The seed round, which comes from Arizona-based individuals and angel investment groups, will be used to scale sales and marketing efforts, as well as accelerate product development.

Aly Saxe, the CEO of Iris, developed the software to boost efficiencies for her own PR agency. Faced with the challenge of staying competitive in the digital age, Saxe was seeking a way to better prove results to clients while refining team performance through data-driven decision making.

'Before Iris there was no technology in the market for the PR industry that actually helped PR pros improve 1-to-1 engagement and streamline their workflow,' Saxe said. 'Iris was designed by a PR pro for PR pros to help them address common pain points and create PR programs that help their clients and companies succeed.'

The software allows users to manage campaigns, contacts, deadlines and performance metrics in one unified system. By saving time on daily account management tasks, Iris users can focus on maximizing their relationships with media, analysts, and influencers while focusing on strategies they know will accelerate results.

Iris investors include Mario Martinez, the founder of 360 Vantage, and the current chairman of InvestSouthwest.org and VentureMaddness.com, and Greg Head, the chief marketing officer at Infusionsoft.

'Public relations is a critical part of the marketing mix, but it has been one of the last of the marketing functions to be measurable in the modern digital era. Iris solves this problem,' Head said. 'It allows us to produce consistent results and make PR investments that we couldn't make in the old 'blind faith' days.'

Iris PR Software is the first SaaS platform in the PR industry, bucking the standard annual contract model. The platform includes multiple pricing tiers and is designed for both public relations agencies and in-house teams.

About Iris PR Software

Iris PR Software is cloud-based software that optimizes the operations of PR agencies and corporate PR teams. It does this by organizing relationship management, improving campaign visibility and reporting, and delivering hard data for communicating success back to clients and internal stakeholders.