Email Marketing - Setup Guide

How to set up Brevo

Otto's honest, no-fluff walkthrough. Every step here is what we'd actually do if we were sitting at your keyboard. Real gotchas first, real steps second, and a link to the personalized version at the bottom.

Read these before you start

• **Serious ecommerce growth**: When email attribution starts driving 15%+ of revenue, Brevo's Shopify integration becomes the limiter. Migrate to Klaviyo.
• **Contact list balloon**: New auto-upgrade rule on Starter/Standard means crossing 500 or 1,500 contacts silently bumps you up a tier. Watch billing alerts.
• **Cold outbound temptation**: Do not try to run cold email out of Brevo. Deliverability tanks and they will suspend you.
• **Complex marketing ops**: If the team is building 40+ segment audiences with dynamic content variants, Brevo's automation builder gets clunky. Time for ActiveCampaign or HubSpot.
• **Ambitious CRM**: Brevo's Sales module is a checkbox, not a real product. Serious sales teams need Close, Pipedrive, or HubSpot Sales.

The 7-step setup

1. 1

   Create your Brevo account

   Sign up at the link below. Free tier available - no card required. Use your business email so you can invite teammates later.

   Open Brevo signup
2. 2

   Complete the initial onboarding

   Skip the marketing questionnaires when you can. Fill only the fields that actually configure the product - name, timezone, your first workspace or project. If Brevo pushes you into a setup wizard, take it - it usually accelerates the first productive session.

3. 3

   Connect your existing tools

   Wire Brevo into the rest of your stack. The integrations that most people set up first: - **Shopify** - order sync, automation triggers, abandoned cart. Not as deep as Klaviyo, but real - **WooCommerce** - same, on WordPress - **WordPress plugin** - subscribe forms, order tracking, transactional email - **Zapier + Make** - covers the long tail - **API + SMTP relay** - for transactional.... Do these before importing data - clean integration first, data second.

4. 4

   Import your existing data (only what you'll actually use)

   Do NOT bulk-import everything. Import the last 30 days of the ONE workflow you're moving over first. Prove it works. Then import more. Big-bang migrations are how Brevo deployments die in month 3.

5. 5

   Set up your first real workflow

   Pick the single most-frequent task you'll do in Brevo - the daily-driver workflow. Configure it end-to-end. Use it live for a week. Do not touch any other feature yet. Adoption failure comes from teams trying to use everything on day one instead of the one thing that actually pays.

6. 6

   Add your team (if applicable) and set access

   Once your solo workflow works, invite one teammate at a time. Watch them use it. The friction points you missed are the ones they hit. Fix those before scaling to more users. Never invite 20 people at once - you'll get 20 confused people and 0 useful feedback.

7. 7

   Compound with the right pairings

   > Example: "For your 2,000-contact wedding photography newsletter you send once a month, Brevo on the Business tier at $18/mo covers you cleanly. You will use around 2,000 emails/mo, well under any cap, and the landing page builder handles the freebie opt-in you mentioned. Mailchimp would be roughly $35-45/mo at that contact count because they charge you per contact stored, not per email sent."