My personal favourite trick with ":r!" is, in a new buffer, running
:0r! grep -rn $pattern $path_to_directory
or any other command that outputs lines containing "$path_to_file:$line_no" (eg most linters).
With that output read into a buffer, placing the cursor anywhere in the "path:line" part and hitting ^wF will open that file in a new split window, and jump the cursor straight to the indicated line - or you can do ^wgF to do the same in a new tab page.
It's a very handy way to work through a big list of work items spread across many files. You do need to coax the right format for it out of your tools, but fortunately "path:line" is pretty de-facto standard.
(Incidentally, I do ":0r" so it inserts the read-in lines at the very top of the file - just ":r" in an empty buffer leads to a leading blank line, which I find irrationally annoying.)