People often assume that since I design websites, I’m familiar with all the latest tech and know how to use it. That’s not always true. I usually learn new tools either when a client asks for something outside my skill set or when they introduce me to something better than what I currently use. I thought it would be helpful to share a few tech services I learned this way that can make your website and marketing easier.

Mailpoet is a newsletter tool that works directly within your WordPress site. I discovered it while helping a client set it up on her website. Normally, I use Mailchimp, but I was impressed by Mailpoet’s ability to automatically convert blog posts into newsletters. This means people can subscribe on your website and receive newsletters based on your blog content—super efficient! You don’t need to repost content between your blog and newsletter. While Mailchimp offers a similar feature, I found it tricky to set up and unreliable. I’ve since used Mailpoet on two new sites I built, Lonesomecarolina.com and YadaChef.com. If you sign up through the forms there, you’ll receive automatic emails with new blog posts—pretty cool!

Elfsite is another tool that offers nearly 100 website widgets, no coding required. You can easily add things like Google Business reviews, Facebook and Instagram feeds, contact forms, and more. I used Elfsite to add a Facebook feed to Lonesomecarolina.com, and it was relatively simple to implement.

I hope you find these two new tools useful. I always try to pass on what I learn.