Hey!
Welcome to this week's MODULR Minute.
In this edition:
- Why email marketing feels like herding cats (and how to fix it)
- A free budget template that actually makes budgeting suck less
- Amazon’s bold attempt at
feminism PR
- Our honest take on the Attio vs. HubSpot debate
Quick reads. Real talk. Let’s get into it.
Email Isn’t One Job. It’s Five.
Here’s why email marketing feels harder than it should: it doesn’t live in one part of the funnel.
You’re writing to:
- Someone who just joined your list
- Someone deciding whether to buy
- A paying customer
- A longtime loyalist
- And the ghost of a churned user you want back
Different people. Different needs. Same channel.
Most marketing tactics get to specialize. Email doesn’t. It’s expected to onboard, convert, upsell, retain, win back—and somehow still feel personal.
So if your email strategy feels messy, it’s not you. It’s the scope. You’re trying to run five campaigns in one inbox.
So what?
First: Skim this next time someone says “can’t we just send an email?”
Second: Start treating email like multiple campaigns, not one. Segment strategically. Write for intent, not just audience. And stop expecting a single flow to do all the work. One size doesn’t fit all—especially in the inbox.
Centralized Marketing Budget Template
When you don’t keep track of marketing spend, it’s easy to overspend. A centralized marketing budget is the backbone of any successful marketing strategy. It ensures that every dollar spent is tracked, optimized, and aligned with your business goals.
With MODULR’s free marketing budget template, you can hit the ground running and create your budget today. Our template includes Expense Categories by market function to organize your spending, Monthly and Quarterly Tracking to track your budget vs. actual spend over time, Performance Metrics to track KPIs, and a Notes Section to include context on spending decisions.
Download the template!
Jeff Bezos PR Launch (Literally)
Amazon has been busy trying to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere of public opinion with its latest feel-good ad campaign. You might’ve seen the recent slew of Amazon ads that portray cheerful warehouse workers praising the company for its amazing benefits and favorable working conditions. It’s all part of the company’s ongoing quest to convince the world that their workplace is less industrial grind and more break room bliss.
Meanwhile, Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos’ other passion project, Blue Origin, just sent an all-women crew into space. The mission has been met with a lot of backlash, and detractors are calling it tone-deaf and performative.
In short, Amazon wants us to believe it’s a great place to work and a pioneer of human progress…we’re not sure which mission is more ambitious.
HubSpot vs. Attio: The Wrong Question?
Attio has been making a lot of noise lately. We’ve gotten more questions around whether Attio or HubSpot is the better pick for small teams.
We’d love to give you a straightforward answer. But here’s the thing: if someone recommends a CRM without understanding your business model, team size, or how your sales cycles actually work—run. They’re selling, not helping.
Still, we’ve worked in CRM for nearly 10 years and have helped dozens of teams pick the right CRM. So here’s our no-BS breakdown of the two:
What Attio is really good at:
- Lightweight and fast—great UX, low friction
- Feels more like a modern database than a CRM
- Easy to model your own objects (not restricted to company, contact, and deal)
- Especially strong for outbound-driven teams
What HubSpot is really good at:
- Ready to use out of the box—less setup, more selling
- Marketing tools are already built in: forms, emails, sequences, and automation
- Solid reporting and dashboards for growing teams
- Integrates with pretty much everything
Where Attio struggles:
- Limited native integrations (though improving)
- No built-in marketing tools—you’ll need to stack
- Takes more effort to set up and maintain
- Geared more toward technical users
Where HubSpot struggles:
- Can feel bloated for very small or early-stage teams
- Gets expensive as you scale up contacts and features
- Steeper learning curve if you haven’t used it before
Our advice:
There’s real value in having your whole team working in one place—not juggling logins and stitched-together tools. Especially if you don’t have a dedicated tools-and-tech person.
And whatever you choose, make sure it can scale with you. Ripping out and replacing your CRM in 18 months is a nightmare. Plan to keep whatever you pick for at least five years.
Braden & Jon
MODULR Marketing
P.S. We're working on a tool to help you track your work wins and earn more $$$ at performance review time. It's ready for beta users. Reply to this email if you're interested in free, early access to the tool.