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Product & growth notes
Practical writing on CRM, email deliverability, marketing automation and building a business on one platform. Search or filter by topic below.
18 articles
How agencies run every client on one CRM
A practical guide to managing multiple clients in one CRM: isolated workspaces, per-client sending domains, white-label reporting and clean handovers.
Where AI actually helps in a CRM (and where it doesn't)
A grounded look at AI in CRMs in 2026: the tasks it genuinely speeds up, the ones it quietly makes worse, and how to adopt it without eroding trust in your data.
The hidden tax of running five tools that don't talk
Every tool boundary in your stack is a place where data goes stale, context gets lost and someone pays in hours. Here's the case for one platform.
Never ship an automation you haven't watched run
Flow simulation runs a real record through your automation — before it can touch a customer.
The 2026 email deliverability checklist
SPF, DKIM, DMARC, one-click unsubscribe, engagement hygiene and the Gmail/Yahoo bulk-sender rules — a plain-English checklist to keep your email landing.
When to connect your tools — and when to consolidate them
Integration or consolidation? A decision framework for messy software stacks: where webhooks and APIs are the right glue, and where a single platform ends the glue entirely.
Deliverability is a product feature, not an ops chore
Warm-up ramps, triple suppression and aligned link domains — the invisible engineering that decides whether your email lands.
12 marketing automation workflows worth stealing
Copy-ready automation ideas — welcome series, lead scoring, re-engagement, abandoned form, post-sale onboarding and more — with the triggers and exits to use.
Flexible objects, explained: beyond contacts and deals
Why the rigid contacts-and-deals CRM breaks down, and how a flexible object model lets you model properties, projects, subscriptions or anything your business runs on.
Lead scoring without the guesswork
A simple, transparent lead-scoring framework your sales team will actually trust: pick signals, weight them, decay them, and route the hot ones automatically.
Designing a sales pipeline that reflects reality
How to build pipeline stages that map to buyer decisions, not your internal wishful thinking — plus exit criteria, probabilities and a weighted forecast that holds up.
Do you need email marketing or a CRM? Both, actually
The false choice between an email platform and a CRM — why the split creates stale data and duplicate work, and what changes when the record and the campaign share a spine.
Consent, suppression and staying out of spam folders — legally
A non-lawyer's guide to email consent in 2026: opt-in vs. legitimate interest, double opt-in, suppression lists, and why compliance and deliverability push the same way.
The no-nonsense CRM guide for small businesses
How a small team should choose and set up a CRM in a weekend: what to track, what to ignore, and how to avoid the bloat that makes big-company CRMs a chore.
How to warm up a new sending domain
A step-by-step warm-up plan for a fresh sending domain: authentication first, then a volume ramp that builds reputation instead of tripping spam filters.
10 things to model with custom objects
Ten real-world examples of custom CRM objects — properties, subscriptions, vehicles, courses, tickets and more — and the fields and relationships that make each one useful.
Reports people actually act on
Why most CRM dashboards get ignored, and how to build reports tied to a decision — with the metrics, cohorts and forecasts a team will open on a Monday morning.
Switching CRM without losing your mind
A calm, staged plan for migrating CRM: what to move, what to leave, how to map fields and pipelines, and how to run both systems briefly so nothing falls through.