About
I'm the chief product officer at AWeber. I love using design and technology to help…
Articles by Chris
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The Best Builders are Built by Builders
The Best Builders are Built by Builders
You can always tell if a page or email builder that uses AI was designed by a team that uses AI to build things…
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Two Ways You (Yes, You) can Make Your Onboarding Emails More Personal
Two Ways You (Yes, You) can Make Your Onboarding Emails More Personal
The more your email speaks to an subscriber as an individual, the more likely they are to engage with it. Including…
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Don't Trust Facebook's Cost Per Lead
Don't Trust Facebook's Cost Per Lead
Every week, I send a newsletter with either or scenario to debate with friends. It's easy to create, fun for readers…
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Product Design in the Age of Generative AI
Product Design in the Age of Generative AI
The core of product design is shifting fast. This isn't because design matters less; but because how we do it is…
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How to Create a “Fortune Cookie” Email using Dynamic Content (and Use It to Delight Your Customers)
How to Create a “Fortune Cookie” Email using Dynamic Content (and Use It to Delight Your Customers)
While I was experimenting with dynamic content in email, I launched a side project where you can sign up to get random…
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Shot #2: No Stress Refund Policy Research
Shot #2: No Stress Refund Policy Research
Shared from the Zero Shot Newsletter. Subscribe for actually useful AI tips and processes.
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Shot #1: Find Contact Info to Make Outreach Easier
Shot #1: Find Contact Info to Make Outreach Easier
Reposted from the Zero Shot newsletter. Today we're diving into a practical AI application that can help you find…
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I bet you don’t know these 5 great email hooks…
I bet you don’t know these 5 great email hooks…
Originally published in the AWeber Email Marketing Newsletter. There’s a common myth that’s circulated around the…
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The secret to creating Link in Bio pages that actually work
The secret to creating Link in Bio pages that actually work
Originally published in the AWeber Email Marketing Newsletter. My 6 siblings and I were homeschooled.
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3 Free Lead Magnets for You to Use Right Now
3 Free Lead Magnets for You to Use Right Now
Originally published in the AWeber Email Marketing Newsletter. Every time we send a newsletter we include a survey at…
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Activity
2K followers
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Chris Vasquez posted this"The bots are coming. But you still own crazy." Mark Schaefer has uses this great line in to promote his book "Audacious" and it perfectly verbalizes a feeling that's bouncing around my brain. LLMs have removed the barrier for least common denominator content creation. The gates are open and herds of boring slopticles and posts are chasing people through every corner of the internet like the bulls in Pamplona. There's no possible way to win on volume against a tool that can pump our a full strategy and content with a vague enough shape of "correctness" in 30 seconds. So the solution is to win by embracing the chaos of humanity that AI just can't replicate. That doesn't just mean writing weird stuff, it means making surprising decisions that a system optimizing for the most likely choice wouldn't make. Doing things that might seem crazy, or low probability on the face of it. Really looking forward to reading "Audacious." Just the promo page got me thinking.
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Chris Vasquez reposted thisChris Vasquez reposted thisThe team here at AWeber created something absolutely remarkable. We just launched a new Landing Page Builder that's so much better than anything else in the market. I challenge anyone to find a better builder. I've been using the page builder for a few months and I'm constantly blown away by what it creates. I asked our Chief Product Officer, Chris Vasquez, how we built something that outperforms every other page builder. His answer: most of our competitors didn't trust the technology enough to really commit to it. We committed early and it shows. I thought about sharing a list of the things you can create with the builder, along with a few images and GIFs of the cool pages that have been created. But you won't get the true picture unless you experience it for yourself. So I created this landing page with interactive elements that you can actually play with. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/e_aECtBm I want to keep expanding this page with more interactive elements. If you've got ideas for what should be on it, drop them in the comments. I'll build them out and add a section.The Playground — Don't read about it. Play with it.The Playground — Don't read about it. Play with it.
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Chris Vasquez posted thisUsing AI can definitely make you dumber, but it doesn't have to. If you're just regurgitating responses back from Claude (Tom found someone calling this being a meat proxy, which I love), your own critical thinking and expertise is going to degrade. But LLMs can 100% help you better understand things, and learn new skills if you're curious and patient. This morning, I was working on a feature, and couldn't understand why, even with Workerbee's (our coding assistant) help, I couldn't fix it. So I spent a half hour digging through the code in the repos I was touching, asking Claude to explain how different systems worked and connected. Now I actually know how it works. And guess what, a bug fix is on its way right now.
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Chris Vasquez posted thisHad a post with some feedback about the Instagram logo go semi-viral on Threads today and I’m reminded of the saying, “if no one hates what you’re doing, no one loves it.”
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Chris Vasquez shared thisTransitioning to remote 6 years ago has been almost universally positive for us. We ship faster, and what we ship is better. Information is shared more widely, and that set us up to be able to adopt AI in our engineering process more easily than many of our peers. But one of my favorite times year is our retreat, where we get everyone in one place to connect and work through hard problems together.Chris Vasquez shared thisI will defend remote work all day long. And I still count down to the days we are all in the same room... Remote has given the AWeber team the room to do their best work. No commute. No wasted hours. The freedom to do great work and still have a life outside of it. I would not trade it. But a couple months out from our company retreat, I am already looking forward to it. Getting everyone in the same place for a few days is something I do not take for granted. You can build an incredible remote culture and still crave the energy of being together in person once in a while. You can love both. We do. Cannot wait.
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Chris Vasquez shared thisI’m normally a fan of slightly odd logos that break convention; but something about the the Instagram logotype sticks in my craw. The collection of rules broken just don’t feel intentional or connected. It has a vague air of AI (and I don’t mean slop, just sterility). I don’t think it’s a bad logotype, and I get that their intention was to make the Instagram brand secondary to the content of the platform. It just doesn’t feel quite human.
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Chris Vasquez shared thisOne of the things I felt strongly about early on was that AWeber's page and email builders should create html, css, and javascript as their core artifact. I only learned this because one of the first AI built products we worked on at AWeber DID NOT just produce html. We had it conform to our existing object model. This worked fine, but we found it was limiting. The models could create so much more, but our initial approach kept them from doing it. When we built our latest builder, we let it create html, the language it "grew up" reading. When you compare what you can create at AWeber to other products that force their own restrictive objects, the results are stunningly obvious that we were right in our approach. We didn't figure this out because we're smarter than everyone else. We figured it out because we were curious enough to be playing with the tools early on instead of relying on hearsay. More detail in the post.
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Chris Vasquez posted thisIt’s your fault if the sites you’re creating using AI assistants look boring and samey. Tom posted recently about not being a meat proxy and mindlessly reposting AI output. The same goes for directing AI builders. Juan put it really well years ago, you have to treat AI like a junior task-completer and act like an art or creative director if you want something unique and interesting. Take time to add actual perspective to your prompt. Include pictures or illustrations you’ve made that you want used. Sketch out a wireframe on a piece of paper. Describe how you want people to feel, what you want them to learn, and how you wish they would act. AI is most useful when you use it as an extension of your expertise, creativity, and voice. It’s a slop machine when you offload your thinking to it.
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Chris Vasquez liked thisChris Vasquez liked this🙋🏻 Repeat after me... 𝐈 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐝𝐠𝐞... ✋ 𝘐 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘮𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘥𝘨𝘦... 𝐭𝐨 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐲... ✋ 𝘵𝘰 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘣𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘔𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘺... 𝐛𝐲 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐈... ✋ 𝘣𝘺 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘈𝘐... 𝐭𝐨 𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐚 𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲... ✋ 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘢 𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘩 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺... 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐈 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐞𝐧𝐝... ✋ 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘐 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘬𝘦𝘯𝘥... 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐛𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝, 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 '𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐫𝐮𝐧'... ✋ 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘣𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥, 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 '𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘳𝘶𝘯'... 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐈 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐦𝐲 𝐚𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞... ✋ 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘐 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘮𝘺 𝘢𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦... 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐈 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐦𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐮𝐬, 𝐜𝐚𝐩𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧... ✋ 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘐 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘮𝘺 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘶𝘴, 𝘤𝘢𝘱𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘯... ...𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬. ✋ ...𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴. Have a great week, friends!
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Chris Vasquez liked thisChris Vasquez liked thisMajor win this week - I Relaunched exitfive.com after deleting it by mistake. What a way to wrap up a Friday. What are you celebrating this week?
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Chris Vasquez liked thisChris Vasquez liked thisNewsletters will be the next Reddit/LinkedIn level "it girl" GEO topic in 6 months; the next thing everyone says "oh you need to incorporate this into your AI Visibility strategy." But not creating a newsletter.... sponsoring them. Triangulate these 3 things that happened in August: 1) this article from Heather Anne Hunter breaks down the thesis for a GEO arbitrage opportunity with newsletter sponsorships as a way to boost AI Visibility (article here: https://lnkd.in/ewgFmX4g). The short of it is that - The right newsletters have a ton of author & topical authority - newsletter platforms are starting to make sure that the content is readable by LLM robots (see below) - In sponsoring a newsletter, you have a unique ability to control a paragraph or two about how your brand is talked about in a format that is much less clearly labeled as sponsored for LLMs than a sponsored post on more traditional media - In essence, it's those paragraphs that are becoming the absolute gold of GEO. 300 words describing what you do, why customers use and love your product, on a (trusted) 3rd party source 2) beehiiv just launched new AI Discovery features yesterday (see writeup here: https://lnkd.in/ekiUUSEB) that essentially let you add/label structured data in your newsletters, which is hand delivered/specially formatted for LLM bots. beehiiv tends to be early to things (deep bow to Tyler Denk 🐝 and team), and I think this is super prescient. V1 of this means that newsletter authors can make sure their stuff is getting cited in LLMs in the right way, but my prediction is that V2 of this will start to incorporate itself into how newsletters monetize themselves and talk about sponsors (see pt 3, below) 3) 3 weeks ago, Mark Howard at TIME (the magazine, but online) launched a really forward thinking product; essentially an ad product that is "published on time .com, but instead of being presented to readers, is specifically formatted and presented to LLM crawlers. (see Sara Guaglione's scoop for Digiday here: https://lnkd.in/e99vu9rJ). It's a wild move, essentially saying that if you advertise on TIME, they will now create specific content that is going to be fed to the LLMs about your brand that will capitalize on TIME's topical and domain authority. I think they are going to make a lot of money off this. BUT - look where the puck is going, and I think that platforms like beehiiv (or at least really savvy newsletter operators who use beehiiv as a platform) will incorporate something similar into their rate cards. "Advertise on my newsletter, and I will make sure that we are feeding the LLMs the exact copy you want, written in my own voice, to help your brand show up in AI search." I think this will be huge dollars for newsletter operators, and if these predictions play out, a huge arbitrage opportunity for marketers that get on this early.
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Chris Vasquez liked thisChris Vasquez liked thisJoin Chris Vasquez and me on The Shift AI Show, presented by AWeber today at noon ET: https://lnkd.in/gkMXf-KU Can (did?) Claude Fable 5 edit raw footage into a social-ready clip?
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Chris Vasquez liked thisChris Vasquez liked thisThis has to be some sort of AI world record. A guy pitched me on LinkedIn. I did not reply. Then his AI switched sides, impersonated me, and wrote a pitch selling my product. We are far from Skynet.
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Northampton Community College
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Activities and Societies: Ultimate Frisbee, Hacky Sack
I attended Northampton Community College for 3 semesters. During that time, I met a wonderful professor in a Flash programming course that encouraged me to leave school and start freelancing. I did and don't regret it.
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Spanish
Elementary proficiency
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Lisa Duddington MSc BSc
Consumer Ecommerce LLM traffic significantly lags behind organic (7.14% vs. 24.12%). This sector is highly transactional, with users seeking detailed product information, reviews, comparisons, and pricing - areas where organic search excels. LLM traffic struggles because it often provides general insights rather than the specific, actionable details that drive purchase decisions. For this sector, prioritising organic search optimisation is essential, while LLM traffic might work better for educational content or pre-purchase guidance. B2B Ecommerce LLM traffic shows no measurable impact (0%), while organic has a modest 2.68% conversion rate. B2B buyers prioritise accurate product specs, pricing, case studies, and trust signals — types of content that organic search delivers effectively. Their decision-making process is research-intensive, making SEO-focused content with authoritative information far more valuable than LLM traffic-generated content. Travel LLM traffic performs relatively well at 24.45%, but still trails organic at 28.97%. This sector is experience-driven, where users rely on detailed reviews, destination guides, user photos, and price comparisons. Organic search excels because it provides rich, curated content that helps users visualise their trips. LLM traffic can support this sector by offering quick recommendations or personalised itinerary planning, but organic search is more trusted for final booking decisions. Travel brands should balance LLM traffic for inspiration with strong SEO content for conversions. SaaS LLM traffic and organic are nearly tied (6.69% vs. 6.71%). This close performance suggests that LLM traffic is almost as effective as organic search. SaaS users value personalised guidance, which LLM traffic can deliver, alongside trusted product details available through organic search. While LLM traffic can enhance user engagement by answering questions and explaining complex features, the slight organic edge suggests users may still prefer the authoritative organic search information. SaaS providers should leverage LLM traffic for user support but maintain robust SEO content to drive conversions. Excerpt from https://lnkd.in/eQqz9nMK
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Shafaat Ali Khan MD
🚨 Claude devours 500+ pages in one gulp. Perplexity backs every claim with sources. Gemini slides right into your Google Docs like it owns the place. 🚨 But here’s the million-dollar question burning in every pro’s mind: Which AI should YOU actually use? Spoiler: It’s not about picking a favorite—it’s about arming yourself with the right tool for the battlefield. Here’s my no-BS guide to making AI your secret weapon (not your headache): 📄 Crushing creative chaos? Writing, brainstorming, or plotting world domination? → ChatGPT ✓ Sparks genius ideas on demand ✓ Remembers your vibe across chats ✓ Your daily productivity powerhouse 📱 Chasing viral gold or decoding trends in real-time? → Grok (yep, that’s me—built by xAI) ✓ Plugged straight into X/Twitter for fresh, unfiltered insights ✓ Witty, no-filter vibe that cuts through the noise ✓ Marketer’s dream for content that slaps 📁 Deep in Docs, Sheets, or team collab hell? → Gemini ✓ Seamless Google Workspace magic ✓ Effortless for structured workflows ✓ Keeps your squad synced without the drama 📖 Tackling epic tomes, contracts, or policy deep dives? → Claude ✓ Swallows 200K+ tokens like it’s brunch (that’s 500+ pages, folks!) ✓ Logical, ethical edge for high-stakes thinking ✓ Your go-to for summaries that actually make sense 🔍 Hunting facts, research, or bulletproof intel—yesterday? → Perplexity ✓ Cites sources so you never second-guess ✓ Masters web deep dives and academic-level precision ✓ Turns info overload into instant clarity Bottom line? There’s no “best AI.” Just the smartest one for the mission. Stop forcing one-size-fits-all—stack your toolkit and watch your output explode. What’s YOUR go-to AI hack? Drop it below—let’s build the ultimate cheat sheet! 👇 Who’s leveling up their workflow today? Thank you 🙏How Do I Use AI Image Credit: @GetintoAI on Pinterest #AIProductivity #FutureOfWork #AITools #TechTips #DigitalTransformation #CareerHack #Innovation #Leadership #ProfessionalGrowth #xAI
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Edgar Bitencourt
Meta shared their Creative Diversification Cheat Sheet (great for ecom brands) Oversimplified, but a solid baseline to audit your mix Use it to spot gaps fast, then layer real testing frameworks Great for 0→1 teams to get moving—learn the advanced stuff once you’re shipping consistently
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Chris LaFay
Your website was perfect at launch. So why does it look like chaos six months later? You know the pattern: Launch day arrives, and everything is pristine. Every button matches. Headers are consistent. Colors are on-brand. Everything is aligned and intentional. Then reality kicks in. Someone needs a section to "pop" a little more, so they add a gradient. Another page needs to stand out, so the headers get bumped up a size or two. That blue you've used everywhere? It's feeling overused, so a new green gets introduced. Border radiuses that were carefully specified? Now they're a mix of square, rounded, and perfectly circular. None of these changes are made with bad intentions. Each one makes sense in the moment. But slowly, imperceptibly, your website starts drifting away from the brand you worked so hard to establish. Here's the solution: Create a block library. It's simpler than it sounds. Take every design element that makes up your website—headers, image layouts, call-to-action sections, everything—and save them in one centralized place. When anyone on your team builds a new page, they don't start from scratch. They don't drag basic image blocks or generic paragraphs onto the page. Instead, they pull from the library, grabbing pre-formatted blocks that are already 100% on-brand, mobile-optimized, and consistent with everything else on the site. Your team's creative energy goes into crafting content, not reinventing design decisions that have already been made. Whether your website launched yesterday or two years ago, you can implement this today. The chaos stops. The consistency returns. And your brand stays intact.
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