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🧰 Master Your Email Marketing Game (With These Tools)
Published 19 days ago • 5 min read
🧰 Smart tools. Useful tips. Weekly.
Hola friend 👋,
I’m Josep. Each week, I hunt down practical tools and productivity hacks to help digital doers like you do more with less effort.
Know someone who’d love this newsletter? 2,000+ readers already do (thanks 🙌). Share it with friends & colleagues so they can join too.
This week: tools to master the art of sending emails.
Unlike social media, where algorithms decide who sees your content, email gives you a direct line to your audience. It’s one of the most powerful marketing channels out there because of its incredible ROI and the direct relationship you build with your readers.
Since starting this newsletter, I’ve learned a ton about email marketing. I had the basics down, but managing this project has been a whole new game. My next goal is to kickstart a new newsletter in Spanish for my personal finance side project, so I've been deep in research mode.
If you’re looking for an all-in-one platform to handle your customer communication, Brevo is a fantastic choice. It’s not just for sending newsletters; it also offers marketing automation, live chat, SMS campaigns, and even a sales CRM to manage your leads. It’s a complete toolkit for talking to your users.
For this newsletter, we use Kit, which, despite its creator-focused features, has its shortcomings (I have to admit, I’m not its biggest fan). That’s why I decided I will use Brevo (good mix of features and prices) for my upcoming side-project newsletter. We also happen to use it at EmailTooltester.com, and we’ve been happy there for a while now.
I am also pretty excited with Brevo’s MCP. Technically I can connect it to Claude or Cursor and create campaigns or pull reports without even logging into Brevo (see tutorial here).
Sending an email is only half the battle; making sure it actually lands in the inbox is also challenging. That’s where a deliverability tool like GlockApps comes in. It helps you test and fix issues that could be sending your emails straight to the spam folder.
GlockApps works by sending your email to a seed list of real inboxes across major providers like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo. It then gives you a detailed report showing where your email landed, whether it was flagged by spam filters, and what you can do to improve your sender reputation.
It’s a fantastic way to diagnose deliverability problems. They offer a limited free plan, which is a perfect way to do a first deliverability audit on your email marketing program. However, paid plans aren’t cheap.
Keeping your email list clean is just as important as sending great content. A list full of invalid, old, or fake email addresses can crush your deliverability and get you flagged as a spammer. ZeroBounce is a tool that helps you prevent that by verifying your email lists.
You can upload your entire list for a bulk cleaning or connect their API to your signup forms to block bad emails in real-time. It checks for everything from typos and invalid syntax to disposable email domains and spam traps. A clean list means higher open rates and a better sender reputation.
I’ve found it particularly useful for pruning old lists that haven’t been engaged in a while. It’s a simple step, but it makes a huge difference in the long run.
Some useful tool deals we spotted this week, which are worth a look if you're into smart savings.
💸 Tidio: An all-in-one customer communication platform combining live chat, chatbots, and email integration to help businesses automate customer support. 25% off.
💸 Xero: A leading cloud-based accounting software designed for small businesses to manage invoices, expenses, and payroll. 90% off for 6 months.
💸 SocialBee: An all-in-one social media management tool to schedule posts, and analyze your performance. Get 50% off for 3 months.
I’m pretty deep into the AI world, and YouTube’s algorithm definitely knows it. Lately, I’ve been bombarded with ads for Base 44. It sparked my curiosity, after trying tools like Lovable and Firebase, I decided to give it a go.
Base 44 is a no-code platform that lets you build full-stack web applications using just text prompts. What’s really cool is that it doesn’t just build the front-end; it also creates and manages the entire back-end, including a database, user authentication, and server logic.
It feels more like a complete solution for building advanced products compared to more UI-focused tools. However, I am curious to know how clever Base 44 is. Could I build any app with it, regardless of the complexity? I am guessing no, at least not yet.
Yes, I use a password manager, but every now and then, I’ll change a password, and for some reason, the manager won’t update it. When that happens, this little trick makes me feel like a hacker, even though it’s incredibly simple.
If your browser has a password saved but it’s hidden behind those familiar asterisks (********), you can reveal it in about three seconds.
Right-click on the password box.
Click on “Inspect” (or “Inspect Element”).
In the code that appears, look for type="password".
Double-click on the word “password” and change it to “text”.
Voila! The password is revealed. I’m sure there are other ways to do this, but I love how easy and effective this little hack is.
🍿 Plot Twist of the Week
Years ago, we bought a lifetime deal on AppSumo for a tool called Ranktracker. We paid a couple of hundred dollars, hoping it would be a solid investment. AppSumo deals can be a gamble – some tools are great, others disappear – but this one took a cheeky turn.
Out of the blue, Ranktracker decided they would no longer honor the lifetime deal. They locked us out of the features we had paid for and demanded more money to continue using them. It felt like a bait-and-switch.
I reached out to AppSumo for help, and their response was basically, "There's nothing we can do." They offered a measly $20 credit for a future deal as a consolation.
Trustpilot has even started displaying a warning on RankTracker’s profile for manipulating ratings on their site. All in all, it’s a genuinely shady company.
Lesson learned: be very careful with lifetime deals from new SaaS companies. They can be a great value, but they can also be a reminder that "lifetime" sometimes has an expiration date. Don’t invest more than you’re willing to lose.
That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading! Next time, we’ll explore how to get mentoring online.
🧰 Smart tools. Useful tips. Weekly. Hola friend 👋, I’m Josep. Each week, I hunt down practical tools and productivity hacks to help digital doers like you do more with less effort. Know someone who’d love this newsletter? 2,000+ readers already do (thanks 🙌). Share it with friends & colleagues so they can join too. This week, we're celebrating a special issue (#20), so I wanted to do something a little different. Instead of just sharing tools I love, I thought it would be fun (and useful) to...
🧰 Smart tools. Useful tips. Weekly. Hola friend 👋, I’m Josep. Each week, I hunt down practical tools and productivity hacks to help digital doers like you do more with less effort. Know someone who’d love this newsletter? 2,000+ readers already do (thanks 🙌). Share it with friends & colleagues so they can join too. This week: tools for the lonely wolf. I love the freedom that comes with being a solopreneur: flexible schedules, the ability to choose what I work on, and exposure to all aspects...
🧰 Smart tools. Useful tips. Weekly. Hola friend 👋, I’m Josep. Each week, I hunt down practical tools and productivity hacks to help digital doers like you do more with less effort. Know someone who’d love this newsletter? 2,000+ readers already do (thanks 🙌). Share it with friends & colleagues so they can join too. This week: building landing pages with a little help from AI. A friend of mine needed a landing page for an event a few weeks ago. He didn’t need a full website, just a simple,...