Respona Review: A Solid Outreach Tool for Link Builders

Respona is an all-in-one email outreach tool. 

They position themselves as specialized in link building, but it really works for all types of outreach: marketing, sales, PR, blogger outreach, recruiting affiliates, and even booking podcasts.

Table of Contents

Let’s have a quick look at its feature list, and then walk through the process of creating an outreach campaign with Respona to give you a feel for the tool. 

Respona Features

It comes with everything you need to create, run, and monitor outreach campaigns from start to finish:

• A built-in search engine, backlink extractor, and podcast finder
• Contact finder/verifier
• Shared email inbox 
• Campaign statistics
• Workspace management
• Integrations with other tools
• Press inquiries
• Relationship management (almost like a CRM, but not quite) 
• Campaign and email sequence templates

The only two features that I feel are missing are a true CRM and bulk email verification. 

Right now, if you have a list of contacts you need to verify, you have to go one-by-one:

But that’s a rare occasion, and since Respona finds and verifies emails in bulk when you run an actual campaign, it’s not a big deal (when you only have a list of websites you need to find contacts, not an actual list of contacts you need to verify). 

Speaking of campaigns, let’s walk through the process. 

Running a Campaign with Respona

First off, you’re going to need to either select a campaign template or create a campaign from scratch.

These campaign templates are tailored for very specific uses: exact link building strategies, finding competitor mentions, etc.

What they are useful for is saving a little bit of time – they work by you filling out some fields (like your website, your competitor URL, your target keywords, etc.), and Respona uses them to pre-configure your search, and the email sequence.

It’s handy for beginners, but if you already know what you’re doing, I feel like creating custom campaigns is faster since you can’t get into the actual campaign before filling out all template fields.

So, for example, if we fill out all the fields in this competitor mentions template, it’ll automatically prepare the search for finding pages that mention your competitor but not you:

It uses advanced search operators to narrow down the search. 

The results are pulled straight from Google for keyword searched, from Moz for default backlink searches, and from Listen Notes for podcast searches.

But, if you have a subscription with Moz, Ahrefs, or Semrush, you can also connect that to Respona and use it as a search source to save up on credits.

The great thing about this search engine is that it can automatically process multiple queries at the same time, and add relevant results straight into your outreach campaign. 

So you don’t have to manually search for prospects – just review the results after they’re done. But if you prefer a manual approach, you can do that too.

Add SEO filters to narrow them down even further. Again, by default, Moz filters are available to everyone, but if you have a connected Ahrefs or Semrush account, you can use their filters instead.

Next step is to find contacts.

This is easy – just tell the tool who to look for, and it’ll do so automatically, in bulk:

Manual mode is included as well. 

Next – your email sequence. 

With a custom campaign, you can either choose from the selection of default templates, or create one from scratch.

When you use a campaign template, it comes with a pre-determined sequence for that purpose, but you can completely change it as well. 

Automatic follow-ups, variables (self-populating fields), a spam checker – all of it is included. Even an unsubscribe link and a referral link to earn in-tool credits.

Finally, the last step is personalization. This is straightforward, and you can skip it if you’re just doing a mass blast. 

But it’s better not to.

To make it easier, Respona has an AI article summarizer – it pulls a bunch of snippets of text from the article so you can more easily find something to mention, without having to actually read the article.

Respona also has a shared inbox tab, where you can manage all of your inboxes after launching your campaigns.

This is neat if you use multiple senders (which you should if you’re doing outreach at scale).

Respona Pricing

Respona comes in two plans: Starter ($197/month), and Unlimited ($399/month).

Both grant you access to the full functionality, but with the unlimited plan you get way more credits, and infinite mailbox slots. 

So, I’d say, go for the unlimited if you’re doing outreach at scale.

Is Respona Worth It?

If you rely on cold email outreach for anything in your business – link building, marketing, PR, etc., then it’s an absolute yes.

It’s easy to get into, the interface is clean, and the support is pretty good. 

The features all work as intended, and it doesn’t take too much time to run your campaigns, freeing you up to focus on other tasks. 

The only nitpick I have is that the Starter plan is pretty expensive.
But they do offer a 14-day free trial, so you can check Respona out before you commit.