Brevo Email Marketing Tutorial for Beginners 2026 - Step by Step

if you're looking for a simple way to manage contacts send emails and automate your marketing bravoo has you covered whether you're a small business freelancer or just starting out it's easy to use and super effective I'm Matt and in this video I'll show you how to set up your account design greatl looking emails and send your first campaign we'll set up everything you need to keep your audience engaged before we dive in here's a quick tip if I'm moving too fast or too slow just click the gear icon at the bottom right of the video player to adjust the play back speed I've also included timestamps in the description so you can jump straight to the topics you're interested in all right ready to get started let's go to get the best available deal with bro make sure to use the first link in the video description to sign up once you're on the page click sign up free in the top right corner you'll be asked to enter your personal information and you'll need to confirm your email and phone number bro's instructions are easy to understand and the forms are userfriendly so simply follow their prompts to get set up you'll also need to select a subscription plan review the plan options and choose the one that suits your needs the best for our demo today we'll be using the free plan because you can always upgrade later let's take a quick tour of the homepage on the left side you have the nav bar with the first item being home next you have contacts campaigns and automations you also have transactional conversations deals meetings and calls and these are all very powerful features on the top bar you have from left to right usage and plan where you can monitor usage metrics and plan limits next you have the help button here you can access the help center with product documentation and how-to guides you can create a support ticket here and there's a search bar for Quick Navigation to find helpful information next you have the notifications icon here you can view recent updates or system alerts last you have the profile drop down here you can manage account info subscription Integrations language settings and much more the center of the page features a calendar and recommended setup steps for firsttime users eventually this section displays helpful suggestions depending on what's going on with your account next up let's set up your account by importing contacts there are three methods to import existing contacts file upload copy paste and import from another tool today we're going to do the import from file method there are four steps to go through to import contacts from a file one upload a file choose a CSV file or a similar file preview the first 10 lines and then confirm if everything looks good second map data you'll need to match your file headers from your CSV or other file to brevo contact attributes for example contact ID here from my CSV file needs to be mapped to a relevant attribute be careful because contact ID is bro's internal ID system so since these IDs are coming from elsewhere I'll need to select external ID email the name SMS s and phone numbers all seem to match but because I'm in the United States I am going to switch these to United States even though it's still just plus one for file headers you have that don't have a pre-existing matching brevo attribute you can create your own by clicking on it then clicking add new attribute you can also select do not import to avoid assigning a file header to any brevo attribute after this click confirm mapping next you'll need to select or create a list you can choose an existing list or create a new one if you create a new list you can either select a folder to put it into or create a new one you'll also want to name your list something descriptive for my purposes I'm just going to select this existing list your first list and your first folder confirm your list to continue step four is to finalize your import first you'll want to decide how to handle a situation where your existing list has contacts that are also on your new list that you're importing you can either update the attributes of the existing contacts or leave the old contacts alone if you choose to update the attributes of the existing contacts with the new information you'll also need to decide what to do if it encounters empty fields to leave the data alone if there are empty fields in the new Doc leave this unchecked if you want to erase the existing attributes anytime there's a blank field toggle this on since I'm importing to a blank list these settings don't matter to me so much you can also choose to to blocklist the contacts that you're importing instead of adding them to a list to message we don't want that in this case lastly click this check box to confirm that your import and contact list aderes to bro's rules then click confirm your import to finish if everything goes smoothly you'll see a success message at the top of the page indicating how many contacts were imported here they are here are my 10 contacts the next step for setting up your account is to authenticate your domain why do you need to authenticate your domain because it boosts your email deliverability and avoids spam filters professional email addresses like your name aty yourdomain.com are recommended as sending from free ones like Gmail or Yahoo May trigger spam rules get a domain from registrars like GoDaddy or Squarespace domains domain setup isn't covered in this tutorial but if you need a domain you can start with the links provided in the description below next here's how to authenticate your domain first navigate to domain settings on the homepage click the profile dropdown then select senders domains and dedicated IPS next click the domains Tab and click add a domain second enter your domain name without the prefixes like https click add a domain third you'll need to authenticate your domain choose one of the three options automatic authentication is recommended and uses entry for DNS updates manual Authentication is also an option and breva will provide detailed steps for DNS setup we're going to use automatic authentication today for automatic authentication you'll log into your domain registar using entry for example I use GoDaddy click continue and complete the two- Factor authentication if prompted click continue and then wait for the success dialogue if everything goes smoothly you should get this popup that says your domain has been authenticated click back to domain listing fourth you'll need to wait for DNS propagation DNS updates can take up to 48 hours to fully propagate so don't worry if it's not immediate that said in most cases it takes place pretty quickly next let's create our first email campaign you can go to campaigns on the left and then click create campaign we're doing an email campaign so let's click that one let's name the campaign something let's say conference welcome email and click create campaign next we need to verify the sender details so manage sender let's ensure the email address is the email address we plan to use and here's the sender name I want to personalize it so I'm going to put my name here Matt with medic media and that's how it'll show up here's the preview we'll click save next let's set up our recipients click add recipients then we'll need to select the list or segment to send our email to I'm going to use this first list that we created earlier there are also Advanced options you can explore but we won't use those today so just click save to continue next let's add a subject I know that this is going to be a welcome email so I'm just going to say hello and let's personalize it and we can add the recipient's first name by going here and clicking first name as the attribute and if for some reason that attribute isn't available let's put there so it'll just say hello there I want an exclamation point and here's a preview of our subject there's also preview text that we'll need to create preview text shows up under the subject in an email client it's meant to be just a little snippet to give a teaser of what's in the email so I'm going to say welcome to the community special offer inside and we'll click save next let's design our email click Start designing before designing any emails I recommend setting up your brand the first time you visit the templates page you'll be prompted to do this so go ahead and click the button to get set up you can start with bro's automatic brand setup by entering your website URL it will attempt to pull in your logo colors and more but you may need to make a few manual adjustments depending on what it's able to pull from site as needed upload your logo and choose your brand colors you can also customize fonts and add social media links if you want to use a custom web font keep in mind that not all email clients support them so so be sure to set a fallback font once you're happy with everything click save and apply brand and you're all set brevo will now use your branding to automatically populate templates saving you time and keeping your emails consistent after setting up your brand you'll return to the template selector page you'll see options like layouts template gallery and my templates layouts are generic designs with placeholders that automatically import your brand assets while the gallery offers fully pre-made templates you can preview templates by hovering over them but note that the previews won't show your brand assets though they will be applied when you select a template for this demo I'll use the Tory layout from the layouts tab click use template to get started this is the drag and drop Builder let me give you a quick overview before we continue here's the top bar the top bar allows you to go back to campaign on the left shows you the name here has your undo and redo options which you can use command Z or command shift Z there's also version history here you can click on to roll back to a previous version if you made mistakes along the way on the right side you have desktop view and mobile view mode which you can click on or easily shift between by clicking shift d for desktop and shift M for mobile when we get to the point where we want to check our email out how it would look at an email client you can click preview and test and it shows you and when we're done here we'll click save and quit on the top right there's also a drop- down menu for more options on the left side navigation we have three sections content style and AI under the content section we have three tabs blocks which contains your addable elements sections which are pre-built groups of blocks that you can grab and drop in and then saved which is where any sections that you create along the way that you save will show up so you can reuse them again under style we have access to edit our brand library and assets we can modify the template and background color we can modify text appearance with the fonts we can modify buttons which we'll do in a bit and we can update spacing lastly there's an AI assistant which is built in and makes it nice and easy to quickly generate paragraphs titles or even create buttons quickly let's go back to the content section let's start by clicking on this placeholder image and adding an image here to welcome our viewers on the left side click replace and then let's add an image I already have one here that I want to use this welcome image click insert and I want to move it up to treat it more like a banner so I'm going to click and drag the purple line will appear to show you where it's going to land and now we have this layout there's an empty block here so I'm going to delete that I can click on it and just hit delete on my keyboard and then let's create a nice header here I just want to say hello and let's personalize it and add their first name if there is no first name attribute let's say there an exclamation point and then let's Center the text now I need a welcome message for this paragraph under the header so I'll use the AI assistant to get me started I'll type a short prompt and click generate it gave me more text than I need so I'll use the reduce content button to simplify it then I'll drag the block under the header delete the old paragraph and edit the text to give it the tone and message that I want lastly I'll Center align it to make it match the header great I don't want this header or paragraph here so I'm just going to click to remove them and then let's add an image from our conference here highlight over this image and then click replace this is a hypothetical conference so I'm just going to search for business conference under the stock images tab in the content library and let's add this one here insert great now I need to replace the text in this bottom section let's say what can I expect from this newsletter next I need some more text for this bulleted section so I'll use the AI assistant again to get me started after giving it a prompt I'll ask it to make the tone friendlier then I'll drag the Block in edit the content and reformat it to look nice I'm also going to Center this header next I'm going to restyle this button but I need a good call to action so I'm thinking I'll welcome new subscribers I think I'm going to try to get them onto my website by offering 10% off a product let's go to content sections tab here's one I like the look of this section so let's click and drag it in right under the button there I'm actually going to offer a 10% discount I'll say save 10% on your first month we don't actually need this header here so we'll delete that and let's drag this button in clicking the button and then going to spacing on the left I can see there's a lot of padding at the top and bottom I don't need nearly that much let's just do 10 pixels of padding on top and now this text and the button are much closer to each other also I want to change the style of the buttons overall so that they have white font instead of black font I think that looks better so I'm going to go to style on the left and let's change our overall button style under buttons we'll click this black text next to the font the hex code for Pure White is FF FF FF 6 FS we'll click out of there now we have a white text for our call to action let's click on it and update the text to say in all caps claim your discount now let's expand this button by clicking and dragging so that the text all fits on one line and let's change this font up here in the paragraph to something a little bit more exciting let's increase the size to 18 and let's make it bold this looks much better lastly let's add a link to the button so we'll add a link to the Cloverleaf audio landing page here where we're going to offer this specific deal and click insert you'll also want to double check your footer make sure required links like your privacy policy and unsubscribe button are included and functional these are essential for compliance and building trust with your audience if you need to make changes you can edit the text or update the links directly in the footer block once everything looks good you're ready to move on I'm going to make just a few more style changes updating the section at the top so the background color is a nice gray to make it stand out from everything else and then just adjusting some header font sizes to give it a weight that feels good lastly I'll click the social icons at the top remove any platforms that I don't want using the trash icon and refresh the Instagram field to pull that URL in from my brand assets I'm pretty happy with this email so let's preview and test and you can choose who to preview this email as I'm going to type my email in and this is how it'll show up if it lands in my inbox with my first name populated in that first name variable this looks good so I'm going to click Send email test at the top left search for my contact information and send test here in my inbox you can see how the email looks in my email client you'll notice that the Pacifico font is not usable by this particular email client so it was important that we set that fallback font this still looks pretty good overall I'm happy with this if you want to remove this tag at the bottom that says sent with brevo you'll need to upgrade to a subscription plan that supports that functionality overall I'm happy with this back in bravoo I'm going to close out of this email preview before exiting out of here completely let's go to the drop- down menu on the top right and save this as a template so we can reuse it again we'll name this template conference welcome email then click save as template in case we want to reuse a section in the future we can save it click on a blank space in the section and then click the save icon the section will appear under the saved tab in the content menu on the left ready to drag and drop into this email or any future campaign overall I'm happy with this let's click save and quit lastly let's finalize and send this at the bottom of the email campaign creation page click the edit settings next to additional settings there's plenty of advanced options in here some of the key ones to point out are the add a tag functionality where you can add a tag to a contact upon sending this email so I'll just say conference welcome and add that tag to anybody who receives this email I'll also use a different reply to address this is for if you want to have email recipients respond to a different email address than the one that's sending this campaign so I'm going to set info@ Clover leaf. audio and then click save at the top of the email campaign creation I'm going to click schedule and you can send now schedule for later or send at the best time personally I'm happy with this email and I'm going to send it now this will return you to your campaign's overview page and you can see that the email campaign is scheduled to send it's essentially sending right now that's the scheduled time and when it's finished you'll see all the stats appear right here in the center inter section after refreshing the page I can see that it's currently running refreshing again I can see that the email has been sent to 11 recipients once an email is finished sending you can go to the right side of it and click the button to view the report this shows you a whole bunch of technical information to really understand how your email is being received quickly some other pages to know about under the campaign section of this app are the statistics page where you can look at overall highle details about your email campaigns and the here in the template section you'll see the email template we saved ready to reuse for creating new campaigns without redoing all your hard work if you found this video helpful give us a thumbs up and subscribe for more content like this if you have questions or feedback leave a comment thanks for watching