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Sendlane Review: Email & SMS Marketing For e-Commerce

Sendlane Review

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Digital marketing is essential for new-age businesses of any shape or size. Email marketing tools are an essential part of any successful digital strategy.

Sendlane is an email marketing platform built by digital marketers that makes identifying and connecting with your clients easy.

Take a look at my Sendlane review below!

What is Sendlane?

What is Sendlane?

Sendlane is a digital marketing firm created by three digital marketers to upgrade the quality of email marketing software tools. Founded in 2013, Sendlane is a much younger company than many of its competitors in the digital marketing space. In 2022 Sendlane has 40,000 users and, in a day, sends over 40 million emails.

Headquartered in San Diego, Sendlane is unique in the digital marketing space because of its founders’ drive for innovation. Developers at the company work to utilize deep behavioral data to optimize digital marketing for Sendlane customers. 

The effectiveness of Sendlane’s deep behavioral data strategy is illustrated by its prestigious Net Promoter Score of 88. Net Promoter Scores measure customer experience and business growth.

Sendlane is a more expensive digital marketing service, which may put it out of reach of operations that are not ready to operate at scale. However, digital marketing services represent a significant potential uptick in sales. 

Improved sales will require active maintenance and improvement of digital marketing strategies, so it is essential to give your organization the necessary tools to grow. Neglecting digital marketing to save money could end up losing you more money in the long term.

Sendlane Features

While the deep behavioral data is the engine that runs Sendlane, an engine is useless without the tools to steer it in the right direction. Sendlane has intuitive content development, design, and creative services. With Sendlane, consumers can execute professional design and management services for all their digital marketing needs.

Design Philosophy

Sendlane does everything possible to make using its platform easy without sacrificing features. Clear visual interfaces guide users through the process of establishing a client list, designing marketing materials, and utilizing deep behavioral data analytics.

Sendlane is accessible to new users but still offers deep customization options. New users can expect improvements in digital marketing services from pre-established email templates and automation funnels. Advanced users can optimize their digital marketing by fine-tuning design, client groupings, and manipulating deep behavioral data analytics to maximize sales.

To ensure all customers get the most out of Sendlane, subscriptions to the service all include extensive support materials. Support materials include more traditional instructions and walk-throughs of various Sendlane tools but also feature ebooks, podcasts, videos, and more. 

Materials represent professional suggestions and guides developed by experienced digital marketers to get the most out of the Sendlane tools.

Sendlane’s The Marketing Automation Hustle Podcast gives you updated wisdom about trends in the digital marketing space. The depth of data available through Sendlane means there are always ways to improve the effectiveness of digital marketing.

Form Builder

Sendlane’s built-in design options allow users to design their professional forms, banners, and other content. A drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to get started and customizes templates to serve your needs. Images, text boxes, and social media buttons are only a drag-and-drop away.

Intelligent Pop-Ups

Intelligent popups

When committing to using a pop-up, timing is everything. A mistimed pop-up can create negative associations with your brand and communications. This mistake replicated can cost you the trust and business of potential customers. On the other hand, a well-timed pop-up can be just as good as a sale when executed at the right time and place.

Sendlane’s deep behavioral data service identifies engagement trends with pop-ups. By measuring user data, Sendlane knows when clients are most likely to find a pop-up helpful. Replicating successful sales with other users can drastically expand customers and profitability.

No Email Send Limits 

Unlike other email marketing platforms, there is no email send limit on Sendlane. Sendlane’s guidelines for best practices when emailing customers are generally three times a week. However, customization options give each business the tools to tailor digital marketing strategies to their user base.

Professional Templates

Sendlane professional templates

Sendlane features fully fleshed-out professional templates that allow organizations to plug and play with the information and graphics they want to use. Sendlane templates give messaging a professional shine, or they can act as groundwork for a style that fits perfectly with your brand.

Drag-and-Drop Interface

Sendlane offers a drag-and-drop interface where you control every aspect of the design. The simple and intuitive drag-and-drop interface gives marketers a professional design without requiring code. For digital marketers looking to dig deeper into customization, the Sendlane editor includes a built-in HTML editor.

Personalization Tags

Sendlane features easy-to-use personalization tags that give your digital marketing the additional reach to resonate with customers. Tags aggregate essential information and allow it to be systematically accessed to create personalized emails.

A simple example of a personalization tag is an email recipient’s name. Customers are more likely to trust emails that address them specifically, so marketers program client names into the broader client list. When an email campaign in Sendlane executes, it automatically pulls the information listed for the users’ names and populates it into the email.

A client list with well-developed personalization tags is invaluable in digital marketing. Effective tags upgrade every other aspect of marketing by enabling more sophisticated data-driven customer targeting. Tags also enable more sophisticated multivariate testing.

Incomplete tag data for a client targeted by an email will result in the automated processes leaving the given variable blank, severely undermining the goal of personalization.

Unlimited Profiles 

Your Sendlane Profile is a nexus for all of the information about your organization you want customers to know. With Sendlane, you can create unlimited profiles under the same payment information to provide an additional mechanism for managing different consumer bases.

Sendlane Beacon

The Sendlane Beacon records & tracks the traffic of potential customers that visit your site. This behavioral data is the core of the unique insights which can upgrade the specificity of targeting in digital marketing.

For high-value digital marketing, important email personalization goes beyond basic personal information. Sendlane sends emails responding to specific customer behaviors detected by the Sendlane Beacon. Site visitor behaviors are targeted based on their empirical propensity to occur among people who ultimately become customers.

The Sendlane Beacon ensures your digital marketing approach is efficient and prevents clogging potential customers’ inboxes, alienating them, and losing a future sale. Additionally, the Sendlane Beacon enhances the specificity of marketing materials presented to potential customers.

Data-Driven Targeting

Sendlane’s vast data collection services are ready to identify spending customers and close sales. To utilize this data, Sendlane includes tools for categorizing contacts and labeling them.

With a well-curated and data-rich client list, Sendlane customers can identify the most lucrative subgroups and weed out unprofitable targets. Sendlane can combine client data to identify more correlations and further optimize profits. 

Pre-Built Automation Funnels

Sendlane automated sales funnel

Sendlane was created to fulfill the potential of digital marketing. The automation features on Sendlane allow marketing campaigns to send emails triggered by events or behavior of customers.

Getting automation set up is easy. Pre-built funnels are designed to synergize with data collected by the Sendlane Beacon. 

While the pre-built funnels showcase Sendlane’s basic automation functions, advanced users can wield these tools to get the most out of each email. Sendlane’s services are characterized by a high degree of customizability, and the automation options are no exception.

Well-designed automation has the potential to drastically increase profits per email by leveraging data-driven analysis of customer behavior. Automation functions can be used across the Sendlane platform, including email and SMS text campaigns.

Live Marketing Experiments

While Sendlane collects some data passively, sometimes customers run live marketing experiments to measure which version of campaign materials is more successful. Experiments can feature up to 4 variances for a category of potential customers. The software looks for key information about how customers react to the subject, preheader, and content in an email.

Live experiments upgrade the data-driven analytics provided by the Sendlane Beacon by setting clear goals and offering empirical comparisons about what produces results.

Deliverability You Can Rely On

Some digital marketing services fail on the most important aspect of email services – deliverability. A major culprit of failed delivery is the spam folder. To circumvent that problem Sendlane takes several steps.

Sendlane owns and controls its IP addresses and vigorously maintains its good standing. This prevents emails from their services from being automatically filtered out. Sendlane’s live marketing experiments allow customers to quickly identify materials that are being filtered out.

Additionally, Sendlane infrastructure and suggestions help prevent your emails from ever being associated with spam. The professional templates and design tools available make clear the validity of the communication to the recipient and automated filter. 

Ultimately, marginal deliverability metrics will be determined by the quality of marketing materials. Fortunately, Sendlane has tips and tools to ensure you produce the best content. 

Original material, masking links, using a consistent domain, masking links, relevant subjects, limiting unusual formatting or character use, and maintaining a hygienic list are all examples of factors Sendlane addresses to make sure your communications find their mark. 

Data-Driven Customer Insights

High-level data analysis provides unique insights into patterns exhibited by your customers. Data gives Sendlane customers the ability to identify the best time of day for correspondence and other habits that are correlated with purchasing.

API Integration

Sendlane is compatible with many other tools organizations are already utilizing as a part of their digital marketing campaign. Sendlane integrates the tools used by a customer into a single account. Centralized account management streamlines communication. Platforms with compatible data sets multiply the effectiveness of Sendlanes proprietary behavioral analysis.

Integration is a quick and easy way to leverage the benefits of other tools in the Sendlane workspace. Other tools can be useful in developing client lists, working with autoresponders to manage customers, or integrating with sites like Facebook to improve ad targeting.

Sendlane SMS

Sendlane sms marketing

Sendlane services extend across the digital realm to include SMS along with their headliner email services. Apply Sendlane’s proprietary data-driven insights to produce results, with potential customers reading messages within three minutes 98% of the time. Sendlane SMS is only available in the United States.

24/7/365 Support

That’s right, Sendlane offers 24/7/365 live chat and email-based support. Potential customers intimidated by the depth and complexity of Sendlanes offerings should take great comfort in their world-class support services.

Real-Time Analytics

Sendlane understands that the appeal of digital marketing is its lightning speed and flexibility, which is why it is committed to offering real-time analytics. Quick feedback will make sure your campaign stays on the right track and provide information to change course to increase profits.

In addition to the real-time monitoring and analysis available at the analytics dashboard, Sendlane generates reports on regular periods. Segmented reports are valuable, even for team members focused on day-to-day analytics, because they can show digital marketers long-term trends that can be obfuscated by up to the second analysis.

Client List Management

Most digital marketing services fee scales with emails sent, so it is highly desirable to vigorously maintain lists and slough off any dead-end leads. However, overly aggressive client list pruning can artificially limit profitability. Effective client list management is key to success.

Sendlane has the tools you need to ensure you get value out of each email. Two built-in features manage client list hygiene in the Sendlane client. Automatic list hygiene will purge inactive users at recurring intervals. Smart list hygiene is a one-time, manual removal of inactive clients.

VIP Upgrade, Any Time

 With Sendlane, anytime you choose to upgrade to the VIP experience, your profile and all of the associated settings and information are migrated into your Pro account. To do this, Sendlane assigns a full-service migration concierge to handle assistance while another team establishes the automation funnels and Sendlane integrations.

Sendlane vs Mailchimp

Mailchimp hero section

Mailchimp is a major competitor in the email and SMS-based digital marketing space. Mailchimp, founded in 2001 in Atlanta, Georgia, provides a free plan of their service which will manage 2,000 clients.

The free version of Mailchimp allows users to learn some of the design and client list tools independent of the automation and multivariate services which are offered with a paid version.

For their paid version, Mailchimp still maintains a limit on the volume of communications a customer can distribute daily or monthly, while Sendlane does not. Transactional emails are also not included by default. Mailchimp may be attractive for consumers operating on a tighter budget because they offer more plans at smaller increments of client management and price.

Mailchimp can struggle with its sending servers being flagged as spam, undercutting important deliverability metrics. Sendlane has effectively addressed this problem with its email servers.

Mailchimp has Sendlane solidly beat in the number of tools the service seamlessly integrates with by default. That integration also goes both ways. If your organization is reliant on important tools that only work with Mailchimp, it might be the way to go.

However, Sendlane does integrate cleanly with several important services and provides its API to integrate services. If your organization can hire someone to integrate the necessary tools, Sendlane provides the tools for optimal integration services.

Sendlane and Mailchimp ultimately offer very similar tools in terms of email creation, automation, testing, and list management. Mailchimp offers more plans, but some services are not available until top-tier pricing, whereas Sendlane offers its powerful analysis tools at all levels.

Ultimately, Mailchimp makes sense for organizations looking for an affordable email digital marketing service. It has the tools necessary to execute digital marketing strategies. Sendlane is a superior choice for organizations trying to grow and capitalize on their digital marketing strategy.

Sendlane Pricing

Subscriptions are available in either Growth or Pro, each with annual and monthly billing options. The Growth plan does not include multi-user access, SMS automation marketing, dedicated account management, VIP migration, and onboarding support. 

Growth contracts are only available for clients looking to email 5,000 contacts per month. The annual payment plan for the Sendlane Growth package is $1000, while the monthly contract is $100.

The Growth Plan includes priority support, access to all features, 24/7/365 live chat, email, and assisted onboarding support.

Pro plans start at 10,000 contacts per month. The base plan costs $275 monthly and is billed at $2,750 when renewed annually. The cost of the plan scales with the number of contacts reached on the client list, always offering discounts for annual contracts over monthly ones.

The Pro plan includes Professional Plus Support, white glove custom onboarding, a dedicated customer success manager, monthly program reviews, and proactive deliverability monitoring. If emails sent exceed the Sending Credits allocated in your Pro subscription, Sendlane charges a Credits Per Month Overage fee of $.25.

At 100,000 clients per month, the professional Sendlane subscription support upgrades from Professional Plus Support to Enterprise Support. In addition to the Professional Plus Support features, this includes a second program review conducted every month and a slack channel dedicated to advancing your brand and addressing your concerns.

At 500,000 clients per month, customers are upgraded to Enterprise Plus Support, which features weekly program reviews, quarterly business reviews, dedicated IPs, and a direct line to in-house deliverability resources for optimization and strategy efforts four times a year. The Customer Per Month overage is reduced to $.20 as part of this plan.

All plans can be supplemented by an SMS add-on to a Sendlane account. The base SMS add-on option is $50 for 5,000 clients and scales proportionately.

If you are interested but not convinced the platform is right for you, request a demo or sign up for the free Sendlane trial with 100 contacts. These opportunities will allow you to familiarize yourself with the features and limitations of the platform and make an informed decision.

Sendlane Reviews Summary

 Sendlane.com is a young corporation, but its founders have extensive experience in the digital marketing space. This fact gives Sendlane additional credibility because the product design was in response to the limitations of services already on the market.

Other corporations have more extensive low-budget offerings, but Sendlane is the advanced digital marketing service available to corporate clients today. Sendlane combines ease of use with next-generation innovations in data-driven behavioral analysis although it lacks some features like a dedicated landing page builder.

The proof of Sendlane’s effectiveness is apparent in their Net Performance Score of 88. Satisfied customers always return to Sendlane because it gives them the tools to find the clients they need. If you are not sure Sendlane fits your digital marketing needs, consider utilizing the fourteen-day free trial to experience its offerings firsthand.

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Walter Voronovic shares accurate, honest & pragmatic information on how to use the internet to build profitable digital business assets. 

 

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