florida, USA national).

Five core workflows

1. Browse a campaign’s roster

Open Campaigns → click into any campaign (e.g. “Palace: May Editorial Pitch”). Scroll to the Members section. Every person we pitched in this campaign is there. Click any person to drill into their profile.

2. Filter People by their pitch state

Attio’s filter UI on the People object lets you compose conditions across any attribute. Useful patterns:

By campaign membership: Associated campaigns contains “Palace: May Editorial Pitch”
By state: pitch_status = bounced (or replied, snoozed, unsubscribed, do_not_contact)
By recency: last_replied_at is greater than “14 days ago”
By market: markets contains Florida
By segment/beat: segment = Editorial, beat = Food

Combine conditions with AND/OR. Sort by any attribute. Then save the result as a View so you can revisit it without rebuilding.

3. Per-person campaign history

Click any person in Attio → scroll to the Associated campaigns section. You see every campaign they’ve been in, ordered by date. Click any campaign to drill back into its details. This is your “have we pitched this person recently?” view.

Use the Notes section on the person record to log relationship context (preferences, past wins, contact preferences, do-not-pitch reasons).

4. Snooze a person

In a person’s record, set:

pitch_status = snoozed
snoozed_until = the date they should be eligible again

The webhook syncs to Supabase. Future campaign filters automatically exclude them. The daily 7am UTC unsnooze cron flips them back to active once the date passes.

This is a global snooze — applies across all future campaigns, not just one. Per-campaign snooze isn’t supported yet (see Where the model is thin).

5. Mark someone as do-not-contact / unsubscribed

For people who explicitly said “stop emailing me” or who unsubscribed via Smartlead’s footer link:

pitch_status = unsubscribed (Smartlead unsubscribes flow here automatically via the webhook)
pitch_status = do_not_contact (manually, for explicit opt-outs)

Both states permanently exclude the person from all campaign filters.

Saved Views cheatsheet

Set these up once and pin them. They become your daily triage surface.

On the People object

View name	Filter	Sort	Use
Campaign: [Pitch Name]	`Associated campaigns` contains ""	`last_replied_at` desc	One per active campaign. Shows the roster + replies floating to top
Replies — last 14 days	`last_replied_at` > “14 days ago”	`last_replied_at` desc	Morning triage. Reply to people while it’s still fresh
Replies to [Pitch Name]	`Associated campaigns` contains "" AND `last_replied_at` > campaign start date	`last_replied_at` desc	Closest proxy to “replied to THIS pitch”
Bounces in [Pitch Name]	`Associated campaigns` contains "" AND `pitch_status` = `bounced`	—	Per-campaign deliverability check
Snoozed — coming back soon	`pitch_status` = `snoozed` AND `snoozed_until` < “30 days from now”	`snoozed_until` asc	Anticipate who’s about to become eligible
Florida — never pitched	`markets` contains Florida AND `pitch_status` = `active` AND `last_contacted_at` is empty	—	Find fresh prospects when designing a new campaign. Replace “Florida” with any market
VIPs	`beat` = `VIP`	`last_replied_at` desc	Concierge view of priority contacts
Pipeline (kanban)	(no filter)	Group by `pitch_status`	Visualize 13K contacts as a kanban. Drag-and-drop to update status
Editorial Food — Florida	`markets` contains Florida AND `segment` = `Editorial` AND `beat` = `Food`	—	Pre-saved campaign segments. Replace with any market/segment/beat combo you pitch often

On the Campaigns object

View name	Filter	Sort	Use
Active campaigns	`status` = `sending`	`start_date` desc	What’s actively going out right now
Performance leaderboard	(none)	`reply_count` desc	Quick scan of which historical campaigns landed
Palace campaigns	`name` contains “Palace:“	`start_date` desc	Per-client roll-up. Make a parallel one for each client
Drafts to launch	`status` = `draft`	`created_at` desc	Pre-launch staging area

Customizing Views

Once you have a saved View, use Attio’s column controls to:

Add columns for the attributes you care about most (sent count, last reply date, beat, outlet)
Hide columns that aren’t relevant for that view
Group records by any attribute (status, segment, market) for kanban-style layouts
Pin Views to the sidebar so they’re one click away

Views can be private (just for you) or shared (whole team sees them). Set this when saving — useful for team-wide views like “Replies — last 14 days”.

Daily routine

A reasonable morning rhythm:

Check “Replies — last 14 days” → respond to anyone you haven’t yet
Check “Snoozed — coming back soon” → plan upcoming pitches around who’s about to be eligible
Check active campaigns → eyeball reply/bounce counts on each (run make sync-campaigns first to refresh from Smartlead)
Triage bounces → for any contact with pitch_status = bounced, decide whether to keep them as-is or correct the email and re-tag

Then for whatever pitch you’re working on:

Open “Campaign: [name]” → who’s in it, who replied, who needs a follow-up
Add notes on individual people as you correspond — context lives on the relationship, not in your inbox

Where the model is thin

last_contacted_at and last_replied_at are global to a person, not per-campaign. So if Sarah was in your March pitch + your May pitch and replied to March, you can’t tell from Attio alone whether she replied to March or May — only that she replied at some point.

For most PR workflows that’s fine — once someone replies, you stop pitching them anyway. But if you want reports like “reply rate of the May Editorial pitch” or “who from the Cherry Blossom DC pitch never opened the email”, you need per-campaign-per-person granularity.

The data exists on the Supabase side already (campaign_contacts join table tracks per-campaign timestamps). Surfacing it in Attio would require a Pitches object (one record per campaign-person pair) — a larger Phase 6 enhancement that’s not built yet. Worth investing in once your team’s reporting needs cross that threshold.

Quick reference: the key attributes

People

Attribute	Type	Purpose
`name` (built-in)	personal-name	First + last
`email_addresses` (built-in)	email (multi)	Primary + alternates. Smartlead matches on this
`job_title`	text	Editor / Producer / etc.
`outlet`	text	Publication / network / brand
`segment`	select	Editorial / TV / Radio / Online / Podcast / Influencer / Photography / Newsletter / Other
`beat`	select	Food / Wine / Travel / Entertainment / Lifestyle / Health / Real Estate / etc. (full list: run `make options`)
`markets`	record-reference (multi)	Geographic tags
`pitch_status`	select	active / snoozed / bounced / unsubscribed / do_not_contact
`snoozed_until`	date	When a snoozed contact becomes eligible again
`last_contacted_at`	timestamp	Most recent send (any campaign)
`last_replied_at`	timestamp	Most recent reply (any campaign)
`bounce_count`	number	Lifetime bounces. Auto-flips status to `bounced` at 2+
`verified`	checkbox	Email-verification result
`verify_status`	text	Verification message (“ok”, “no MX record”, etc.)
`instagram` / `twitter` / `linkedin` (built-in)	text	Social handles
`phone_numbers` (built-in)	phone (multi)	Phone numbers
`Associated campaigns`	record-reference (multi)	Every campaign this person is in

Campaigns

Attribute	Type	Purpose
`name`	text	Display name. Convention: `Palace:` / `Planta:` prefix
`status`	select	draft / sending / paused / completed
`start_date`	date	When the campaign first sent
`smartlead_campaign_id`	text (unique)	The Smartlead-side ID
`supabase_id`	text (unique)	The Supabase-side ID
`segment_filter_summary`	text	Human-readable: “Florida · Editorial · Food”
`sent_count` / `open_count` / `reply_count` / `bounce_count`	number	Aggregate stats. Refreshed by `make sync-campaigns`
`members`	record-reference (multi)	Every person in this campaign

Tips and gotchas

The webhook updates contact-level fields, not campaign-level state. When you click Start on a campaign in Smartlead, the campaign’s status doesn’t auto-update in Attio. Run make sync-campaigns to pull fresh status + stats from Smartlead. Worth running daily or after any UI action.
Edits in Attio sync to Supabase within seconds. Changing pitch_status on a person fires the webhook → Supabase row updates → next campaign filter automatically includes/excludes accordingly.
Bulk edits via Attio’s UI are fine. Select multiple people in a View → bulk-update an attribute → all changes flow through the webhook.
Dedupe before launching big campaigns. If you suspect duplicate Person records (same human under two emails), run make dedupe DRY=1 from the repo to surface them. The dedupe pass moves notes + market links to the surviving record before deleting the duplicate.
Snooze ≠ unsubscribe. Snooze is a temporary pause; unsubscribe is permanent. Smartlead’s automated unsubscribe link triggers the latter via webhook.
Notes belong on the Person, not the Campaign. Per-campaign annotations would require the Pitches object (not built yet). For now, write campaign-specific context as a note on the relevant Person, mentioning the campaign by name.
Don’t manually edit members in Attio for active campaigns. The campaign roster reflects what was sent through Smartlead. Adding/removing someone in Attio doesn’t change the email send queue; it just makes the data inconsistent. Use Smartlead’s UI to pause/edit live campaigns.

When to come back to this guide

You’re onboarding someone new to Attio → walk them through “Five core workflows” + “Daily routine”
You want to find unpitched contacts in a market → “Saved Views cheatsheet” → “Florida — never pitched” pattern
You wonder why a campaign’s status is wrong → “Tips and gotchas” → run make sync-campaigns
You hit a wall on per-campaign tracking → “Where the model is thin”

For everything below the Attio surface (creating campaigns, importing CSVs, troubleshooting webhooks, deploying), see RUNBOOK.md.