Brevo tends to come into a business for one reason and stay for several. A developer picks it for password-reset and order emails because the API is straightforward. Marketing starts sending a newsletter from the same account. Someone adds SMS for appointment reminders. A year later there’s a sales pipeline in there too.
That breadth is useful, and it’s also why Brevo accounts get messy. Contacts arrive from the API, forms, imports and integrations, each with different attribute names. Automations were built by different people for different channels. And at some point it stops being clear which emails are transactional and which are marketing.
We sort that out, then build the automation on top.
Two kinds of email in one account
This is the first thing we check, because getting it wrong causes both compliance and deliverability problems.
Transactional email is triggered by something a person did and expects: an order confirmation, a password reset, a booking reminder. In Brevo it’s sent through the SMTP relay or the API, usually from your website or app, using transactional templates.
Marketing email is promotional: campaigns, newsletters, nurture automations. It must only go to people with a lawful basis to receive it, and it must carry an unsubscribe link.
The problems we see sit on the boundary. An order confirmation template that includes a big promotional block and a discount for the next purchase. A “transactional” automation that’s really a re-engagement campaign sent to everyone, including unsubscribed contacts. Or the opposite: critical account emails sent as marketing, so customers who unsubscribed from the newsletter stop receiving their invoices.
We classify every message, put each on the right sending path, and use separate sender addresses (and often separate subdomains) so that a weak promotional campaign doesn’t affect the reputation your receipts depend on. Domain authentication with SPF, DKIM and DMARC is part of that. Our email deliverability work covers it in more depth.
Contacts, attributes, lists and segments
Brevo stores everyone as a contact, identified by email address (and optionally by phone number for SMS and WhatsApp). Data about them lives in contact attributes.
The structure we usually set up:
- Attributes for durable facts you’ll filter on: customer status, signup source, plan, country, consent dates. Each one gets a clear name and data type, and we remove the duplicates that integrations created (“FIRSTNAME”, “first_name”, “First Name”).
- Lists for the small number of real groupings: consent-based groups or audiences you deliberately add people to. Lists in Brevo are static containers, so they shouldn’t be used to approximate behavior.
- Segments for anything that should update on its own: engaged in the last 90 days, customers who haven’t bought this year, contacts in a particular region. Segments use attribute, engagement and event conditions, so membership stays current without manual work.
A common sight is dozens of lists named after old campaigns (“Webinar March”, “Import final v2”) with heavy overlap, which makes it impossible to know how many people you’re actually emailing or who agreed to what. We consolidate them and move the logic into segments.
Automations that follow the customer
Brevo’s automation builder starts each workflow from an entry point, such as a contact being added to a list, an attribute changing, a form submission, a website visit or a custom event sent from your site or app. From there it can wait, branch on conditions and send email, SMS or WhatsApp messages, update attributes, or move contacts.
A realistic problem: a customer subscribes, joins the welcome series, and places their first order on day two. The welcome automation doesn’t know about the order, so on day four they receive “Ready to make your first purchase? Here’s 10% off.” Fixing that means sending a purchase event to Brevo and adding exit conditions or branches that check for it.
So we start with the events. Which actions on your site, store or app should Brevo know about, and with which properties? Once those arrive reliably, we design workflows for welcome, post-purchase, reminders and re-engagement, each with clear entry rules, exclusions and a defined exit. See email marketing automation for how this fits into lifecycle planning.
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SMS and WhatsApp
SMS in Brevo is bought with prepaid credits, and WhatsApp campaigns run through a connected WhatsApp Business account with message templates approved by Meta. Both are more personal than email, and both carry stricter consent expectations in most countries.
We set up separate consent attributes per channel, confirm phone numbers are stored in international format, and use SMS for messages where timing matters, such as delivery updates, appointment reminders or a time-sensitive offer for people who explicitly asked for one. An email subscriber who gave you a phone number at checkout hasn’t automatically opted into marketing texts.
Is Brevo’s sales CRM enough?
For small teams, sometimes. Brevo includes deals, pipelines, tasks and meeting scheduling, and having sales and marketing data in one place is convenient. It’s a reasonable choice for a business with a simple sales process and a handful of people selling.
It becomes limiting when you need detailed lead routing, multiple teams with different processes, or sales reporting your management relies on. At that point most businesses keep Brevo for messaging and connect it to a dedicated CRM such as Pipedrive, HubSpot or Zoho. The sync should be deliberate: decide which system owns customer status, consent and contact details, and connect them through a native integration, a workflow tool or the Brevo API.
Moving to Brevo, or cleaning up an old Sendinblue account
Accounts that began as Sendinblue often carry years of history: old lists, attributes that no longer mean anything, automations built for products you’ve stopped selling. We audit what’s still in use and archive the rest before building anything new.
If you’re migrating into Brevo from another platform, we map attributes, consent records and suppression lists first, rebuild automations around Brevo’s entry points rather than copying them blindly, and warm up sending gradually on the new account. Our CRM migration service covers the process.
Is Brevo the same as Sendinblue?
Yes. Sendinblue rebranded as Brevo in 2023. The core email, SMS and transactional products continued under the new name, and existing accounts carried over.
Should transactional and marketing email use different sender domains?
It’s usually wise to separate them, at least with different sender addresses and often with a subdomain for marketing. That way a promotional campaign that performs poorly doesn’t affect delivery of receipts and password resets.
When should we use a list instead of a segment in Brevo?
A list is a static group you add contacts to. A segment is defined by conditions, such as attributes or engagement, and updates on its own. Use lists for a few deliberate groupings and segments for targeting.
Can Brevo send automated emails based on purchases?
Yes, if purchase data reaches Brevo, either through an ecommerce integration or as custom events sent from your store or app. The automation can then start or branch on that event.
Can Brevo sync with another CRM?
Yes, through native integrations, workflow tools such as Zapier or Make, or the API. Before connecting, decide which system owns each field so they don’t overwrite each other.