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Friday Finds
Curated ideas, practical tools, and marketing-inspired thinking for people who design learning.
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Time for another tools edition of this newsletter. Last time, I gave you the daily drivers—the tools that are always open on my screen.
Today? The secret weapons marketers use to make people actually want to read their emails, click their headlines, and show up to their events. These are tools we featured in Think Like a Marketer, Train Like an L&D Pro because they solve problems L&D pros face every single day: nobody opens our emails, nobody clicks our course titles, and our "learning experience" feels more like homework than helpful.
Five tools. All proven. All ready to steal.
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Supported by iSpring
Not every learner is the same—so why train them like they are? This free session shows how iSpring LMS makes it easy to create adaptive, role-based learning paths. You'll walk away with practical examples you can put to work right away.
→ Save your seat
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Tools Worth Your Attention
Readability Checkers
(Pick Your Poison)
Here’s what marketers know that we don’t: Complex writing kills results. Period. They follow approaches like Smart Brevity—short sentences, clear language, scannable structure. Then they check readability on everything. We… don’t. We often write like we’re trying to sound smart rather than to be understood.
Use Hemingway App, Word’s built-in stats, Grammarly, whatever. Just use something. Aim for Flesch Reading Ease 60-70. Every time.
The real secret weapon? Give your LLM readability instructions: “Write this at 7th-8th grade level, Flesch Reading Ease 60+, sentences under 20 words.” Try my “Message Makeover Coach” to help your AI write like a marketer, not an academic.
Why Readability Is a Quiet Superpower in Learning
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Sharethrough Headline Analyzer: Because Attention is Currency
You get less than 3 seconds (probably way less). Your course title either earns attention or kills it.
Sharethrough scores headlines on what actually drives engagement—not what sounds professional. It catches vague language, weak verbs, and constructions that make people scroll past.
Try it: "Leadership Development Program" → "5 Conversations That Turn Managers Into Leaders"
Marketing teams use this thinking for everything. You should too.
https://headlines.sharethrough.com/
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Lu.ma for Event Pages That Sell the Experience
Your registration page is either selling the experience or killing interest. There's no middle ground.
Lu.ma gives you clean pages, one-click registration, automatic reminders, and a professional presence that signals "this is worth your time." Personally, I love that it handles all the admin and reminder messaging, so you can focus on designing the actual learning experiences.
Marketers know the experience starts before the event. So should we.
https://luma.com/
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MailerLite for Emails People Actually Open AND Read
Most L&D pros send announcements like funeral notices. Marketers send emails that people read and act on.
What you get: A/B testing for subject lines, beautiful templates that don't scream "corporate training," automation for strategic campaigns, and analytics that show what's working.
Plus, it's actually affordable for L&D budgets. (Free for up to 500 subscribers)
https://mailerlite.com
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Mindstamp to Make Your Videos Interactive
Passive video is an engagement killer. Marketers add clickable hotspots, quizzes, and call to action buttons because interaction = engagement = results.
Mindstamp lets you add quizzes, branching scenarios, and knowledge checks inside your videos. No fancy editing skills or expensive software required. You get data on what learners understood and where they tuned out.
https://mindstamp.com/
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Also supported by Neovation
1 in 5 new hires walk out the door within 45 days. On February 18, come see how to use AI to build an onboarding experience your new hires will actually love—in hours, not weeks. Oh, and you'll walk away with free prompt templates you can start using right away.
→ Save your seat—your future new hires will thank you!
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The Bottom Line
Marketing tools aren't built for marketers. They're built for anyone who needs to earn attention, drive action, and get results. That's L&D now.
These five? Just the beginning. I've got automation platforms, analytics tools, and content resources that translate perfectly to L&D work.
Hit reply and tell me what problem you're trying to solve. I've got more tools to share than I could fit in one newsletter.
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Know someone who could use any of these tools? Forward this their way. |
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