Just recently, I saw a long conversation on Facebook where someone asked if there were any good email marketing platforms outside of the top two or three that everyone seems to be using. This person was looking for a platform that had not been pummelled by hackers lately, keeping well-known email marketers down for days at a time. Around the same time, I was contacted about a sponsored post from an interesting email marketing platform. If you’re that person, then here is an email marketing platform that you might not have heard of yet, but should definitely consider.
SendinBlue
SendinBlue is a marketing platform for beginners and advanced users that automates the entire marketing process, from email marketing and beyond. It was released publicly back in 2012 to give users their own attention-generating engine that powers marketing campaigns.
Some of SendinBlue’s prime features include:
- Email marketing
- SMS marketing
- Simple newsletter creation
- Campaign scheduling
- Segmentation of contacts
- Real time reports & statistics
- Spam checking
- Trigger marketing
- Dedicated IP address
How to Use SendinBlue
You can start by signing up for a free account to get a feel of things. After logging in, you can import email subscribers (if you have any) from another email marketing service into SendinBlue via a CSV file. When all contacts have been imported, you can create a new email campaign. Clicking on ‘create a campaign’ in SendinBlue will let you configure the default campaign settings, such as the name, subject, the sender’s name and email.
After you define the campaign’s name and purpose, you click the ‘create your email’ button (the next step) to bring up 4 different editors to create a mailing list campaign.
Among these 4, the ‘Drag and Drop Newsletter builder’ is the easiest to get used to. What did I love about this option? It literally took me a few minutes to create a perfectly fine newsletter with all the widgets. It also lets you upload and add images as well as set background text and colour.
Here’s what the default format looks like.
I love that SendinBlue lets users drag and drop widgets wherever they want to. For instance, the social media buttons can be included in the newsletter to refer subscribers to your social profiles. This is a great option considering that emails including social sharing buttons have a 158 percent higher click through rate. While you have the option to add many different social networks (as shown below), you may just want to choose just the one or two networks that drive the most traffic to your website.
After finishing the newsletter, you can send yourself or anyone else as many test emails as you want to see the outlook of the newsletter. Once you are satisfied with the look, it is easy to copy and use newsletters for the future as long as you stick to the same format.
SendinBlue also gives you preview options for many different browsers and email clients, including those on smartphones and tablets.
Here’s how an email will appear on an iPhone.
The next step is to select the subscriber (recipient) list and enter a schedule date for the campaign. There is also an option ‘or send your campaign now’ to send the campaign instantly.
With 60% of marketers believing that email marketing produces a positive return on investment, SendinBlue’s quick campaign creation makes it a viable option for anyone considering an email marketing tool for lead generation.
How SendinBlue compares to MailChimp
I’ve mentioned MailChimp on several occasions, and it’s really a great tool for email marketers. But SendinBlue gives it a run for its money by offering email marketing packages at a MUCH lower price.
SendinBlue’s free package lets you send 9,000 emails per month to unlimited subscribers. Its lowest priced package, costing $7.47 per month, lets you send 40,000 emails per month. This can be broken down as 1 email to 40,000 subscribers per month, or 2 emails to 20,000 subscribers per month.
MailChimp on the other hand lets you send 2,000 emails to 12,000 subscribers for free, while the package for unlimited emails starts at $10 for 500 subscribers. Sending emails to 40,000 subscribers in MailChimp would cost above $200.
That’s a significant cost difference!
SendinBlue also has many extra features that are missing from MailChimp and other popular platforms, including ecommerce tracking, transactional emails, SMS, and the ability to whitelabel your messages.
Conclusion
SendinBlue’s plethora of features and, more importantly, its pricing will give you second thoughts if you’re currently using MailChimp, Aweber or another email marketing service.
It has all the features found in a top-tier email marketing service and SendinBlue’s awesome support center makes it a treat to set up and get started. I would definitely recommend it if you’re looking to save money.
Try it for free – no credit card required. It could be the a-ha moment for your email campaigns… and your marketing budget.
