Forem: Alison Gibson

Why Developers Should Care About Email Marketing

Alison Gibson — Sat, 14 Jun 2025 10:11:35 +0000

When you think about email marketing, you probably picture drag-and-drop builders, A/B tests, and growth hacks shared by marketing influencers. Not code. Not APIs. Not dev tools.

But here’s the thing: email marketing is very much a developer’s playground. If you’re building apps, launching products, or even tinkering with side projects, email is often the most powerful, flexible, and technical tool you have for reaching users.

And to make it easier for folks like us, I put together this repo:

👉 Awesome Email Marketing – A curated GitHub list of tools, templates, APIs, and learning resources to help developers dive into email marketing without having to wade through fluff.

Email: Still the Most Reliable Channel

We spend so much time optimizing for SEO, tweeting our way into timelines, and experimenting with social reach—but email remains one of the few channels you truly own.

It doesn’t depend on an algorithm. It lands directly in a person’s inbox. And unlike a tweet, it doesn’t vanish in 30 minutes.

But here's the real kicker: most email marketing platforms come with APIs, webhooks, SDKs, and other dev-friendly ways to integrate. Want to trigger onboarding emails when a user finishes a tutorial? You can code that. Want to personalize content for 10k users? That's just a script away.

Where Dev Meets Marketing

Email marketing is also where developers and marketers actually collaborate. You write the backend that sends transactional emails. You set up the event triggers. You make sure SPF/DKIM/DMARC are configured correctly so your messages don’t land in spam.

But you might not always want to go it alone.

I recently discovered Marketinguys, a smart directory for finding marketing talent. If you’re a solo builder or part of a small team, you can plug in a vetted marketer to help shape campaigns while you handle the tech. Think of it like Upwork, but focused, higher signal, and actually useful for startups.

And if you like staying sharp with ideas, The Marketing Newsletter is surprisingly solid. It’s short, curated, and written with a builder mindset—no fluff, no buzzwords. I’ve started skimming it weekly alongside engineering newsletters, and it actually balances the feed.

Tools, Templates & Tinkering

Most developers (including me) hate dealing with HTML email. It’s archaic. It breaks easily. There’s no flexbox, no grid, and Outlook will ruin your day.

But tools like MJML and Maizzle—both listed in the Awesome Email Marketing repo—abstract away a lot of the pain. You write modern markup, and they spit out robust, responsive email HTML.

There’s also Marketing Tools List, a massive directory where you’ll find lesser-known gems for email automation, testing, deliverability, and analytics. I ended up discovering a free tool there to preview emails across clients, which saved me hours of testing.

You’ll find many of these in the GitHub repo I mentioned, but what makes the tools list special is that it includes non-email tools too—so it’s great if you want to zoom out and optimize your full marketing stack.

Just Start Somewhere

The hardest part of email marketing as a dev isn’t the code—it’s knowing where to begin.

Do you use Mailchimp or Resend? Do you build custom flows or integrate Zapier? What even is a good open rate?

That’s why I created Awesome Email Marketing. Not because I have all the answers—but because I was tired of hunting them down every time I built something new.

It’s full of tools I use (or admire), guides I trust, and platforms worth knowing. And it's open for contributions—if you've got a go-to library, ESP, or template set, I'd love a pull request.

TL;DR

Email marketing is more technical than most devs realize—and more powerful too.

It’s not just Mailchimp and marketing teams.
It’s automation, APIs, templates, logic, and real-time messaging.
And it’s one of the few channels you own as a builder.

Whether you’re sending your first onboarding sequence or scaling up a full email system, start with tools built for developers. Then pair up with marketers when you need to, stay inspired with curated newsletters, and keep building smarter workflows.

Start here 👉 github.com/alisongbs/awesome-email-marketing

Content Marketing for Developers: Why It Matters and How to Start

Alison Gibson — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 06:35:46 +0000

Content marketing isn’t just for startups, influencers, or product managers — it’s for developers too.

Whether you're trying to build a personal brand, grow your open-source project, or just share what you’ve learned, content marketing can be an incredibly valuable tool. And no, it doesn’t mean clickbait headlines or hyped-up tech jargon. Done well, content marketing is simply about sharing useful knowledge in a way that reaches others.

🧠 Why Should Developers Care About Content Marketing?

If you've ever solved a bug thanks to a blog post or GitHub README, you’ve seen content marketing in action. It’s not just about “selling” — it’s about teaching, helping, and connecting.

Here’s what it can do for you:

Build your reputation – Become known for the topics you care about.
Grow your projects – Attract users and contributors to your open-source work.
Open up opportunities – From freelance work to full-time roles to speaking gigs.
Give back to the community – Save someone else hours of struggle.

✍️ What Kind of Content Can You Create?

You don’t need to be a “thought leader.” Just be helpful.

Start with what you already know and work from there:

Step-by-step tutorials
Dev logs or changelogs for your projects
Deep dives on tools or frameworks
Lessons learned from side projects or jobs
Real-world comparisons (e.g., “Why I chose X over Y”)

Think of your blog post as the thing you wish you had found last week when you were stuck.

🌍 Where Should You Share It?

You don’t need your own domain to get started. Post where other devs already read and share content:

Dev.to
GitHub READMEs, Discussions, or Wikis
Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Mastodon
Hacker News, Reddit
Newsletters and personal blogs (when you're ready)

📚 Resources to Level Up

If you want to improve your content game, here are two excellent places to start:

awesome-content-marketing – A GitHub repo full of curated content marketing tools, guides, and examples. Especially helpful if you want a developer-friendly starting point.
The Marketing Newsletter – A free, no-fluff newsletter that shares modern marketing tips, tools, and insights. Great for developers who want to understand marketing without drowning in buzzwords.

👋 Final Thoughts

You don’t need to “do marketing” to benefit from content marketing. All you need to do is share what you know, what you build, and how you solve problems. That’s enough.

The next time someone Googles their error message or searches for how to integrate a tool — maybe they’ll find your post.

And maybe, it’ll save their day.

GTM Engineering: Where Tech Meets Growth

Alison Gibson — Sun, 08 Jun 2025 15:11:03 +0000

If you're a developer who's ever dipped your toes into marketing, product growth, or customer analytics, chances are you've brushed up against the concept of GTM Engineering. It's an emerging field that blends engineering skills with business strategy, and it's growing fast.

Let's break it down, explain why it's gaining traction, and show you how to get involved (spoiler: there are cool open resources).

What is GTM Engineering?

GTM stands for Go-To-Market. It traditionally refers to the strategy a company uses to launch and scale a product. This includes marketing, sales, and customer support.

GTM Engineering is where technical folks (like us) come in to make that strategy data-driven, automated, and scalable.

Think of GTM Engineers as:

Data engineers for marketing and product growth teams
Developers who build internal tooling for sales and customer success
Technical partners who ensure growth experiments are measurable and testable
Bridge-builders between product, marketing, and data science

What Do GTM Engineers Actually Do?

Here are a few practical examples:

Building and maintaining customer data pipelines (e.g. Segment, RudderStack)
Writing scripts to automate lead scoring or enrichment using APIs like Clearbit or HubSpot
Creating internal dashboards for marketing attribution or customer health scoring
Instrumenting front-end and back-end code to capture user events for analytics
Collaborating with RevOps to sync CRMs like Salesforce or HubSpot with product usage data
Owning tools like Customer.io, Amplitude, Mixpanel, and making them talk to your app

If that sounds like a weird mashup of DevOps, data engineering, and growth hacking—you're not wrong. But that's what makes it exciting.

Why Should Developers Care?

Business Impact: GTM Engineers work closer to revenue than almost any other engineering role.
Visibility: Your work is seen directly by marketing, sales, and leadership teams.
Versatility: You'll touch data, APIs, UIs, automation, and integrations.
Career Growth: Companies are increasingly hiring for these hybrid roles because traditional silos ("that's a marketing thing") just don't work anymore.

Learning Resources

You're not alone if you're Googling your way through your first GTM Eng project. Luckily, there's a community forming around this space.

A great place to start is the GitHub repo: Awesome GTM Engineering

This curated list includes:

Key concepts and terminology
Tools and platforms GTM Engineers often use
Articles and blog posts from the community
Example architectures and code

Final Thoughts

GTM Engineering is still defining itself. That means it's a great time to get involved. If you're a dev who loves thinking about the customer journey, shipping fast internal tools, or connecting the dots between data and business goals—this might be your next move.

Feel free to star the Awesome GTM Engineering repo, contribute what you're learning, and help shape the future of this hybrid craft.

Thanks for reading! If you're working in or exploring GTM Engineering, drop a comment below. I'd love to hear how you're building the bridge between code and customer.

[Boost]

Alison Gibson — Sun, 08 Jun 2025 11:19:41 +0000

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