What is SendInBlue
SendInBlue (www.sendinblue.it) is a software for email marketing French, launched in 2007 by Armand Thiberge and Kapil Sharma. The company has four offices around the world, in Paris, Seattle, Berlin and Delhi, India.
The software was initially launched in French, becoming available in English and Spanish in 2013 and in Italian, German and Portuguese in 2014.
The software suite SendInBlue includes modules dedicated to email marketing, including:
- campaigns email marketing;
- transactional email;
- email marketing automation;
- CRMContact database;
- management of Facebook Advertising;
- notices of retargeting;
- Landing pagewith drag & drop editor.
The product also offers an email editor with customizable templates for email and landing page, a database to segment contacts into lists for marketing campaigns and an analytics dashboard to monitor the progress of email marketing campaigns.
No specific knowledge or skills are needed. The SendInBlue platform offers intuitive and easy-to-use tools. In case of difficulty, you can consult the tutorials and the FAQ section, or contact the support service by phone, email or by opening a ticket.
Let's see together how SendInBlue works and what you can do with it email marketing software.
Structure of SendInBlue
The SendInBlue dashboard is intuitive. After registering, you can log in to the platform and take advantage of lists, campaigns, automation and templates.
Inserting email contacts
The first level of the SendInBlue structure includes importing contacts within one or more lists. You can choose to import contacts directly with a .cvs or .txt file that you have within your computer.
Contacts can be collected directly through the form which can be created from SendInBlue (which also allows the creation of Landing Pages). Alternatively, you can import them by uploading an Excel file, by means of a copy-paste or by inserting them manually one at a time indicating e-mail address and telephone number.
The sign-up forms can then be embed directly within your own website and into a given list. The contact form can be made directly with the templates offered by SendInBlue or, alternatively, you can opt for the integration with other software designed to collect the email addresses of users who subscribe to your newsletter.
For example, you can choose to integrate the collection with optins like Thrive Leads o WP Forms and then get the contacts imported directly into one of the lists you've created on SendInBlue.
CRM
A distinctive aspect of Sendinblue is the CRM (https://it.sendinblue.com/funzionalita/crm/), which allows, albeit with currently lesser CRM functionalities such as Hubspot,, the orderly organization of contacts also indicating the commercial initiatives carried out.
SendInBlue features
Settings: Subject, A/B Testing and Google Analytics
After creating at least one contact list, we are ready to create a email campaign. In order to properly implement a campaign you can use different tools offered by SendInBlue.
First of all, it is necessary to define in the first section subject, preheader , sender, the "sacred triad" of opening rate, and other features, including:
- automatic setting of the UTM parameters for Google Analytics, to understand what your conversion rates are, what sessions you get, and related metrics and dimensions;
- possibility of creating A/B Test.
A/B Test
SendInBlue allows you to make A/B Test to understand how your user list reacts to two different emails.
Design: Templates and Drag & Drop Editor
In this section you can choose between various models that will help you make the graphics but also help you choose between different options.
The template section provides:
- Drag&Drop Editor (which can be used in a simple way with the "cut" and "sew" system, without inserting any code, similar to what happens in Page Builders for WordPress such as Elementor).
- advanced text editor for creating simple emails
- possibility of directly inserting a html code for the creation of your custom template.
Drag & Drop and Responsive Editor
The Responsive Drag & Drop Editor allows you to create emails to be sent to a list of contacts through a template that offers the possibility to optimally build the header, the body and the footer of the email.
In each of these areas you can insert:
- images;
- text;
- spaces;
- buttons;
- content elements as image blocks;
- links and icons for social networks.
In addition, at the end of the email you have the option for any unsubscribe from the mailing list.
Advanced text editor
If you want to make a simpler email and don't want to opt for the drag&drop editor you can use a Advanced text editor, which allows you to insert images and text and organize your email directly with a html code.
After these steps, select the lists or the relevant segmentsyou can choose whether to send in real time the campaign or let SendInBlue choose the best time to send according to past performance. The latter is a feature found only in paid plans.
Email Marketing Automation
You can create scenarios of Email Marketing Automation (https://it.sendinblue.com/funzionalita/marketing-automation/) that can be activated based on temporal triggers (e.g. sending an email after a certain time), action based (e.g. when the user opens or clicks on an email) or related to theecommerce (when the cart is abandoned).
With the automation section you can segmenting contacts precisely. You can profile them by:
- date of birth;
- place of residence;
- sex;
- route they take on the site.
You can also use a code (tracking script) that can be implemented on the website.
Metrics and KPI tracking
With SendInBlue you can monitor in real time all the key metrics of your campaign. In order to monitor it in the best possible way, it is possible to obtain various data such as:
- number of events;
- opening emails;
- click, bounce (hard and soft bounce);
- rate of delivery (deliverability).
Real-time statistics allow you to verify that your email marketing campaigns are running smoothly.
Heatmaps
To better visualize the data you can also use heat maps, which identify the areas on which you focus more, a feature typically included in the software of CRO such as Yandex Metrica, Hotjar, Mouseflow o Lucky Orange.
Integrations
SendInBlue integrates optimally with various software, programs and analysis tools (https://it.sendinblue.com/plugins/).
The integrations are divided into specific categories, such as E-commerce, Analitycs, CSM, CRM, Event Management, Lead Generation, Modules and Developer Tools.
Here are some examples of integration:
- Magento: you can automatically synchronize your Magento contacts with SendinBlue and you can easily send your emails, marketing sms and transactional emails.
- WordPress: if you use this CMS To manage your website or blog, you can integrate it with SendInBlue by importing contacts and inserting an html contact form or form. SendinBlue also offers a free set of tools for WordPress, freely downloadable from here.
Other integrations that interact well with SendInBlue include:
- Drupal
- WooCommerce
- Prestashop
- Zapier
- Optin Monster
- SalesForce
- Shopify
- Jimdo
- Wix
- Gravity Forms
Opinions and Reviews on SendInBlue
180,000 companies around the world have chosen this ESP. Le opinions about SendInBlue reported on G2.com (https://www.g2.com/products/sendinblue/reviews) are mostly positive. Users who have chosen to use it appreciate it:
- the excellent quality/price ratio;
- the ability to take advantage of the free plan;
- fast assistance and in Italian;
- the user-friendly structure of the dashboard;
- the ability to send SMS.
Prices
SendInBlue offers the possibility to choose different pay plans (https://it.sendinblue.com/tariffe/). For those who plan to make less than 300 mailings per month, there is the possibility to use the service for free.
The paid plans are:
- Lite starting from 19 euros per month;
- Premium starting from 49 euros per month;
- Companyfor those who need to send large volumes, with prices and conditions to be agreed.
Payments are made by credit card or RID. The subscription starts on the day of payment and is renewed on the same day of the following month. Email or SMS credits are invoiced at the time of purchase.
Conclusions
In the email service provider landscape, SendInBlue is distinguished by a number of positive features, including:
- platform in Italian and easy to understand, suitable even for the less "skilled";
- punctual and competent assistance service in Italian;
- professional functionality, also available free of charge or at very competitive prices;
- constantly evolving platform with some features not traditionally included in an ESP, such as landing page editor, ability to create campaigns, and Facebook Advertising and do retargeting with the support of AdRoll
- a chat service
- an effective email marketing automation platform, also included in the free plan, where you can set up scenarios triggered by time-based triggers or based on certain actions taken by the user;
- a free plan with which you can send up to 300 emails per day.
Do you use SendinBlue? What do you think?
Here you can sign up for SendInBlue's free plan and send up to 300 emails per day without any limitation.
Sendinblue Consulting
You need a Sendinblue consultant or do training on the platform? Contact me for a Email Marketing Consulting.
