Every small business and startup faces the challenge of finding affordable marketing.
Whatever stage your business is in, there is one thing you can do for free that will help you grow: email marketing. What’s the best part? You can begin building a list at any time—even before you open your doors for business.
We examined some of the dozens of email marketing providers, spoke with customers and experts, and found Sendinblue to be the best.
Who should make use of Sendinblue?
One of your company’s most valuable marketing assets is an in-house email list. It’s a surefire way to stay in touch with people who are interested in your company. Regardless of how third parties such as Google, Facebook, or Amazon changes the rules of the game, your list is still yours, and you can reach out to the people on it.
The free version allows you to add an unlimited number of contacts. However, you are limited to sending 300 emails per day. You can also use the email designer, template library, SMS marketing, email and SMS personalization, and chat.
Why is Sendinblue our top email marketing provider recommendation for a startup or small business?
Sendinblue is a marketing automation platform that aims to reduce your workload as an entrepreneur so that you can concentrate on other aspects of your business. It is also useful for those in the digital marketing industry who want to work smarter rather than harder.
So, how does Sendinblue assist its users with their marketing efforts?
Email marketing
- Sendinblue is one of the smartest solutions for email marketing. Why? Because while some services offer email automation, this company goes further and makes it more affordable. It lets you design professional-level emails either through its many templates or by starting one from scratch.
- Its drag-and-drop editor makes it possible for just about anyone to design emails even if they’ve never typed a line of code in their life. Just insert the elements that you need and watch Sendinblue work do its thing.
- Because email designs are highly customizable, you can make them closely match the branding of your company. Of course, the customization possibilities do not end there.
- Sendinblue can automatically populate specific fields. That means your emails can be tailored to the person to whom you’re sending them. Sendinblue even claims that you can personalize the email by displaying product images in the recipient’s favorite color. You can use data to your advantage as long as you have it.
- Because emails have an unlimited number of lists and contacts, you can send emails to as many people as you need. Are you unsure which email design is superior? Not a problem. A/B testing can be used to determine which design works best for your audience.
- And when you’re ready, you can schedule your emails to be sent at the most optimal times. You can rely on Sendinblue’s machine learning capability to figure out when you should be sending your emails.
- As you can see, Sendinblue is an excellent email marketing tool, and we’ve only scratched the surface. There’s even more to it.
- Sendinblue also allows you to send SMS messages to your target audience. This is especially useful when it comes to promoting time-sensitive events. All you have to do is create a draft, choose a contact list, and schedule when you want Sendinblue to send it.
- You can even set up transactional SMS, which means you can send valuable information to customers such as shipping updates, order confirmations, and other details that make transactions go more smoothly.
- As with emails, you can personalize your SMS so that your messages reflect the recipients’ personal information like their names, companies, or orders.
- And there is an analytics feature that will allow you to track your progress. It’ll show you your engagement rate (alongside other valuable metrics) and what you need to do to improve your performance.
Chat support
- Most e-commerce sites provide customer support via live chat. If yours doesn’t have that feature yet, then Sendinblue can help with that.
- You can tailor your chat to your online business. This includes changes to the colors and the addition of a logo. The chat support can be installed in a matter of seconds. You only need to add a few lines of code to your website’s header.
- Once the chat feature is enabled, you can communicate with potential and current customers directly from the Sendinblue Chat Inbox. When you engage a user, you’ll know where they are on your website, so you’ll have a better idea of what problems they might be experiencing.
- You can organize your team so that specific types of inquiries are handled by the most qualified members. Simply put, salespeople can answer sales questions. Or you could have your lead generation team handle potential clients. Not only does this save time, but it also makes sure that all concerns are handled by the right people.
Shared Inbox
- One of Sendinblue’s best features is its Shared Inbox. It allows users to reply to customers much faster because it consolidates all messages you receive. This is where you can assign messages to specific team members and mark them as resolved once you’re done.
- What’s even better is that it keeps track of conversation histories. Now you don’t need to pull previous conversations just to stay up to date whenever a customer reaches out a second time.
- This is also useful for lead generation since you already know what products or services a returning lead is interested in.
- Gmail, Outlook, Office 365, and Yahoo are among the email service providers that can be linked. If your email provider isn’t on the list, you can connect it to Sendinblue via IMAP.
- These are just a few of the reasons why we recommend this email marketing software. It is one of the best automation solutions for digital marketers.
Sendinblue pricing
Sendinblue offers four plans: Free, Lite, Premium, and Enterprise.
The free version lets you add unlimited contacts. However, you can only send up to 300 emails per day. You also get access to the email designer, template library, SMS marketing, email and SMS personalization, and chat.
Lite
The Lite plan’s pricing starts at $25/month and increases as you raise the email limit. The lowest you can go is 10,000 while the highest is capped at 100,000.
It includes all the features that you’ll find in the free version. However, it removes the daily sending limit, adds email support, and introduces A/B testing. It will also remove Sendinblue branding.
Premium
The Premium plan works the same way as Lite in the sense that it starts with a base price and increases depending on the email volume limit that you set. The lowest you can go is 20,000 emails for $65/month. It goes all the way up to 1 million emails.
This plan gives you marketing automation, Facebook ads, landing pages, multi-user access, and telephone support alongside all the features you’ll find in Lite.
Enterprise
Enterprise is for those with advanced digital marketing needs. You’ll need to get a quote from the Sendinblue team to see how much it’ll cost.
With this plan comes custom email volume, priority sending, 20+ landing pages, access for more than 10 users, a customer success manager, and more.
Sendinblue pros and cons
Is this email marketing platform worth the price? What are its advantages and disadvantages?
Let’s see.
Pros
- Email marketing with a lot of features — Sendinblue is one of the best email marketing tools we’ve tried.
- Full-stack features — Sendinblue is an excellent choice for those who require lead generation features in addition to email automation.
- Pricing — The flexible pricing options ensure that you only pay for what your business requires.
- Spending limit — There is no spending limit on any paid plan.
- Workflow editor — This tool makes it incredibly simple to create an automation workflow that will assist you in meeting your email marketing objectives.
- SMS marketing — Sendinblue can handle all of your SMS marketing needs.
- Built-in lead generation — Create landing pages, opt-in forms, and run Facebook Ads directly from this platform.Transactional emails — Most email marketing services simply don’t offer this. In fact, we use Sendinblue’s transactional email functionality for our own site.
- Better customer communication — Live chat, customer email inbox, and built-in CRM can help you keep up with customer communication.
Cons
- Customer service — Email support is available only with the Lite plan. To receive phone support, you must upgrade to the Premium plan. Priority support is available for the Enterprise plan.
- While Sendinblue walks you through creating an email campaign, the rest of the interface appears complicated, especially for newcomers.
- Multi-user access — This feature is only available to Enterprise plan subscribers.
It’s also an excellent choice for anyone looking for a full-stack marketing tool. Sendinblue’s pricing makes it an excellent choice for an affordable email marketing tool includes email marketing, automation, live chat, CRM, landing pages, and so on.
Need help with email marketing? Get in touch with us today