Building a great newsletter strategy isn’t just about picking the right email service provider. If you don’t have the right tools to go with your ESP, it’s going to be tough to grow your audience and drive the results you want.

Over the years, I’ve tested out many, many newsletter tools. (Hundreds, probably? I never thought to count them all.) Today, I want to recommend a few of my favorites to you.

Before we dive into the tools, I wanted to say: I’ve personally used all of these, and have recommended them to both clients and readers. (I’ll also be transparent with you: These are all partners of mine, and I do receive a small commission when you buy through the links in this email.)

With that being said: Here are a few tools I really like when it comes to running pop-ups on your site, building a referral program, and designing great newsletters.

Growing your email lists + driving revenue

There are so many growth tools out there, but I haven’t seen any that perform as well as Pico. With most of these, you’d be happy to convert 1 percent of site visitors to newsletter subscribers, but with Pico, I’ve seen conversion rates of up to 4 percent, thanks to Pico’s ability to target specific types of users (based on time on site or referral source), and to create units just for mobile devices. Pico makes it easy for a reader to subscribe using their Google or Facebook login, which makes their pop-ups extra effective. I also love that it integrates with WordPress, for easy set-up, and with Zapier, so you can add new subscribers to nearly any ESP.

And Pico doesn’t just do newsletter sign-ups. They’re also a powerful platform for collecting payments, whether your revenue comes from subscriptions, memberships, or donations, or if you’re driving eCommerce sales for your brand.

Pricing is based on the number of contacts on your list — you’ll pay $5 per month for every 1,000 emails added to your list, and Pico takes 5% of all payments processed. I highly recommend giving Pico a try — I think you’ll see far better results with them than any other growth tool. (Just make sure you tell them you discovered Pico through Not a Newsletter!)

Building a referral program

Many of the biggest newsletters on the internet — names like TheSkimm and Morning Brew — have been able to grow so quickly thanks to their referral programs. These programs encourage loyal readers to share a newsletter with friends in exchange for exclusive rewards. I’ve tested several tools for building your own referral program, but my favorite is Sparkloop.

Why? It integrates with ESPs like MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, ConvertKit, and Active Campaign, and you can get your entire referral program up and running in just an hour or two. And best yet: The cost here is incredibly low — often less than $0.10 per new email address. I’d highly recommend giving them a try. You can sign up for Sparkloop via this link.

Designing beautiful newsletters

The email builder that comes with your ESP is usually good enough for day-to-day newsletters. But sometimes, you want to design something special, like a unique email to drive your readers to become paying subscribers or to attend a big event. For that, you may want to turn to an email builder to make something that will really grab a reader’s attention.

Two email builders I like: Chamaileon’s great for large teams — it allows multiple people to be working on the same email, like you’d do in Google Docs. If you’re working solo, or if you want a tool that allows you to build AMP elements into your newsletter, try Stripo.

Most Chamaileon users will pay between $250-500 per year for an account. Stripo, for a solo designer, only costs $125 per year. Both are excellent tools if you need to design something that goes above and beyond your normal newsletter design.

Sign up for Chamaileon here, or Stripo here.

Looking for another type of tool?

If you’re looking for help growing ad revenue, figuring out the right ESP, or have another question, I’m here to help! Reply to this newsletter and let me know what you’re looking for. I’d be happy to recommend something that might work for you!

—Dan