As an ecommerce store owner โ current or future โ you probably don't need to be told about the value of email marketing which happens to be one of the most beneficial online marketing methods.
Sendinblue (now Brevo) is one of the most popular and user-friendly email marketing services that you may choose for marketing your online store, and it came up as a great alternative for Mailchimp and even for AWeber.
I have included my Sendinblue review in this article below but before going into that, I want to briefly touch upon another important matter as it relates to online marketing.
While this is not something exactly revolutionary or unknown, many online marketers fail to realize the full significance and value of analytics as it relates to their online business. From this perspective, I suggest that you check out one of my recent posts: 7 Must-Have Ecommerce Analytics Tools.
What is Brevo?
Brevo is easily one of the most popular email marketing platforms available today.
Not only is Sendinblue designed for simplicity and accessibility, but it offers an affordable email service to companies of all sizes and backgrounds. Indeed, the Sendinblue tool is one of the cheapest on the market, and it comes with a user-friendly free plan thatโs available for beginners too. If youโre looking for a service that offers the perfect combination of SMS campaigns, WordPress interoperability, and opt-in opportunities, then this could be the tool for you. If you upgrade from a free plan to the โLiteโ service for your small business, then you can also get a sensational email service for as little as $25 per month.
Donโt worry, the Sendinblue plugin will ensure that you can enjoy the benefits of your email campaigns combined with your site and landing page building tools too.
Sendinblue Pros and Cons
Sendinblue Pros ๐
For the most part, people feel overwhelmingly positive about the experience that they can get from Sendinblue. The cost of the software is relatively good, and it's worth noting that the tool comes with some pretty impressive analytics tools too.
Other positives include:
- Sendinblue features powerful and flexible email automation functionalities.
- Sendinblueโs Premium plan comes with an extra landing page builder for the creation and review of landing pages.
- There are numerous attractive templates and design tools you can capitalize on to make your email designing and review process much easier.
- Sendinblueโs customer support teams review issues raised and respond swiftly through email ([email protected]), live chat, and phone.
- Compared to its competitorsโ cost reviews, Sendinblue plans are reasonably priced.
- Sendinblue features a free plan, complete with contact management and email automation functionalities.
Sendinblue Cons ๐
Unfortunately, any email marketing tool, including Sendinblue can also have its downsides. For instance, the tool is still relatively basic compared to some other autoresponder software on the market today. Additionally, the UI might take a while to get used to.
Issues include:
- SendinBlue supports a limited number of integrations.
- Learning curve for some users – not as basic as it could be
- Limited functionalities for mergers and autoresponders
- Our review tests revealed a couple of email deliverability problems that Sendinblue continues to experience.
Sendinblue (now Brevo) Pricing
Sendinblue offers email plans, SMS plans, and IP plans. The Sendinblue IP plans are for digitally signing your emails and taking full control of the IP reputation. You might use that at some point, but for now, our main review focus is on the email plans.
To start, you're able to sign up for the Sendinblue marketing service for free. This provides unlimited contacts but there is a sending limit. After that, the plans go all the way up to the Enterprise plan, which has custom pricing you'll have to figure out with Sendinblue. The most expensive plan with an actual price tag on it is for $66 per month.
๐ All of the Sendinblue pricing plans are flexible with no commitments. You also don't have to type in your credit card to get started.
As for the plan specifics, here's what you have to work with for the Marketing Platform:
- Free โ $0 per month for 300 emails per day. There's no limit on the number of contacts you can have, and you receive items like marketing automation, an email template library, and a mobile-friendly editor.
- Lite โ $25 per month for 20,000 emails per month. There's no daily sending limit and you get everything provided in the previous Sendinblue plan.
- Business โ This Sendinblue plan starts at $65 per month, but it could go up in price depending on how many emails you want to send out per month. There's also phone support, and no limit on marketing automation and you receive all of the features from previous plans.
- BrevoPlus โ This one has a tailored volume and a custom price. It comes with a dedicated Sendinblue account manager.
Our previous reviews featured the Sendinblue pay-as-you-go plan, but that's no longer available.
๐ Moving on now, here is my detailed review of the Sendinblue email marketing service:
How to Use Sendinblue: Standout Features from Sendinblue
Sendinblue is an email marketing and automation solution designed for the modern business.
Unlike other tools that were designed with the desire to take over the world, Sendinblue took a slightly different approach, prioritizing user experience and simplicity over complicated and cutting-edge features. That's not to say that you can't get state-of-the-art solutions with your Sendinblue email marketing software. However, there's less of a learning curve with this tool than you'd find in competitors like HubSpot or Klaviyo.
Sendinblue serves small to mid-sized businesses with automation, text messaging campaigns, email drip plans and so much more.
When running an online store, it's necessary to have an email list and marketing campaign tool. Sendinblue provides email marketing features, but you also get far more than some of the competition. For example, you receive contact management, transactional messaging (welcome emails, order confirmation emails or shipping notifications), and automated campaigns. You can also take advantage of the SMS and IP plans if you're looking to expand your marketing processes.
That said, itโs worth noting that Sendinblue has taken the European GDPR regulations into consideration, and obtained a relevant compliance certificate. Therefore, you can bet that by the time the law is implemented on the 25th of May 2019, Sendinblue guarantees its Europe-based users adherence to all the GDPR guidelines. That means itโll continue to manage data while respecting the right to access, right to object, right to portability, right to be forgotten, right to rectification, and other features that come with the law
Quite admirable, I must say. However, thatโs not the only new thing here. If youโve been reading our updated Sendinblue reviews, you might have noticed the trend that the software has been keeping up with lately.
I can tell you for sure that todayโs Sendinblue is not similar to last yearโs. The company is always conducting reviews of its entire feature set, and it continues to introduce new functionalities to improve Sendinblueโs overall efficacy as a marketing tool.
What is Sendinblue?
So, what exactly does the current Sendinblue version offer?
How Does Sendinblue Work?
- Support: Apart from live chat, you can contact the support team via Sendinblueโs online messaging system and phone support is also available. It also provides a knowledge base with helpful guidelines and tutorials that cover pretty much everything.
- Landing Page Editor: Premium and Enterprise plans come with a landing page editor, which is handy for creating your own specialized landing pages. You can choose to build yours from the ground up, or simply capitalize on the available templates to make your work much easier.
- Integrations: Sendinblue can be embedded with a wide range of third-party software, including CRM, payment, marketing, and ecommerce tools. Then to top it off, it grants access to a decent set of supplementary services through its Zapier integration.
- DMARC, DKIM, and SPF Authentication
- Bounce Management: Sendinblue provides logs of both soft and hard email bounces. The hard ones are then blacklisted automatically.
- Email Preview: You can preview how your email message will appear on various clients before you send it.
- Multilingual: Sendinblueโs main site comes in six different languages.
- Reports and Analytics: You get all the critical reports you might need to keep tabs on your marketing campaigns- including Google Analytics reports, as well as geo-tracking and click-map insights.
- Deliverability: Going by numerous review tests we conducted, Sendinblue managed a decent score in email deliverability. But, we noticed it experienced issues delivering a couple of emails to Outlook and Hotmail.
- Opt-In and Opt-Out Forms: The signup forms on Sendinblue are quite dynamic, with advanced features like captcha verification and data auto-population. Itโs also possible to give your leads the option of choosing the specific mailing lists theyโd prefer opting into.
- List Management: You get to manage your mailing lists based on user demographics, behaviors (actions taken), and lead scores. And if youโre handling many leads at once, you can take advantage of Sendinblueโs multi-parameter filtering tool to segment them accordingly.
- Email Automation: Sendinblue is built to offer powerful and dynamically versatile email automation functionalities. Its workflow editor, for instance, allows you to target leads based on their on-site actions, web behaviors, email engagement, plus contact data. And to ensure precision, you can test them before activation. The corresponding lead scoring system is also admirably accurate.
- Transactional Emails: You can set your system to send transactional emails containing stuff like receipts and purchase confirmations- through SMTP.
- Templates: By default, Sendinblue comes with 65 different options of professionally designed layouts.
- Email Types: Apart from standard emails, Sendinblue supports SMS marketing messages, A/B tests, transactional emails, and auto-responder messages.
- Personalization: There are various flexible ways of personalizing messages you send to your leads. You can, for example, set up advanced custom conditions using โIf/Then/Elseโ parameters, which might require some coding on Excel.
- Email Editor: Sendinblue comes with an intuitive design builder, plus and responsive drag-and-drop email editor, which happens to be loaded with multiple pre-set elements.
Fair enough. But, how reliable is Sendinblue as an email marketing software? How do you even use its features to create, run, manage, and analyze your campaigns?
Well, letโs review the Sendinblueโs core functionalities and overall usability in detail:
Sendinblue Ease of Use
The user interface here, for starters, is seemingly designed using the same approach weโve discussed in previous Sendinblue reviews.
Just like the name itself suggests, youโll notice a lot of blue around the entire Sendinblue layout, which happens to alternate with sections of white. Then to help you spot the main controls, Sendinblue has used other colors. But, they all blend seamlessly to create a neat and minimalistic layout.
Now, the Sendinblue dashboard has been built to give you the critical insights right off the bat. Apart from your contact count, youโll be able to see the number of individuals whoโve opened your emails, the subsequent number of people whoโve clicked on your emails, and oddly enough, the amount of blacklisted contacts.
But, itโs not all about contacts. Adjacent to that figures review section, Sendinblue outlines your trigger, SMS marketing, and email marketing campaigns. Plus, a corresponding set of shortcuts for setting up additional ones.
And in case youโd like to quickly scan through your past campaigns, Sendinblue has provided a convenient list right at the bottom of the dashboard.
Moving forward- one of the things you might want to start off with, of course, is contact list building. Thankfully, Sendinblue is generous enough to facilitate different methods of doing that.
You can jump right in and begin entering the details manually. Or alternatively, save yourself the heavy lifting by simply importing via a .csv or .txt file. And since a generic CSV layout would probably complicate things for you, Sendinblue avails a relevant template.
Sadly, you donโt get the option of importing contacts straight from an existing mailing list. Therefore, if you have one already, youโll be forced to first convert it into .csv or .txt before you eventually transfer the details to Sendinblue.
You have to admit that the whole process is pleasantly simple and straightforward. But, unfortunately, those feelings may be short-lived because the situation changes slightly when you get to the Sendinblue automation function.
Now, letโs be honest about one thing. Of course, weโd all appreciate working with a simple automation system. But, hereโs the problem- after conducting reviews of many marketing tools, Iโve realized that the simplest options come with very limited customization capabilities. In other words- if you want an extensively customizable system, you have to deal with the complexities of advanced automation engines.
Well, Sendinblueโs automation framework is not only powerful, but also dynamically versatile. So, you can bet that you wonโt have such an easy time at first. Creating the ideal sequential trigger rules for your marketing campaigns, and then drafting the corresponding series of messages takes time.
Donโt get me wrong though. Sendinblueโs automation is only challenging when youโre starting out. You should be able to master all the ropes after several rounds of tweaks.
And to help you track all that, Sendinblue comes with a notification system that alerts you as soon as information has been deleted, saved, or added. Itโs a particularly useful feature when you need to keep tabs on your teamโs activities.
But then again, it might turn out to be a bit annoying. In that case, you can proceed to Sendinblueโs settings and disable the function.
Creating Email Marketing Campaigns on Sendinblue
The whole process of setting up email marketing campaigns is pretty dynamic, with several holistic layers and options. The first step entails defining the sender name, sender email, email subject, and of course, the campaign name.
If you want to specify additional parameters, you can proceed to the advanced options sections and tweak elements like custom fields, tags, and unsubscribe links.
Now, when you get to the subsequent email design stage, youโll notice that Sendinblue offers three options. Thereโs a straightforward text editor for HTML coders, a typical drag-and drop editor, plus my favorite, an intuitive design builder.
Ok, I can guess the latter two sound like one and the same thing. But, the fact is, they are two distinctive tools provided by Sendinblue.
I like the design builder for its overall responsiveness and straightforward operability. Itโs particularly optimized for mobile app users, and it provides multiple email template options.
Although marketing emails are mostly associated with text, Sendinblue seemingly pays keen attention to its images. It comes with an exceptional image editor, whose elements admittedly outshine what weโve covered in other email marketing tool reviews.
Setting Up Your Campaigns in Sendinblue
Designing the ultimate email for your drip campaigns is just the first step in effective marketing. Once you've got your message looking just how you like it, you'll also need to think about how you're going to get that content out to your target audience.
You'll have two options with Sendinblue. The first is to send your message to everyone on a selected contact list. The second option is to send your messages to specific segments of a list. You accomplish the second option by selecting a specific “condition” for the message. For instance, your email may only be sent to people who clicked on a link in a previous message or bought a specific item from your store.
๐ก One great thing about Sendinblue, is that it lets you to check a proof version of your campaign before you send the whole thing out to the digital masses. After all, you don't want to risk sharing content that's going to make your business look bad. For such a cost-effective tool, Sendinblue provides a very high level of control over how you schedule and send campaigns.
Another major plus is that you can rest assured that the emails you create with your responsible builder tools will display just as well on smart phones as they do on your laptop or computer.
Remember, for an immersive drip campaign, you'll need to turn to Sendinblue's automation features, which means preparing all of your messages in advance, and creating a chain of events that triggers each piece of content to send. The process is simpler than you'd think – but it requires a bit more tweaking than you would need for sending a basic message.
On the plus side, setting up automations also means that you can send SMS messages alongside your emails to improve your chances of engaging the right audience members.
Plus, once you get everything fully set up with your automated campaigns, you can leave them to run without your input for a little while – at least until it's time to come back and check the performance of your messages by looking at your reports and analytics.
Sending your Campaigns
A big part of creating successful email marketing campaigns, is being able to review your email efforts and find out what's working for your brand.
Sendinblue can help with this by providing a basic suite of reporting tools for you to work through. Using these tools, you can check the numbers of your email opens, clicks, subscribes, and even complaints. Compared to a lot of basic email marketing tools, SendinBlue's offering is actually quite advanced – particularly since it offers geographic information about where your emails are being opened.
Sendinblue also goes above and beyond by giving you an insight into how the designs of your emails are paying off. When you can track down which links are being clicked most often, you can develop a better strategy for where you should be placing key CTAs and buttons.
There's a heat map available for your clicked links – but you can only access this if you have a higher level account with Sendinblue, so expect to pay a little more for advanced analytics.
If you're sending transactional emails, you can also connect to some interesting information about how many of your messages are “soft” bouncing, and how many experience a hard bounce.
One particularly valuable part of the reporting and analytics offering from Sendinblue, is the fact that you can dive a little deeper into the details of your “openers and clickers.” In other words, you get to learn more about who's actually interacting with your emails.
By looking at where in the world your openers and clickers come from, what time of day they typically open their emails, and even which devices they prefer to use to check their email, you can begin to improve your optimization efforts for future campaigns.
Sendinblueโs Contact Management
Unlike pro features like the landing page editor, unlimited contact management comes in all Sendinblueโs pricing plans, including its Free package.
Well, this review has already covered the process of creating a contact list. But, make no mistake. The contact management function does much more than that.
For instance, for the purpose of GDPR and other regulations, you can make sure that all of your contacts are fully opted-in to your emails before you start sending content.
Ultimately, the lists you create are systematically fed into the automation engine to help Sendinblue go target the right people.
Although marketing automation is also included in all plans, Free, Lite, and Essential plan users cannot set up workflows with more than 2,000 contacts. Come to think of it, however, that could be a huge number for a standard small business.
But, if you happen to exceed that, consider upgrading to the Sendinblue Premium plan. Its workflows accommodate an unlimited number of contacts.
Transactional Messaging
If there's one thing that really sets Sendinblue apart from the other email marketing and automation tools on the market – it's probably transactional messaging. This is the feature that makes the Sendinblue software an excellent addition to any company's advertising strategy. After all, while you can get pretty significant solutions for contact management and automation through tools like ActiveCampaign or GetResponse, few companies compete with Sendinblue‘s transactional emails.
If you're new to the concept of transactional emails, these are basically the messages that you send as part of your sales cycle or strategy. They provide customers with access to payment receipts, order confirmation emails and more.
So, why are these messages so valuable?
Well, they keep customers involved with your brand, first of all. What's more, transactional emails get 8 times more clicks than any other message. Despite this, a surprising number of email marketers ignore or forget about their transactional emails completely
Fortunately, Sendinblue takes a different approach. This solution allows companies to automate their transactional emails for a wide variety of crucial customer actions, including subscriptions, receipts, purchases, sign ups, and so much more. You also get reports to tell you exactly how many of your emails are ending up in the inbox, rather than their junk folder.
For many business leaders, transactional emails are what sets Sendinblue apart from the other email software solutions on the market.
Improving Deliverability
Even the best email marketing tools can't do much for your business if your messages aren't reaching your target audience. Unfortunately, making sure that your content gets to the inbox of your intended customers is often easier said than done.
Fortunately for today's email marketers, Sendinblue has a solution to your deliverability issues. The company has developed a range of features specifically optimized to drive better deliverability rates. For instance, any message in your campaign that triggers a hard bounce from a customer will automatically be blacklisted to prevent you from sending further messages that way. You'll also be able to sort your contacts according to whether or not they've engaged with a message in the last 6 to 12 months.
If people don't seem to be interested in your messages after a while, you'll have the option to either target those individuals with a quick re-engagement campaign or remove them from your list entirely.
Another of Sendinblue's features that helps a lot when it comes to email marketing deliverability, is the option to access dedicated IP addresses. If you have an Enterprise account, then you'll get a dedicated IP automatically. However, if you can't afford that package, don't worry. Sendinblue will also let you buy a separate IP address for a single yearly fee.
Since there are many different things in an email campaign that can affect deliverability, Sendinblue won't be able to promise you high inbox rates. However, what the application does do, is make sure that you have all the tools you need to improve deliverability as much as possible.
Sendinblue even provides documentation and guides that can help you to improve your deliverability strategies one step at a time too.
Other Noteworthy Features
The integrations with Shopify, Prestashop, Magento and WooCommerce are extremely easy to set up because of the plugins.
Sendinblue's ability to send transactional emails (order and dispatch confirmations etc.) is another feature that is not supported by many email marketing apps. One quite rare feature is the ability to send transactional SMS messages directly via your store. (You will have to pay extra for this feature but it can still be a very useful feature especially when directly integrated with your store operations).
Customer Service and Support
Even email marketing masterminds need help sometimes.
Just like any software, Sendinblue isn't foolproof, there's a risk that something could go wrong when you're using your applications, or that you don't know how to use a specific tool. Fortunately, Sendinblue provides a range of options for users who need help making the most of their new investment.
For instance, you can check out the Sendinblue help center, which features plenty of guidance and advice on how to use your account, manage your email campaigns and sms campaigns, or create transactional emails – among other things.
If you have a more specific issue that you can't solve with a DIY approach, then you can also submit questions and concerns to Sendinblue through their ticket system.
There's a phoneline available, although it's not really intended for help and support. On the other hand, you can reach out to Sendinblue on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn if you're having trouble getting a response from them via email ([email protected]).
Twitter is probably your best bet for quick customer service.
Integrations
Sendinblue is excellent for integrating with other handy programs that you might need to make the most of your email marketing strategy. For instance, Sendinblue has a “featured” integration with Magneto, which automatically syncs all of your Magneto customers with your Sendinblue account. You can also access handy connections with tools like Drupal, WordPress, WooCommerce, Optinmonster, and even Salesforce.
Some of the other integrations that Sendinblue supports include:
- Shopify (Shopify Reviews here)
- Google Analytics
- Gmail
- Facebook ads
- Eventbrite
- Intercom
- Wix
- PayPal
- Mailchimp
- Stripe
- Pipedrive
Go and check out what kind of interactions you can access here.
Don't forget that Sendinblue also offers access to an open API for developers that want to embed parts of the Sendinblue experience into their own workplace apps too.
Sendinblue: Security and Protection
It's difficult to find much information on Sendinblue's security and privacy policies.
However, you can rest assured that the Sendinblue data centres are protected by video surveillance 24/7, and in the event of any incidents, all of the video recordings, activity records, and logs the company has access to will be analyzed. What's more, Sendinblue has an intrusion detection system for each data centre.
Aside from protection for data centres, Sendinblue also provides robust protection in the form of SSL technology to keep your messages encrypted and secure. What's more, the Sendinblue company is dedicated to being fully GDPR compliant, so you can rest assured that your personal information isn't going to end up with any third-party brands.
To protect against spam, Sendinblue also has a zero-tolerance policy for any user that attempts to send spam content to audiences. You'll need to make sure that everyone in your contact list has opted in to receive emails from you. Additionally, Sendinblue will reserve the right to suspend accounts that have been suspected of spam posting, without warning.
Sendinblue Alternatives
As great as Sendinblue can be for companies in search of the perfect solution for email marketing and automation features – itโs not right for everyone. This tool might not have the right number of emails available for your company, or you might need something with more HTML and CSS customization for your opt-in pages. The good news? There are plenty of alternatives to Sendinblue that you can try instead. Here are just a few of our favorites.
HubSpot Marketing Hub
Like Sendinblue, HubSpot is a user-friendly digital marketing platform with a handy free plan for beginners. Brimming with features like a reliable email service, signup forms and opt-in tools, HubSpot makes it easy to attract and convert more leads online. Additionally, you can connect your HubSpot email with the CRM system for a personalized approach on every welcome email and follow-up message. HubSpotโs drag-and-drop editor allows for ease of use when it comes to drafting the perfect email campaigns for a wide number of emails. Additionally, you can find inspiration among a selection of fantastic goal-oriented templates too. Need to know which of your emails are having the best impact on your customers? Donโt worry, you can use the built-in analytics and A/B testing to help with that. Donโt forget to use your CRM information to segment and enhance your emails too.
Pros ๐
- Support for up to 2,000 free emails per month
- Easy to use editor with email templates
- Option to use the HubSpot free CRM for list segmentation
- Fantastic range of automation features
- Plenty of personalization
Cons ๐
- Some features require a paid account (i.e. A/B testing)
- Can be a bit of a learning curve initially.
Read the comprehensive HubSpot Marketing Hub review here.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampgin is another sensational online tool for small business owners that need access to everything from Facebook ads, to SMS campaigns. If you need more than you can get from the Sendinblue plugin, then ActiveCampaign could be an excellent choice. It delivers a host of sales and CRM technologies, email marketing tools, and marketing automation.
For those who like to try before they buy, ActiveCampaign comes with a two week free trial to get you started. When that runs out, the plans are pretty well priced, starting at $17 for the lite package,which comes with unlimited sending for up to 3 users.
When you consider the rich selection of capabilities that you get, including uptime SLA support, phone customer support, free social data and more, itโs safe to say that you get plenty of value from an ActiveCampaign purchase.
Pros ๐
- Extensive range of high-quality tools available
- Selection of plans to choose from (good pricing)
- Freer trial available to test the service
- Excellent sales and customer features
- Ideal for integration
Cons ๐
- Something of a learning curve
- Enterprise version of the product is quite expensive
Read the comprehensive ActiveCampaign review here.
ConvertKit
Convertkit is an email marketing and automation tool specifically designed for those who want a reliable alternative to Sendinblue, Mailchimp, and other market leaders. Although itโs still a relatively young product compared to some competitors, ConvertKit has a strong reputation in the market for its ease of use and excellent performance.
Whether you know your way around WordPress plugins, HTML, and unsubscribe buttons or not, ConvertKit will help you to attract and convert as many customers as possible, with features like advanced automation rules with visual workflows, email broadcasting, and forms or landing pages.
Managing subscribers and personalizing your emails to suit them is easy with ConvertKit. Additionally, the tool comes with access to a wide selection of integration options, with tools like WooCommerce, Shopify, and more.
Pros ๐
- Excellent ease-of-use design for beginners
- Fantastic range of lead pages and landing pages
- Simple interface
- Advanced automation options
Cons ๐
- Quite a restrictive platform for advanced users
- Not a lot of customization options
Read the comprehensive ConvertKit review here.
AWeber
AWeber stands out as one of the most popular email marketing tools on the web. It has an excellent heritage, and offers hundreds of email templates to choose from – perfect for those who want to get started on the web as quickly as possible.
For businesses and business owners that want to start nurturing and converting leads as quickly as possible, AWeber is easy to use, and brimming with useful features. Thereโs access to everything from campaign management tools with a drag-and-drop editor, to automated follow up strategies. You can even design your own sign-up forms and segment your subscribers too.
AWeber offers lots of customization options for your emails, fonts, and pages. Whatโs more, you can design plenty of fantastic autoresponders to keep your customers engaged and connected too. However, AWeber isnโt the least expensive tool on the market.
Pros ๐
- Easy to use design
- Plenty of customization options and templates
- Fantastic range of automation choices
- Segmentation, reporting, and A/B testing built-in
- Well respected brand
Cons ๐
- Not the best value for money
- Some templates are better than others
- Segmentation is a little limited
Read the comprehensive AWeber review here.
Constant Contact
Last, but not least, letโs take a look at Constant Contact.
This attractive and well-known email marketing product is a powerful tool for email marketing, offering various unique ways to segment your audience and reach them with carefully-targeted messages. The marketing automation feature included with Constant Contact means that you can make sure youโre speaking your customerโs language with every email.
Constant Contact comes with access to customizable registration forms, excellent deliverability rates, A/B testing, and access to reports on things like the number of opens, forwards, clicks, and more. You can also integrate this tool with a variety of leading software options like WordPress and QuickBooks.
Pros ๐
- Plenty of integration options
- Lots of chances for email customization
- Powerful segmentation and customer management
- Ease of use
- Good customer support
Cons ๐
- Limited tracking and reporting features
- Not as many tools or integrations as some other tools
- Not the cheapest option available
Read the comprehensive Constant Contact review here.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is one of the best-known email marketing tools on the web today. If youโre a small business starting your email strategy for the first time, or a large enterprise, youโve probably heard of Mailchimp. With plenty of tools for double opt-in, real-time analytics and so much more, MailChimp is an excellent way to take your lead generation to the next level.
Mailchimp comes with a selection of different campaign options to consider, including plain-text campaigns, RSS campaigns, and regular emails. You can also A/B test your messages to see which one drives the right results. Mailchimp helps you to personalize your emails and target them to the right audience, plus thereโs a free plan for beginners, that supports sending up to 12,000 emails per month.
Although MailChimp isnโt the cheapest or the most comprehensive email marketing tool available, itโs a great choice for those diving into the email landscape for the first time.
Pros ๐
- Plenty of segmentation options and personalization
- A/B testing and in-depth reports
- Easy to use design
- Free plan available
Cons ๐
- Limited customer support
- Demand for some CSS knowledge
- Constant design updates can be hard to keep track of
Read the comprehensive Mailchimp review here.
FAQ:
How do you use Sendinblue?
Sendinblue is a very user-friendly tool, brimming with guides and advice to help you launch your campaigns. Once youโve created an account on SendInblue, youโll need to validate your account, import your contacts, and complete your profile. Once youโre done, youโll be ready to start creating your campaigns with the simple drag-and-drop editor.
Is Sendinblue free?
Sendinblue offers a free package that allows businesses to send as many as 300 emails each day to an unlimited number of contacts. You can remove the limit for as little as$5 per month, and upgrade at any time.
How to configure Sendinblue?
There are a number of things that users can do to configure their Sendinblue accounts. Once youโve signed up for an account, import your contacts to your Sendinblue profile, complete your profile, and schedule your campaign to validate your account. From there, youโll be able to customize your email experience further with things like plugins, automations, and a unique DKIM signature too.
How to delete your Sendinblue Account
If you decide, for any reason, that youโre done with your SendinBlue experience, you donโt have to keep using the service. Just go to the โMy Planโ page on your account by clicking your name on the right-hand corner of your page. Scroll to the very bottom of the page, then click on โClose my Accountโ to stop using Sendinblue.
Is Sendinblue good and reliable?
Sendinblue is widely regarded to be an excellent email marketing service. Itโs affordable, easy to use, and comes with a wide selection of useful features. Additionally, the Sendinblue campaigns that have been tested online often show a high deliverability rate.
How to validate a SendinBlue account?
Once youโve created an account on SendinBlue, you will need to activate your account. To do this, log into your dashboard and import the contacts you want to communicate with. Finish your profile by filling out your details, and schedule an initial campaign with your recipient list. You can reschedule and change your campaign when your account is validated.
How to use Sendinblue API?
You will need a Sendinblue account to use the websiteโs APIs. All APIs will require HTTP authentication, which you can access from a key that is built into your API console. The SendinBlue is a three-part REST API.
How to use Sendinblue SMTP?
The Sendinblue SMTP is a transactional email service available from Sendinblue. To get a SMTP password, just head into your Sendinblue account then click on your name. From there, scroll through the menu until you find โSMTP and APIโ. Copy your SMTP password to use the SMTP transaction solution. You will need to access your account to get this information, so if you forget your password, make sure you know how to perform a password reset.
Does Privy Work with Sendinblue?
Privy is a digital solution for creating subscription forms, landing pages and pop-ups. You can upgrade your Sendinblue experience by syncing Privy and Sendinblue. Any contacts that subscribe to a Privy campaign after that will be added to your Sendinblue contacts.
Does Sendinblue Work with Outlook?
You can import your Outlook contacts into your Sendinblue account directly on Sendinblue. Additionally, you can use Zapier to sync your Sendinblue and Outlook experiences in a handful of clicks.
Does Shopify Work with Sendinblue?
Yes! There is an official plugin available from Shopify for Sendinblue. This means that you can integrate your Shopify plugin with Sendinblue to improve SMS and email campaigns with more personal information about your clients. You can also download and access useful reports from both tools.
Does SquareSpace Work with Sendinblue?
You can connect Sendinblue to a range of websites and external tools. The best way to connect SquareSpace and Sendinblue is to use Zapier.
How to Export Contacts from Sendinblue?
Export your email addresses from Sendinblue by going to the Contacts tab in your Sendinblue account. Find the list of contacts you want to export, or export all of the contacts in your service at once. Click the box to the left of the email option and click on the Export tab. You can decide whether to export only once, or once per day.
Sendinblue Review: Is it the Best Email Marketing Software?
As an email marketing platform, Sendinblue has improved quite a bit over the years. It's a solid alternative to the other popular email services like Mailchimp and AWeber, since it now has ready-made templates and a drag and drop builder. It's nice to have the plugins for some of the popular ecommerce platforms, along with the ability to send transactional emails and SMS messages.
Overall, Sendinblueโs worthwhile for most ecommerce businesses. The templates are beautiful and you can't go wrong with the builder. I also like that it provides the SMS tools for when you want to expand your marketing arsenal. It's things like this that aren't offered by the competition. You can also read my Mailchimp review to see if that better fits your needs.
You can start your free trial by heading over to www.brevo.com.
Sendinblue got amazing customer care. They respond to emails within a day! I provided the right information and they activated my FREE automated email chain. AMAZING!
Thanks for sharing Olli!
I used to love this company but I will never use them again. Today, unless you buy a $145/yr dedicated server all of their emails will go to your customers spam accounts. And then because your open rate drops, SendinBlue will suspend your right to send emails, unless of course you pay $145 for a dedicated server. I will never use their service again.
This is my email to sendinblue
1.
!Okay, I think I am done with you guys. I sent another campaign and no emails were sent. Not even a single one. Either sell software or control the way I do business. Dont do both.This is MY campaign and should be managed by me, not you.
There are too many email marketing options out there.”
2
“Once again, you have failed to understand the nature of my business. These emails are to students who are enrolled in a particular course. Upon enrolment, they are allocated an email address by the institution. There is no opt-in.
As a company, we work in conjunction with educational institutions and we cannot second guess whether our email broadcast is going through or not. Imagine sending a “notification” that a new lesson relevant to an upcoming test is available and nobody gets it?
The level of control you try to exercise over us goes beyond the scope of normal business practice and you fail to accommodate for differing scenarios.
My decision is NOT to use you unless there is a significant change in your practice.”