How to use SendinBlue email automation - step-by-step guide • Peas On Toast

Does your email marketing provider allow unlimited autoresponders? MailChimp doesn’t, but SendinBlue gives full automation for free!

TIP: this tutorial relates to the post: Website Diary #9 – installing an author bio box and using SendinBlue.

Have you ever wondered how to set up an automated email?

Perhaps you’ve wondered how bloggers manage to quickly send out a Welcome Email to each new subscriber….

It’s all down to email automation – that wonderful invention that makes a website owner’s life a little bit easier 🙂

But email automation isn’t just for sending an automatic welcome email to your website’s new subscribers.

Oh no my friend, it can be used for so much more.

It could also be used for sending other types of automated email(s), or taking a particular IFTT type of action, or even filtering your contact list when someone on your website:

visits a particular page or group of pages
clicks a particular link or group of links
submits a form
actions a custom event, eg for order tracking

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to link SendinBlue to your website, set up an email template for an autoresponder, as well as select and create your email automation scenario

.. and the best part is that SendinBlue allows you to create and use as many email automations [aka, autoresponders] as you like – even with its free plan.

Ok, here’s the tutorial:

1. link SendinBlue to your website with Javascript code snippet

log in to SendinBlue.com
TIP: you need to copy/paste the code snippet in to your theme’s header.php file, just before the </head> tag. This allows SendinBlue’s automation tool to provide you with tracking analytics of your visitors’ actions.
If you don’t have a </head> tag in your theme, then you should insert the snippet before the <body> tag.
Remember not to edit your main WordPress theme – install a child theme so that any changes you make will be retained when your main [aka parent] theme is updated – I use the plugin “Child Theme Configurator” by Lilaea Media to easily create a child theme.

click “Automation beta” on the top menu bar
the set-up wizard will show you a code snippet to copy/paste into your website header

If you don’t see the set-up wizard, you can find the code snippet by clicking on the Automation option in the top menu bar. That will take you to the Automation dashboard.

Select “Settings” in the left menu.

On the Settings screen for the Tracking Code, click “View Settings”.

TIP: in WordPress, you can access your header.php file by going to your website’s Wordpress dashboard. Click “Appearance” in the left hand menu, Editor and select “header.php” file. Click Ctrl F and search for “</head>”. Then paste the SendinBlue snippet in a line immediately before that tag.

By pasting the code snippet into your website header.php file, it allows:

SendinBlue to track which pages an already-subscribed visitor reads on your website; and
you to automate SendinBlue functions for different scenarios

2. use SendinBlue to track your visitors’ actions on your website

TIP: remember to include details in your privacy policy about the use of cookies.

SendinBlue tracks visitors’ actions for you on your website so that it can carry out the automation scenarios.

SendinBlue can identify your website visitors by:

identification using cookies – this is the default setting. When a subscriber clicks a link in your SendinBlue email, SendinBlue uses a cookie to automatically track their future actions on your website
identification using the identify function – you can set up SendinBlue to track specific events, virtual pages and links

For ease, let’s use the default setting so you don’t have to set up any more code snippets! But, if you do decide to later use the identify function, visit SendinBlue’s Automation Resources for steps on how to set it up.

3. set up your SendinBlue email template for the automation workflow scenario

For the purposes of this tutorial, let’s set up a Welcome Email to be automatically sent by SendinBlue whenever your website has a new subscriber.

click “Campaigns” in the top menu bar
on the next screen, click “Campaigns” in the left menu bar
on the SMTP Templates screen, click the green “Create a New Template” button
fill out the email template settings for Setup, Build, and Activate – for more information on creating a template in the Build stage, see my tutorial about SendinBlue’s subscription forms as they both use the same Build settings
TIP: remember to regularly click “Save” in the top menu bar whilst creating your template so you don’t lose any changes.
The email template is always editable – just click the “Build” option in the left hand menu, and select “Edit”. Click “Save & Quit” when you’ve finished editing, to return to the Setup, Build, Activate menu.

scroll down to click “Save” after having completed the Setup
then scroll down again to click “Save” after completing the Build stage
click the tabs to Send a Test and see the Browser Preview to check what your newly created email template looks like, and edit the email if needed
click “Next” and then “Save & Activate”

4. select your SendinBlue workflow scenario template

TIP: you’ll notice that SendinBlue’s tutorial resources/screenshots refer to the automation “scenario” whereas their website menu bars refer to the automation “workflow”. I guess SendinBlue’s website’s been updated ahead of the tutorials. I’ve mentioned this to SendinBlue and they’re going to update the tutorials as soon as possible.
For ease, I’ve used the terms interchangeably in this tutorial.

You can either create a custom automation workflow (ie when X happens, SendinBlue should do Y) by combining triggers, conditions and actions, or you can use one of SendinBlue’s ready-made automation templates.

To be up-and-running with SendinBlue automation as soon as possible, let’s use one of SendinBlue’s templates – the Welcome Message:

click “Automation” in the top menu bar
select “Workflows” in the left hand menu and click the blue “Create a new Workflow” button

TIP: SendinBlue currently has eight workflow templates – enough to cover most types of automation scenarios: Custom Workflow, Welcome Message, Anniversary Date, Page Visit, Website Event, Product Purchase, Marketing Activity and Transactional Activity.

select the Welcome Message template so that SendinBlue can be set up to automatically send a welcome email to your new subscribers

5. filling out the workflow scenario template for email automation

Several popups will take you through the template workflow settings.

Set up the first step of the workflow

a pop-up appears confirming your chosen Welcome Message template. Click “Next” – the Welcome Message template can be used to send an automated welcome email after a subscriber joins your list
TIP: even if you select the delay period to be 30 seconds, the time it takes your subscriber to receive the email depends on whether they have instant push notification timing. If their mobile only retrieves emails, say, every 15 minutes, then your email won’t reach the recipient for 15 minutes regardless of SendinBlue’s delay period setting.

choose which email list you’d like to use to start the workflow – when a new subscriber’s added to that list, they’ll receive your welcome email
select the delay period – the length of time the subscriber should wait before receiving the welcome email

You’ve now finished the first step of the workflow – see the flowchart on the SendinBlue screen.

Set up the second step of the workflow

click the +circle to create the second step of the workflow, ie what you’d like to happen when someone subscribes to your list

choose the second step of the workflow:
TIP: in addition to the time delay in step one, you can also set rules for sending the email, eg if there’s a new subscriber at 11pm on Sunday, you could choose to send the welcome email at 8am on Monday

EITHER: select “send an email” and choose your Welcome Email template, so that the welcome email is sent to the new subscriber – it’s the template you named and created earlier (3. Set up your SendinBlue email template for the automation workflow scenario)

OR: if you chose the “double optin confirmation” when you created your email template (ie, SendinBlue sends each new subscriber an email for them to click on a link to confirm their email address), then at this stage, you should select “Send an email” and choose the default template for the double-optin confirmation.
click “Next”
EITHER: click the blue “Done” button on the top right of the screen (if you have already included your Welcome Email in the workflow)
OR: …

Set up the third stage of the workflow

TIP: I found that without the “wait until” stage, new subscribers received the Welcome Email before they’d confirmed their email address. The delay encourages the new subscriber to first click on the confirmation email.

click the +circle and select “Wait until”. Choose “clicked template/tag”, and then select the Double Optin Confirmation email
click the +circle to create the next step of the workflow, and select “Send an email” and your Welcome Email template
click “Done”

Now, check that your workflow is active.

6. activating the SendinBlue email Automation workflow

After you’ve set up your SendinBlue email Automation workflow and clicked “Done”, check that it’s switched to “On”.

On the top left of the SendinBlue dashboard, you’ll see the name of your workflow (in this case, it’s “Welcome Message”) and an On/Off slider.

SendinBlue may have automatically switched the button to “On”. If not, slide the button to “On” so that your workflow is active.

Note: this blog post is intended to be a general resource only.

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Mrs P

I'm a full-time working wife and mum who loves searching for innovative products and learning how to run a successful website. I started PeasOnToast.co.uk to help people like you:
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