Brevo
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is a powerful tool for small businesses to create, manage, and optimize email marketing campaigns.
The tool is designed for industries ranging from e-commerce to retail, agencies, education, nonprofits, and startups. In this Brevo review, I will explore how it works, its product offering, features, use cases, pricing, integrations, support, and alternatives.
Features
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Integrated CRM for customer relationship management
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Email marketing with customizable templates
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Marketing automation with features like abandoned cart reminders
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Landing page builder with A/B testing
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SMS campaigns for targeted outreach
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Analytics for performance tracking
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GDPR compliance with built-in tools
Pros
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Easy-to-use interface with drag-and-drop editor
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Affordable pricing plans with a free plan
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Automation tools to lower heavy lifting
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Multi-channel marketing through SMS and email
Cons
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Lacks social media automation
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Limited support for advanced API needs
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Free plan comes with Brevo branding
Brevo Review Methodology
Geekflare tested Brevo’s email marketing platform, evaluating its email campaign creation, marketing automation, CRM capabilities, and integration options. Combining hands-on usage and user feedback, we deliver an unbiased review of its effectiveness in streamlining marketing efforts and enhancing customer engagement for small businesses.
How Does Brevo Work?
Brevo is a diverse tool that can be used in email marketing campaigns, running transactional emails, and as a CRM. This is how it works:
- Email marketing campaigns: Brevo is designed to help companies create and execute email campaigns. The tool helps users create professional-looking emails, schedule campaigns, and manage contact lists. It is also known for features like A/B testing that allow you to test different designs or subject lines to optimize your campaigns for better engagement.
- Transactional emails: With Brevo, you get transactional emails like order confirmations, shipping updates, and password reset notifications. These features make it easy to communicate consistently with clients and maintain a professional and trustworthy brand.
- CRM functionalities: Brevo has built-in CRM features that make it easy to manage customers. The tool tracks customer interactions, manages leads, and organizes contact lists for better-targeted communication.
Brevo Campaign Creation Process
Creating campaigns is one of Brevo’s key functionalities. This is how it works:
Step 1: Sign up on Brevo: Go to the Brevo landing page, click Products, and then Email Marketing. Sign up either using email or Google to get started. The tool will take you through several steps to understand you better.
Step 2: Create Campaigns: Once you have signed up, you can create campaigns. Go to the dashboard and select Campaigns and then Emails.
Step 3: Design Emails: You can now design professional emails using the drag-and-drop editor. Select a template that suits your audience and start designing your email through the drag-and-drop editor. You can customize the campaigns using the logo and preview changes as you make them.
Step 4: Setting up automation workflows: Brevo automates your workflow via features like abandoned cart reminders, follow-up emails after purchases, and welcoming new subscribers.
Step 5: Segmenting audiences: Brevo has segmentation options that allow you to target users based on demographics, behaviour, and location. For instance, you can create a segment for users who opened a previous email or followed a certain link.
Step 6: Analyzing results: Brevo provides comprehensive analytics that measures campaign performance. For instance, conversion rates, click-through rates, and open-rates.
Step 7: Integrations: Brevo integrates with popular business tools to maximize efficiency and streamline workflows. For instance, you can integrate with Google Analytics for detailed analytics. You can also use Brevo with your favorite CRMs like Hubspot or Salesforce.
6 Brevo Product Offerings
Brevo is known for its user-friendly design and versatility, as it comes with tools for email marketing, workflow automation, and customer relationship management, among other features. Below are the Brevo’s product offerings.
1. Marketing Platform
Brevo is an all-in-one marketing software that simplifies marketing with email, SMS, WhatsApp campaigns, AI tools, and automation. Send emails through personalized campaigns to sell products and engage your audience. You can send up to 300 emails [per day on the free plan]. I found the templates for creating landing pages easy to use. Brevo also supports web and mobile push notifications that you can use to ignite interest and catalyze conversions. Use AI to craft emails and save time spent on setting up campaigns.
2. Sales Platform
Brevo helps you manage pipelines, automate tasks, schedule meetings, and track performance to boost sales efficiency. The pipelines are customizable, and you can track deals at every stage. The tool has a feature that allows you to receive and make calls, manage contacts, and access recordings with a few clicks. The shared inbox feature lets you keep your team on the same page through shared customer emails. The meetings feature allows clients to book appointments and attend meetings without leaving the tool. Analyze conversion rates, sales revenue, and other sales parameters to make informed decisions.
3. Customer Data Platform
Brevo’s customer data platform unifies and syncs customer data, enabling data import, deduplication, scoring, dashboards, and personalized campaigns. The dataprep custom rules feature lets users get business-ready data by reformatting and cleaning without writing code. Brevo also acts as a single source of truth where you can add data from a data warehouse, FTP, any database, or through an API. You can also integrate the tool with analytics for advanced reports.
4. Loyalty Platform
Modern businesses are built around communities. Brevo’s loyalty platform helps create tailored loyalty programs with flexible rewards, customer insights, and tools to maximize engagement and retention. Loyalty programs reward long-serving customers and also ensure that they keep coming back. Brevo’s loyalty programs help business owners understand what customers value, like discounts, unique experiences, or complimentary products.
5. Messaging API
Brevo’s Messaging API ensures reliable delivery of transactional emails, SMS, and WhatsApp messages with high deliverability, personalization, and easy integration. The customization feature lets you personalize transactional emails with products, prizes, and customer names. The tool integrates with major CMS tools to keep your customers hooked.
6. Conversations Platform
Brevo’s conversations platform enhances customer interactions with live chat, chatbots, a universal inbox, and AI tools for better engagement and efficiency. The beauty of this feature is the diversity, which means you connect with users on their preferred platforms. I found using the universal inbox to manage social media interactions, WhatsApp, email, and live chat easy with one tool.
6 Brevo Features
Brevo is parked with various features for marketing and automation. These are some of the features that make it great, which I have highlighted below.
1. Drag-and-Drop Editor
Brevo’s drag-and-drop editor is user-friendly for crafting professional emails without even coding skills. The editor has pre-built and customizable templates for different campaign types like newsletters, promotional offers, and product launches. The real-time preview feature lets you visualize how your email will appear on the customer’s screen.
The personalization feature makes it easy to address recipients with their first or all names. You can also add location data or purchase history to make users understand that you know them well. Branding is easy with the Brevo drag-and-drop editor, as you can add logos or even change colors to suit your company’s colors. This editor supports interactive elements like buttons and links to your social media pages, landing pages, or website.
2. Automation Workflows
Brevo has automation features that trigger email sequences based on user actions. These automation features allow businesses to create personalized data-driven experiences without manual intervention. For instance, new users automatically get an automatic welcome message. Another example is when a user receives a reminder for an abandoned cart without the website owner lifting a finger.
Brevo has templates for all these workflow automation. You get customizable templates for welcome emails, cart abandonment recovery, anniversary messages, and more. Multi-channel automation makes sending and following up with customers via email, SMS, and WhatsApp easy.
3. CRM Integration
Brevo provides a unified view of customer interactions. The tool comes with built-in CRM even on its free plan. You can manage customer relationships, track deals, organize contact data, and streamline your sales process from one tool. This CRM is fully integrated with Brevo’s automation and email marketing tools. The 360-degree customer view provides a complete history of all customer interactions, including email campaigns, products, and pages.
The CRM is fully customizable, as you can add custom fields to suit your business needs. It also has filters that you can use to segment customers based on things like location, engagement or purchase history. Analyze sales performance with reports on team productivity, conversion rates, and deal values. Assign deals and contacts to team members for better collaboration. Add comments, notes, and updates on the CRM to keep your team aligned with the organizational goals.
4. A/B Testing
Brevo allows you to optimize email elements for better engagement through A/B testing. Also known as split testing, this feature enables different versions of an email to be sent to determine which one works best. Thus, you can make wise decisions by experimenting with variables like Call-to-Actions, subject lines, visuals, and content of your emails. A/B testing is available only on paid plans.
5. Real-Time Analytics
Brevo allows users to track campaign performance with clear visuals. It has powerful insights to help you create, manage, and optimize your automation workflows and email marketing campaigns.
For instance, you get campaign metrics like open rates to determine how many people have opened your emails, bounce rate to determine the number of emails that failed to deliver, and unsubscribes to determine the number of people who opted out of your email list.
6. Omni-Channel Communication
Brevo is ideal for users who want to use SMS, WhatsApp, and chat in addition to emails. The integrated approach allows you to create cohesive customer engagement and marketing strategies. Omni-channel communication enables you to reach users wherever they are and deliver personalized experiences.
This feature has a unified inbox where you can manage communications from emails, SMS, live chat, and WhatsApp from a single dashboard. You can also automate workflows like an email for cart abandonment, followed by SMS and WhatsApp messages if a lead does not purchase within 24 hours.
4 Brevo Use Cases
Brevo is an all-in-one platform that meets diverse marketing users’ needs across various industries. It has robust features that allow users to create, launch, and manage personalized campaigns. Let us look at the specific use cases that suit Brevo.
1. E-commerce Campaigns
Brevo has various tools that e-commerce businesses can use to personalize customer experiences.
For instance, you can use Brevo to send personalized emails featuring product recommendations based on customers’ past purchases and browsing history. You can also send automated emails for items left in the shopping cart. You can also create seasonal campaigns like “Top Selling Items for January,” “Holiday Specials,” and “Summer Essentials” using the drag-and-drop editor.
2. Lead Nurturing
Brevo excels in lead nurturing and moving potential customers through a sales funnel. For instance, a customer can download a free resource, and you set out an automation that sends a series of emails.
The first email can be a thank you note and a quick introduction to your business. The subsequent emails can include customer success stories, invitations to schedule a meeting or exclusive discount codes.
3. Transactional Notifications
Brevo is big in transactional emails. For instance, you can send automated messages about order confirmation, shipping updates, and failed payment processing. For instance, a business can set automations that send an email with the order details after a customer makes a purchase. Transactional emails are essential as they help businesses create trust. Customers get clear and professional updates, encouraging repeat business and enhancing the overall experience.
4. Blog Newsletter
Brevo is a handy tool for content publishers and bloggers who want to distribute content. For instance, a food blogger who wants to share the latest recipes with their audience. They can use Brevo to create visually appealing emails that include the latest recipes, cooking tips, and upcoming events. Similarly, a tech blogger can use Brevo to distribute weekly digests featuring software and hardware reviews, top articles, and trending topics in the industry.
Brevo Pricing
Brevo has four pricing plans to cater to different needs. It offers a free plan to experience its feature set. I will do a comparison for each plan offered under the Brevo pricing structure.
Free | Starter | Business | Enterprise | |
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300/day | 5,000/month | 5,000/month | Unlimited Contacts | |
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Basic | Advanced | Advanced | Advanced | |
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$0 | $8.08 | $16.17 | Custom |
Note: You don’t need to provide credit card details when signing up; only your email address and organization name are required.
Brevo Integrations
Brevo integrates with various tools for unified workflows. These integrations make it easy for businesses to improve customer engagement, increase operational efficiency, and streamline marketing processes. These are some of the integrations:
- WordPress: Brevo works seamlessly with WordPress, and this integration is ideal for those looking for an all-in-one marketing platform. Brevo is available as a WordPress plugin, and I found it easy to boost email marketing effectiveness, streamline e-commerce operations, and automate contact management.
- Shopify: Integrate Brevo with your Shopify store to streamline marketing efforts, engage customers, and drive sales. Use Brevo to automate abandoned cart reminders and email campaigns and provide personalized product recommendations.
- Google Analytics: Enjoy effortless data synchronization when you connect Brevo with Google Analytics 4. This integration gives clear visibility into marketing performance as you can track new contact conversions automatically.
- Zoho CRM: Get advanced and enhanced customization freedom as you work on list views, deal stages, and attributes. This transition gives you an all-in-one platform for WhatsApp integration, SMS campaigns, and advanced email automation.
- ActiveCampaign: Migrate from ActiveCampaign and enjoy simpler and smarter marketing. The migration process is frictionless and maintains your workflows. The drag-and-drop editor ensures that you can set up automations without complexities.
Brevo Support
Brevo has various support options to assist users with any questions or issues they may encounter when using the platform. These support services are designed to help businesses of all sizes through live support, self-help features, and prioritized support for premium subscribers.
- Support Form: Brevo has a support system that allows you to send your queries, and one of its customer care representatives will get back to you. This support feature allows you to choose between email and live chat responses.
- Help Center: Brevo has an extensive knowledge base for answers to common questions. Users can filter their queries by clicking on common topics like SMTP, validation, and contacts. Alternatively, they can use the search bar by typing certain keywords to land at different articles and guides.
Brevo Alternatives
Brevo is not the only email marketing and workflow automation tool. Some of its biggest competitors in email marketing are Mailchimp, Sendgrid, and MailerLite. Below, I have added a comparison table highlighting the following parameters:
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Email/SMS campaigns, CRM | Email marketing & audience insights | Transactional Emails | Email marketing | |
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$8.08 | $20 | $15 | $9 | |
Geekflare’s editorial team determines ratings based on factors such as key features, ease of use, pricing, and customer support to help you choose the right business software. | ||||
GDPR-compliant with Brevo
Brevo is a GDPR-compliant platform through its comprehensive tools that ensures that user rights are safeguarded and protected. For instance:
- Users can request that their data be deleted permanently and securely to ensure that it does not land in the wrong hands. All data will be deleted within 30 days.
- Users can rectify their account settings and account information at will. Such users can also contact support to rectify or edit information.
- Users can object by opting out of newsletters and marketing emails.
- Users can export their data upon request to third-party tools.
Who Should Use Brevo?
Brevo serves as a customer relationship management and marketing platform, making it suitable for different types of businesses. These are some of its best fits.
- Small to medium businesses looking for email marketing with CRM: The combination of email marketing and CRM functionalities makes Brevo ideal for small to medium businesses. Email automation makes sending emails, following through, and managing leads easy. The integrated CRM allows businesses to track customer interactions, manage customer data, and segment users based on patterns and behavior.
- E-commerce stores looking for SMS marketing: Online shops can use SMS marketing capabilities to engage customers and reach them promptly. Transactional SMS will be useful for businesses that want to send order confirmations, personalized promotional messages, and shipping updates.
- SMBs looking to create landing pages for lead generation: Brevo has an easy-to-use landing page builder. The drag-and-drop editor ensures that you don’t have to write any code. The A/B testing feature allows businesses to test different message layouts and formats before sending. The page builder has advanced customization options and branding features.
Who Shouldn’t Use Brevo?
While Brevo has a complete suite of tools for lead generation, CRM, email, and SMS marketing, it might not be the best fit for all case scenarios. The following are instances where businesses might explore options:
- Businesses require extensive API-driven solutions: If your business depends on highly customized APIs with deep integrations, then Brevo’s API will not be a good fit. Tech-driven enterprises should thus opt for advanced APIs like SendGrid.
- Social media automation: Brevo primarily focuses on SMS and email marketing and does not offer social media automation. If your business relies heavily on social media campaigns on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, a dedicated tool like Manychat will be a good choice. This Manychat review shows how it specializes in chat-based marketing and social media management automation.
FAQs
Yes. Brevo uses AI to optimize email campaigns, personalize marketing messages, and predict customer behavior.
Yes. It allows users to send 300 emails/day and access the drag-and-drop editor and customizable templates to create, launch, and manage marketing campaigns.
Brevo Verdict
Brevo is an excellent solution for small to medium businesses looking to efficiently launch and manage multi-channel marketing campaigns. It combines an easy-to-use user interface with features like CRM integration, built-in GDPR compliance tools, and marketing automation. I enjoyed using the drag-and-drop editor to create professional emails even without coding knowledge.
However, Brevo is not a good fit for businesses requiring complex, API-driven solutions. I find Brevo’s API basic and unsuitable for large enterprises looking for advanced features.
Brevo receives the Geekflare Value Award for its affordability, multi-channel marketing tools, and GDPR-compliant features.
What’s next?
Once you sort out your email marketing campaign through our guide on Brevo, let’s explore more guides to take your digital marketing campaigns to the next level.
