AppSumo Black Friday Drop 3: 6 Tools to Grow Your Audience

AppSumo Black Friday Drop 3: All About Audience Growth

AppSumo's third Black Friday drop zeroes in on a theme every business owner cares about: growing your audience. This batch includes six tools that tackle the problem from different angles — hosting virtual events, launching affiliate programs, landing media coverage, booking appointments, and running email marketing campaigns.

The lineup includes HeySummit for virtual events, Pushlap Growth for affiliate programs, Press Ranger for media outreach, Trafft for appointment booking, and two email marketing platforms — Encharge and Acumba Mail. Each one targets a different stage of the audience-growth funnel, so depending on where your business is right now, one or more of these could be a serious upgrade to your current stack.

HeySummit: Host Virtual Events That Actually Make Money

HeySummit is a mature platform for hosting virtual events, and it goes well beyond basic webinars. You can create one-off workshops, single-day or multi-day events with multiple speakers and tracks, ongoing series, on-demand video libraries, and even full video courses. The platform originally launched on AppSumo about six years ago and has expanded significantly as the live events space has evolved.

Setting up an event is straightforward. You name it, assign a company, and start adding speakers. Each speaker gets their own customizable profile page with bio, social links, promotional photos, and even an introduction video. These speaker pages help sell attendees on the event before they ever buy a ticket.

The revenue features are where HeySummit really shines. You can sell multiple ticket types — think VIP passes with limited quantities and time-restricted availability. Beyond tickets, there are add-ons, donations, coupons, and even sponsorship slots where advertisers can pay for access to your audience. Content delivery supports live webinars, live streams, and pre-recorded sessions pulled from platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia, and many others.

One compelling use case: if you're a music teacher, dance instructor, or fitness trainer currently selling one-on-one lessons over Zoom, HeySummit lets you pivot to group sessions. Instead of one student paying for a private lesson, you could have 30 people each paying a similar rate — effectively multiplying your income without multiplying your hours.

Pushlap Growth: Build Your Own Affiliate Army

Pushlap Growth lets you create and manage your own affiliate program so other people promote your products and services for you. The concept is simple — give affiliates a tracking link, they share it with their audience, and you pay them a commission on any resulting sales. It costs the customer nothing extra while giving affiliates a financial incentive to spread the word.

The affiliate experience is polished. When someone joins your program, they land on a branded portal where they enter their details, choose a payment method (Wise, PayPal, or bank account), and generate their unique tracking link. Pushlap Growth makes this process clear enough that even non-technical affiliates can get started without confusion.

On the business owner side, you get granular control over commissions through tiered structures. Set a flat rate or percentage, limit commissions to the first purchase or the first 12 months, and restrict them to specific products if you're running a Shopify or WooCommerce store. The integration list is solid — Stripe, Shopify, WooCommerce, Paddle, and even JavaScript-based tracking for custom setups. There's also a universal forms integration that tracks referrals through website forms alone, which is a unique touch.

The affiliate portal itself is fully brandable with your logo, colors, background images, and custom domain. You can upload marketing assets — banners, color schemes, videos — so affiliates represent your brand correctly. Coupon-based tracking is supported alongside link-based tracking, and all payouts can be managed directly inside the dashboard via Wise, PayPal, bank transfer, or platform credits.

Press Ranger: Access 2 Million+ Journalists and Podcasters

Press Ranger is a media outreach tool that gives you access to a database of over two million journalists, publishers, and podcasters. The idea is to get earned media coverage for your business instead of relying entirely on paid advertising.

The media database is searchable and filterable. You can browse by media type — journalists, publishers, or podcasters — and narrow results by country, category, keywords, popularity rating, and whether they're actively recording or accepting guests. For podcasters, you can even filter by those with valid contact emails. Once you find a match, you can add them to a contact list, set a research status, or send an outreach email directly from the platform using customizable templates with auto-filling variables.

Press Ranger also includes a built-in CRM with a Kanban board for tracking your outreach pipeline. Move contacts through stages like researching, reached out, and passed — so you always know where you stand with every potential media opportunity. When you first set up your account, the platform even surfaces journalist and publisher recommendations based on your company profile.

The press release feature is worth highlighting. AI generates full press releases based on your announcement type and news, and if you want distribution, Press Ranger offers wholesale placement starting at $299 for guaranteed coverage across 400+ outlets including Apple News, Fox and NBC affiliates, and the Associated Press. There's a clear SEO benefit to having your brand mentioned on third-party authority sites, making this a dual-purpose tool for both PR and search visibility.

Trafft: Appointment Booking Built for In-Person Services

Trafft is an appointment booking platform, but it's not trying to compete with Calendly or TidyCal for simple meeting scheduling. Trafft is purpose-built for businesses that offer in-person or location-based services — think salons, gyms, music schools, fitness studios, and group classes.

The customer-facing booking experience is clean and functional. Visitors see available services, pick a class or appointment, choose an instructor, select a time slot, and specify how many people are attending. Upsells are built right into the flow — for a fitness class, you might offer boxing gloves as an add-on. Payment integrations include Stripe, PayPal, Square, Mollie, and Authorize.net, so collecting payment at the time of booking is seamless.

On the backend, Trafft handles the complexity that physical service businesses actually deal with. You can manage multiple employees with individual working hours, days off, and service assignments. Resources like equipment and rooms can be reserved per booking to prevent double-booking. Multi-location support means a business with several studios or offices can let customers choose where to go. Custom fields for both customers and appointments let you gather the specific information you need to deliver the service.

The platform also supports virtual appointments through Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams integrations, along with coupons, custom domains, and customizable appearance with CSS and JS support. Having run a music lesson business for about ten years and paid MindBody tens of thousands of dollars, a one-time lifetime deal for a tool like Trafft would have been a game-changer.

Encharge vs. Acumba Mail: Two Email Marketing Tools, Very Different Strengths

Both Encharge and Acumba Mail landed in the same drop, which makes for a natural comparison. They're both email marketing platforms, but they serve different types of users and businesses.

Encharge is the more technical, automation-heavy option. Its visual automation builder uses an infinite canvas where you can create sophisticated flows — like an automated Stripe signup sequence that sends trial emails, checks subscription status, triggers welcome messages, tags customers, fires Slack notifications, and follows up after cancellations. The email builder supports plain text, images, buttons, and embedded video with auto-generated thumbnails. Encharge also offers site tracking, a feature typically found in higher-end CRMs, which lets you follow visitor behavior across your website (with proper GDPR compliance, of course). The integrations list is extensive, making it a strong fit for SaaS businesses or anyone who needs deep automation tied to payment processors and other tools.

Acumba Mail takes a different approach. It's simpler, more design-forward, and easier to pick up. The standout feature is its template library — 872 templates built on the BeFree editor, which is one of the most intuitive drag-and-drop email builders available. If you care about sending beautiful newsletters or e-commerce blasts without wrestling with complex automation logic, Acumba Mail gets you there faster. It does have automations, but they're more straightforward: trigger, template, wait, send again based on opens. It also includes landing pages and surveys, though you'd probably still want dedicated tools for those.

One important note: Acumba Mail is exclusive to AppSumo Plus members, so if you're not a Plus subscriber, that narrows your choice. For either platform, deliverability matters — authenticate your domain, verify your sender identity, and warm up your list gradually rather than blasting thousands of emails on day one.

Which Tools Are Worth Grabbing?

Drop 3 covers a lot of ground, and the right pick depends entirely on where your business needs the most help. HeySummit is a no-brainer if you're running or considering virtual events — the monetization features alone justify it. Pushlap Growth is ideal if you have a product or service and want other people promoting it for you without the overhead of managing influencer relationships manually.

Press Ranger fills a unique niche for businesses that want earned media coverage but don't have a PR agency on retainer. The database access and built-in outreach tools make it accessible even if you've never pitched a journalist before. Trafft is highly specific to service-based businesses with physical locations, but for that audience, it could replace expensive monthly subscriptions like MindBody.

For email marketing, the choice between Encharge and Acumba Mail comes down to complexity versus simplicity. If you're running a SaaS or need deep automation tied to Stripe and other integrations, Encharge is the clear winner. If you want gorgeous templates and a fast path to sending newsletters, Acumba Mail is the easier pick — assuming you have AppSumo Plus access.

Watch the Full Video

Prefer watching to reading? Check out the full video on YouTube for a complete walkthrough with live demos and commentary.