Email Productivity Tools

One of the biggest mistakes I see in marketing today is tech overload. We focus on the how before we even know the why. It's a recipe for disaster. It's tempting to think that the latest software will solve all your marketing problems. Like buying a specific tool will generate the leads we so much want. But it's not that simple. I've watched small businesses invest heavily in marketing automation platforms, only to use them for basic email blasts. What a waste. The tech should support your strategy, not dictate it. You need to know why you're using a tool before buying it. 👉🏾What problem are you trying to solve? 👉🏾How will it help you achieve your goals? Think about it like planning a trip. You wouldn't buy a plane ticket without knowing where you're going or what you want to do there, right? It's the same with marketing tech. Start with your goals, strategy, and target audience, then choose the tools to help you reach them. #demandgeneration #marketingstrategy #b2bmarketing

I've sent over 20 million cold emails since launching Flowd 5 years ago. These are the 5 best OUTBOUND EMAIL TOOLS for sales teams (and why) 1. Instantly.ai → Unlimited sending at a fixed price → AI-powered deliverability tracking → Powerful built-in email warm-up Pricing: One of the best-value options for high-volume teams Best for: Scalability. At Flowd we send 1000s of emails daily — Instantly gives us the sending power we need. Unlimited sending alone makes it a no-brainer for teams scaling outbound. 2. Smartlead → Smart AI-based warm-up → Combines email with LinkedIn outreach → Supports multiple inboxes under one account Pricing: More expensive but powerful for multi-channel prospecting Best for: Teams that want to mix LinkedIn and email outreach without juggling multiple tools 3. Woodpecker.co → Easy-to-use interface → Great for small teams & agencies → Strong email personalisation options Pricing: Higher cost per email sent compared to Instantly Best for: Sales teams prioritising high deliverability without complexity 4. Outreach → Full sales engagement platform (not just email) → Integrates deeply with CRMs → AI-powered insights & analytics Pricing: Premium (best for larger sales teams with a budget) Best for: Enterprise teams needing a full sales engagement suite — not just cold email 5. lemlist → Image & video personalisation features → Multi-channel sequences (LinkedIn, Calls, Email) → Good automation capabilities Pricing: Mid-range but can get pricey at scale Best for: Sales teams focused on highly personalised outreach 💬 Curious — what are you using for outbound right now? Would love to hear what’s working (or not working) for your team.

I have seen people go insane trying to choose the right TMS. They have the completely wrong approach. We all make this mistake: We look for the perfect software to solve our problems as they are. We have a process, and then we look for a tool that can execute that exact process for us. But, no tool fits perfectly. So, we settle for something, sign a contract, and spend the next 5 years getting more and more frustrated. The better way to choose a TMS is to look at the options that provide the best features for your business goals. Then, think about how you can adapt your processes to work with this software. Recognize that your business will change, the industry will change, and the software will probably change as well. Look at the software as something to grow with, not something that can solve every issue exactly as it is now. If you are looking for the software that does that, you will be unsatisfied forever. Changing your processes will be uncomfortable, but fighting with your TMS every day because you refuse to adapt is worse. Choose a software for the next 5 years. Think about the cost, your business goals and the potential for value generation. Then, create a plan to optimize this value generation by using the tool to its full potential. Loc leaders- How do you go about choosing a TMS?

Built an outbound stack so complete, it feels illegal to share 🤫 Most teams don’t struggle with lead gen. They struggle with everything after the lead. I’ve seen it happen: → Tools everywhere, nothing connected → Sales and marketing on different planets → No clear path from “lead found” to “deal closed” So I mapped the entire outbound funnel from data scraping to meeting booked, and picked 100 tools that actually work together. Here is the full stack 👇 1️⃣ Data Sources → B2B Databases: ContactOut, Crunchbase, Apollo, Ocean.io, Sales Navigator → Unique Databases: Harmonic, PublicWWW, PitchBook, Vainu, Pandamatch → Local Business Databases: D7 Lead Finder, Scrap.io, LimeLeads, Spylead 2️⃣ Lead Generation & Enrichment → Lead Gen: Lead Engines, Clay, Generect, LeadMine, Amplemarket, Kuration AI → Email Finders: Findymail, Lusha, Name2Email, FullEnrich, Prospeo, Datagma → Email Verification: Verifalia, Clearout, Enrow, DeBounce 3️⃣ Prospecting Infrastructure → No-code Prospecting: Databar.ai, Persana AI, Rows, Phantombuster, Baseloop → Sales Triggers: Bombora, Common Room, Owler - A Meltwater Offering, LoneScale, Visualping → Technographics: BuiltWith, NerdyData.com, UpLead, WhatRuns 4️⃣ CRM & Pipeline → CRM Tools: folk, HubSpot, Attio, Close, Clay.earth 5️⃣ Outreach Infrastructure → Infrastructure: Mailscale, Mailreef, Superwave, Mailforge, Zapmail → Email Outreach: Reply, Unify, Hunter.io, Smartlead, Instantly → LinkedIn Outreach: Expandi.io, Dripify, HeyReach.io → X (Twitter) Outreach: Apify, Drippi, Inboxs → Reddit Outreach: Surfkey, KeyMentions, ReplyGuy 6️⃣ AI-Driven Execution → AI Agents: Jason AI, Vidyard, AiSDR, Valley, Lindy → Workflow Automation: Zapier, Airtable, Bardeen, n8n, Cassidy, Beam AI → Copywriting Tools: ChatGPT, Claude, Wordtune, Gemini, Jasper, Mistral 7️⃣ Final Mile Tools → Docs & Proposals: PandaDoc, GetAccept, Docusign → Conversation Recording: Attention, Bluedot, tl;dv - AI Meeting Assistant → Meeting Scheduling: Calendly, Cal, Chili Piper 8️⃣ Sales Productivity → Clari, Rattle, TextPie, Superhuman, WINN.AI ____________________ What’s one tool you’d never remove from your outbound flow? Let’s compare stacks

The most expensive unsubscribe you’ll ever get? A smart buyer you didn’t tag properly. If you’re not tagging: • Who buys from bundles • Who purchases via influencer link • Who replies to CS emails • Who buys during holidays only …you’re not doing CRM. You’re just spraying emails. Here’s a tagging strategy you can set up in 24 hours: 1. Tag everyone who buys from a bundle as “value seeker” 2. Tag VIP email buyers with “early adopter” 3. Tag first time holiday only buyers with “promo seasonal” 4. Tag CS engagers with “high interaction” 5. Tag quiz takers as “data qualified” Then? • “Value seekers” → hit with new bundle drops • “Promo seasonal” → hold them until holiday season • “High interaction” → invite into feedback or referral flows Email is just noise until it’s personalized. And personalization only works if you listen.

Your favorite tool doesn’t matter. Not to your boss. Not to your client. Not to the person desperately waiting for a solution. What really matters? -The tool that gets results -The one your team can actually maintain -The one that makes things easy to understand -The one that solves real problems -The one that works, consistently I’ve seen people stuck for weeks trying to find the “perfect” tool, while the actual problem grows bigger. I’ve been in rooms where flashy dashboards impressed no one, because the real issue wasn’t fixed. I’ve seen juniors judged for using Excel when it got the job done faster than a fancy script. Let’s stop the tool wars. Let’s stop shaming people for using what they know. Let’s focus on impact. Because at the end of the day, no one cares what you used. They care: -If their pain is gone. -If their decision is easier. -If their business runs better. Use what works. That’s what really counts. Agree? Disagree? What’s a time you solved a problem with a “simple” tool that just worked?

Most revenue teams are utilizing severely outdated GTM tech stacks. From poor sending reputation, bad data, & unoptimized nurturing systems Teams are losing $100,000’s in revenue every year by not implementing the right systems. At RevGrowth, we’ve searched for innovative GTM tech that enters the market. Why? 1. To optimize efficiency, results, and costs at scale 2. So you don’t have to Here’s the A-Z breakdown of our modern GTM tech stack we develop for our B2B clients: 1. Outbound Sequencing EmailBison is our go-to email sequencer in 2025. Features: > Isolated IP sending > Multiple sending servers > Unlimited contact storage > Unlimited workspaces > Powerful API & webhooks > White-labeled instances 2. Email Inboxes ScaledMail has been our inbox provider that covers all our needs Google & Microsoft diversification packages, great deliverability, excellent team to assist with inbox setup and deliverability management, and consistent inboxing on Outlook accounts. 3. Account Data > Crunchbase - Company Intelligence > BuiltWith - Company Technologies Data > Storeleads - E-commerce Data > PandaMatch 🐼 - Look-a-Like Lists > influencers.club - Influencer Data > Shovels - Contractors Data > GetLatka - SaaS Leads Database > Clutch(.)co - Agency Services Database > PitchBook- Venture Cap, Private Equity, M&A > d7leadsfinder - Local Leads > TitanX - Phone Number Data 4. Contact Data Apollo, Prospeo.io, Icypeas, LeadMagic, and Enrichley have been our top contact data providers so far this year. 5. Data Scraping Apify - Offers thousands of community-developed web scrapers Instant data scraper - Can scrape virtually any website with datasets 6. LLMs > OpenAI: General web research (Claygent web scraping) > Anthropic: (claude): Text generation (Script writing, GTM strategy) > Perplexity: Deep web research (Database searching) 7. GTM Workflow Tools Clay - Essential for data enrichment, qualification, messaging generation, automated workflows across multiple tools through APIs, web research, and general operations n8n - AI automation tool (like Make but with AI capabilities) for developing full AI agents to handle complex tasks 8. Data Management Airtable - Cloud-based platform for project management, data tracking, campaign planning OutboundSync - Handles lead routing to CRMs with integrations to email sequencers HubSpot - Comprehensive CRM solution This helps with all outbound email data tracking. 9. Inbound-Led & Omnichannel Outreach Trigify.io - Tracks LinkedIn engagement and signals, scrapes user data, exports to CRM/tools RB2B - De-anonymizes website visitors and finds their LinkedIn profiles for automated outreach HeyReach.io - LinkedIn automation tool for connection requests and messaging campaigns with integrations to other tools — What other tools would you add to this? Let me know your favorites in the comments below.

This is the email enrichment workflow we use to send over 1.7M cold emails per month. This is all baked into a Clay template so that my team can duplicate it every time we launch a new campaign. We basically have a 2 step process. 1. We pull most of our contact lists from Apollo. Reasoning: They have a very good contact database that combines some great filters that we can use to build our lists. If we need a more custom company list than Apollo can provide, we pull the list from something like Ocean.io, upload the domains to apollo and find contacts there. The other reason we do this is because many email finders work by finding permutations of a name against a domain. But an example of a company that won't work for is slack. Their main domain is slack(.)com but their emails are at slackhq(.)com. Apollo has many of these resolved for you. 2. We upload to Clay and run this workflow in this order. Validate apollo email with debounce Anything that wasn't validated we use Prospeo to find more emails. Validate with Debounce Anything we don't find, we use Icypeas and LeadMagic due to their low cost high accuracy enrichments. Validate with Debounce I've found that checking more than 3 providers really only increases our tech spend and maybe increases the list by a couple percentages here and there. Note: Erol Toker has an email finding tool that I've found to be extremely accurate that just hasn't made it into our workflow just yet but I wanted to shout it out. Now Clay takes care of all the email finding for us so we can merge all of the emails into one column. If an email does not exist in that column, we also make a conditional formula to not run any other enrichments because if we don't have an email, why waste money if we can't send an email. You'll also notice we use debounce even though these tools verify their emails. I love them all for that but I usually see bounce rates go up if we don't use debounce and in this current email deliverability climate, we have to be as strict as possible. Debounce also isn't taking new customers so I've heard people have good success with tools like Million Verifier and Clearout as well! When we have a list that we NEED an email for as many people as we can, we will run the full Clay waterfall to put as many shots on goal as we can. And why not? They only charge when an email is found. Perhaps the only edit I make to the waterfall is that if a catch all domain is found by two providers, I write my own formula so it doesn't keep trying to run the waterfall since the domain is catchall.

If you’re sending the same email to everyone on your list… you’re leaving sales on the table. Here’s what I mean: → Someone who joined yesterday is not the same as someone who’s followed you for years → A loyal buyer shouldn’t be pitched the product they already own → And someone who’s never clicked anything won’t care about your latest offer But if everyone gets the same thing? → Buyers feel unseen → Beginners get overwhelmed → Advanced subscribers get bored → And the people who might be ready to buy miss the moment entirely That adds up fast - lower open rates, fewer clicks, missed revenue. So here are three ways to fix that. Nothing fancy. Just smart segmentation you can set up today: - 1. Ask what they need (on Day 1) Inside your welcome email, include this: "What’s your biggest challenge with [topic]? Reply with A, B, or C" → A = Beginner challenge → B = Mid-stage challenge → C = Advanced challenge Based on what they click, tag them. Now when you launch something, you can send messaging that actually speaks to where they’re at. - 2. Track what they do, not just what they say → If they click a pricing page but don’t buy - follow up with objection handling → If they always open Topic X - send more of it → If they never engage with Topic Y - stop sending it This works in any email platform with link tracking. - 3. Match your message to their stage → Never bought? Start with education + a clear next step → Bought once? Offer the next logical product → Bought multiple times? Focus on loyalty, referrals, community People at different points need different nudges. Treating them the same doesn’t make sense. - I get why most people skip this. It feels like another system to build. Another thing to manage. But it doesn’t need to be complicated. Simple tags, clear signals, and a system that actually speaks to people based on what they need is often all it takes. If you’d rather not figure it out on your own, just DM me “segmentation” and I’ll show you how we can build it properly. ✌️

This is my ENTIRE cold email tech stack broken down by function Most people ask "what tools should I use?" but the real question is "how do they work together?" Here's the 5-stage system that runs everything: Stage 1: Lead Generation & Research → ListKit: Pull targeted prospect lists → Google Docs: Draft & refine email copy → Close: CRM to manage the entire pipeline Stage 2: Data Enrichment & Orchestration → Slack : Team coordination and notifications → Clay: Orchestrate data flow between all tools → Airtable: Store and organize all prospect data Stage 3: Email Verification & Sending → Apify: Scrape additional prospect data → listmint: Verify email addresses and catch-alls → Smartlead: Handle all email sending and campaigns Stage 4: Scheduling & Landing Pages → Calendly: Seamless meeting booking → Framer: Custom landing pages that convert Stage 5: Performance & Analytics → ChatGPT: AI research at scale → Microsoft Clarity: Track website behavior → Kit: Email marketing and nurture sequences — The magic isn't in individual tools ... it's in how they connect Each stage feeds into the next automatically Most people use 3-4 random tools that don't talk to each other This stack eliminates manual work and scales infinitely