In this paper, global exponential outer synchronization of coupled nonlinear systems with general coupling matrices are investigated via pinning impulsive control. More realistic and more general partially coupled drive-response systems are established, where the completely communication channel matrix between coupled nodes may not be a permutation matrix. By using pinning impulsive strategy involving pinning ratio and our generalised lower average impulsive interval method, a number of novel and less restrictive synchronization criteria are proposed. In the end, a numerical example is constructed to indicate the effectiveness of our theoretical results.