brevo

What is Brevo

Brevo is an all-in-one digital marketing platform designed to help businesses manage their customer relationships and grow. Originally founded as Sendinblue in 2012 by Armand Thiberge in Paris, France, the company rebranded to Brevo to reflect its expanded services beyond just email. Its core purpose is to provide a single, unified platform for all marketing and sales activities. This includes email marketing, SMS campaigns, live chat, a customer relationship management (CRM) system, marketing automation, and more. Brevo serves a wide range of users, from small businesses and startups to large enterprises, by offering a scalable and cost-effective solution to connect with customers across multiple channels.

Brevo Features

Brevo offers a comprehensive suite of tools to manage customer communications and sales processes.

• Email Marketing: Create professional email campaigns with a drag-and-drop editor, choose from a library of templates, and personalize messages with contact attributes.
• Marketing Automation: Build automated workflows to send welcome emails, follow up on abandoned carts, or nurture leads based on their behavior on your website.
• CRM (Sales Platform): Organize your contacts, track deals in a visual pipeline, and manage all customer interactions from one central place.
• SMS & WhatsApp Marketing: Reach customers directly on their mobile phones with targeted SMS and WhatsApp campaigns for promotions or important updates.
• Chat: Add a live chat widget to your website to provide real-time support to visitors and convert them into leads.
• Transactional Emails: Send automated emails for order confirmations, password resets, and shipping notifications through a reliable SMTP server or API.
• Landing Pages & Signup Forms: Design custom landing pages and forms to capture new leads and grow your contact list without needing technical skills.
• Aura AI: An integrated AI assistant that helps with content creation, suggests the best time to send campaigns, and provides smart segmentation recommendations to improve performance.

Brevo Pricing Plans

Brevo offers several pricing tiers to fit different business needs and sizes.

• Free Plan: Ideal for individuals or small businesses just starting out. It includes core features like the email editor and contact management but has daily sending limits and includes Brevo branding.
• Starter Plan: Suited for growing businesses that need to send more emails and want to remove Brevo branding. It offers higher sending limits and basic reporting.
• Business Plan: Designed for professional marketers and teams. This plan includes advanced features like marketing automation, A/B testing, landing pages, and more detailed analytics.
• BrevoPlus Plan: A custom enterprise solution for large organizations with high-volume sending needs. It provides advanced security, a dedicated account manager, and tailored support.

Brevo Free Plan

Yes, Brevo offers a generous Free Plan that is available forever. The plan includes access to the email marketing editor, chat functionality, SMS and WhatsApp campaign tools, and contact management for an unlimited number of contacts. The main limitation is a daily sending cap of 300 emails per day (9,000 emails per month). Emails sent on the Free Plan will also include the Brevo logo.

How to use Brevo

Getting started with Brevo is a straightforward process.

1. Sign Up: Create a free account on the Brevo website. No credit card is required.
2. Import Contacts: Add your existing contacts by uploading a CSV file, copying and pasting from a spreadsheet, or manually adding them. You can also create a signup form to place on your website to collect new contacts.
3. Create a Campaign: Go to the 'Campaigns' section and start a new email campaign. Choose a template or build your design from scratch using the drag-and-drop editor.
4. Design Your Email: Add your text, images, and branding. Personalize the content using contact attributes like the recipient's first name.
5. Select Recipients: Choose the contact list or segment you want to send the campaign to.
6. Schedule and Send: Review your campaign, send a test email to yourself, and then schedule it for a specific time or send it immediately.
7. Analyze Results: After sending, track the performance of your campaign in the reporting dashboard. You can see open rates, click-through rates, and other important metrics.

Pros and Cons of Brevo

Pros:

• All-in-One Platform: Combines email, SMS, chat, CRM, and more, reducing the need for multiple tools.
• Generous Free Plan: The free tier offers many features and a good sending limit for new businesses.
• Competitive Pricing: Paid plans are often more affordable than competitors, especially for users with large contact lists.
• User-Friendly Interface: The platform is intuitive and easy to navigate, even for beginners.

Cons:

• Basic CRM: The built-in CRM is functional for small teams but may lack the advanced features of dedicated CRM software like Salesforce.
• Automation Limitations: Some of the more complex marketing automation features are only available on higher-priced plans.
• Initial Deliverability: New accounts may need some time to warm up their sending reputation to achieve optimal email deliverability.

Brevo integrations

Brevo connects with over 150 popular applications to streamline your workflows. Integrating tools is typically done through the 'App Center' within your Brevo account, where you can find official plugins and instructions.

• Shopify and WooCommerce Integration: Sync customer data and purchase history to send targeted email campaigns, such as abandoned cart reminders or product recommendations.
• WordPress Integration: Use the Brevo plugin for WordPress to add signup forms to your site and manage subscribers directly from your dashboard.
• Salesforce Integration: Connect Brevo with Salesforce to sync contacts and leads between both platforms, ensuring your sales and marketing teams are aligned.
• Zapier Integration: Connect Brevo to thousands of other apps through Zapier to automate tasks without writing any code.
• Facebook Lead Ads Integration: Automatically add new leads generated from your Facebook ads directly to your Brevo contact lists.

Brevo Alternatives

• Mailchimp: A very popular email marketing tool known for its ease of use and strong brand recognition. It is great for beginners but can become expensive as your contact list grows. Brevo is often a more cost-effective alternative with more features on its free plan.
• HubSpot: A powerful all-in-one platform with a strong focus on CRM and inbound marketing. HubSpot is more comprehensive but also significantly more expensive than Brevo.
• MailerLite: Known for its simple interface and excellent features, including a landing page builder on its free plan. It is a strong competitor to Brevo, with a focus on simplicity.
• Constant Contact: A long-standing player in the email marketing space, known for its high deliverability rates and excellent customer support. It is a solid choice for small businesses who value support.

Brevo API

Yes, Brevo provides a powerful and well-documented API that allows developers to integrate its functionalities into their own applications. You can use the API to manage contacts, send transactional emails, create campaigns, and much more.

To get your API key, you need to log in to your Brevo account, navigate to the SMTP & API section from the main menu, and generate a new API v3 key. The key is available for free on all plans, including the Free plan.

Here is a simple cURL example to add a new contact using the Brevo API:

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.brevo.com/v3/contacts \
  --header 'accept: application/json' \
  --header 'api-key: YOUR_API_KEY' \
  --header 'content-type: application/json' \
  --data '{
    "email": "new.contact@example.com",
    "attributes": {
        "FIRSTNAME": "John",
        "LASTNAME": "Doe"
    },
    "listIds": [2]
}'

Brevo Affiliate program

Brevo offers an affiliate program for bloggers, marketers, and content creators who want to promote the platform. Affiliates earn a commission for every new customer they refer who signs up for a paid plan. The commission is a fixed amount, typically paid for each new subscription. To join, you need to apply through the affiliate program page on the Brevo website. Once approved, you will get access to a dashboard with your unique referral links, marketing materials, and performance tracking. Payments are usually made through platforms like PartnerStack or directly via bank transfer once you reach a certain earning threshold.