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- marketing teardown: 💙 brevo (formerly sendinblue)
marketing teardown: 💙 brevo (formerly sendinblue)
can they survive this rebranding and leveling up?
Tom Snyder
July 25, 2024
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hey marketer!
today I’m digging into one of every marketer’s fave industries: email marketing software.
yeah, but not the big players like hubspot or mailchimp – I’m examining a smaller, but still established company.
brand in the hot seat: brevo (formerly sendinblue)
today's treasure trove
who is brevo?
📊 quick stats:
brevo's the swiss army knife of marketing automation. I’m talking email marketing, transactional emails, sms, landing pages, crm – you name it. they’re running the same game as big shots like hubspot, mailchimp, and constant contact.
brevo used to roll as sendinblue until they hit the rebrand button about a year ago.
why the switch? they wanted to be the go-to all-in-one solution, leveling up from just sending marketing and transactional emails.
they've been in the game for over a decade, but they're still not as big as the competition. just look at mailchimp's ad spots, klaviyo’s shopify collab, and hubspot’s content marketing hustle. 🐒 🛒 🎡
target demographics
here’s what’s up.
as they say on their site and other places, they’re all about startups and agencies. not the typical smb crowd that mailchimp goes for and not the big enterprise customers hubspot and salesforce chase.
their site’s packed with customer stories from growth agencies, e-commerce shops, small saas companies, and of course, the homepage is loaded with logos from big brands in every industry.
their social content is lasered in on medium and large industry players, posting about conference engagements, gartner reports, and their own case studies.
so, who’s the real target demo?
they’ve opened the corral and are trying to rope in all the cattle – big, small, you name it. 🐄 🤠
is this the right target demo for brevo?
tbh, I think so.
I know they’re facing major headwind from the competition, but serving up enterprise, all-in-one solutions is much more lucrative than trying to compete with mailchimp for smb and hobbyist customers.
marketing messages
all. over. the place. 🙄
their current h1 “grow with our email marketing & crm suite”
so basic. the only messaging I saw that meant anything (that I can’t find now 🤦) was: “the easiest email marketing and crm platform available”
“easy” generally connotes small business, since the enterprise level is more concerned with comprehensive solutions that integrate with their current systems rather than how “simple” a new platform is.
are these the right marketing messages for brevo?
I think they are dropping the ball by having created an entire new brand that effectively just seems like a new name and new logo at this point. nowhere do they take a strong stance on who their audience is and what they do better than the alternatives.
businesses know they need email marketing and a crm to grow, but what makes brevo different? how about focusing in on a couple of differentiators, like the simplicity of their platform and the amount of integrations they offer?
a new h1 might look something like this: “integrations that marketers want, simplicity that sales teams need”
in fact, don’t compare brevo’s h1 with hubspot’s 🙈 oof.
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marketing campaigns
brevo is mixing demand gen with seo by using search ads and tons of blog content. the organic content is the same across channels (instagram, facebook, and x/twitter) with no tiktok since the rebrand.
there’s been little youtube content since the rebrand, and the format doesn’t seem dialed in – some videos are talking head-style explainers for their different products with a few screen recordings of feature walkthroughs.
are these the right marketing campaigns for brevo?
imo, it’s clear that the marketing and design team is spending resources making beautiful slideshows and images for organic content, but it adds little value to the conversation.
instead, brevo could focus on video – youtube and tiktok, to build a creator-led brand to tell the story of brevo, connect with their target audience (maybe in-house marketers at large enterprises), and do “corporate-life” style content while jumping on trends and memes. 💅💻
there are already tons of videos on youtube comparing brevo with competitors, and brevo’s own voice is lost in the fray.
ditch the seo play (writing tons of blog articles) and create a “product marketing newsletter” for customers and non-customers to learn about new features and highlight success stories every week. brevo can use their free tier plans as loss-leaders and nurture those leads into more comprehensive plans through this newsletter.
lastly, they could hone in one their bread-and-butter: email marketing and host an in-person event just for email marketers. not just a conference – more like ted talks + disneyland. use all the email and sms automation available for signups, then run a real-time case study of the product in action.
wrap up
like I said in the last deep dive, I’ve been through rebrandings before and they can be tough.
this is a golden opportunity for brevo to make an impact as effectively a new entrant to the market – but can they pull it off?
if you read this far, thanks (and read the other deep dives here)!
what’s your favorite email marketing platform? reply to this email and let me know!
✌️,
tom at marketer gems
