Brevo Email Automation: Building Revenue-Generating Workflows

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) has established itself as a competitive full-stack marketing platform, and its automation workflow builder is genuinely capable for e-commerce. The platform’s strength is its combination of automation depth, transactional email infrastructure, and CRM data — all in one place at a price point that makes it particularly compelling for growing brands.

This guide is a practical walkthrough of building revenue-generating automation workflows in Brevo — the triggers that matter, the sequences that work, and how to use Brevo’s testing and analytics capabilities to optimise performance over time.

Understanding Brevo’s Automation Workflow Builder

Brevo’s workflow automation is accessed under the “Automations” section of the platform. Each workflow has three components: a trigger (what starts the workflow), conditions (decision branches based on contact data or behaviour), and actions (what happens — send email, update attribute, add to list, send SMS, notify a team member).

This three-part architecture is similar to Klaviyo and ActiveCampaign, which makes Brevo’s automations recognisable for marketers coming from those platforms. The depth of conditional logic is substantial — you can branch on contact attributes, email engagement, purchase events, web tracking data, and custom events you define.

Entry Triggers Available in Brevo

Brevo supports the following trigger categories, each relevant for different workflow types:

• Contact attribute change: Contact’s data changes (e.g., moves to a new segment, a custom attribute is updated)
• Form submission: Contact submits a Brevo form or signs up via a pop-up
• Email engagement: Contact opens, clicks, or does not open a specific email
• Page visit: Contact visits a specific URL (requires Brevo’s web tracking snippet)
• E-commerce events: Purchase made, cart abandoned, product viewed (via Brevo’s e-commerce plugin or API)
• Date-based: Triggered on a specific date or relative to a contact attribute (e.g., X days before a birthday or subscription renewal)
• API event: Custom events pushed to Brevo via API for advanced use cases

This trigger variety covers the full range of standard e-commerce automation use cases without requiring workarounds.

Building the Core E-Commerce Automation Sequences

Welcome Series

The welcome series is the highest-priority workflow to build first. In Brevo, set the trigger to “Form submission” from your main signup form, or “Contact attribute change” if you are importing subscribers from an external source.

A five-email welcome series that works:

Email 1 (Immediate): Welcome the subscriber, deliver your lead magnet or incentive if you offered one, and introduce the brand briefly. Keep it warm and personal in tone.

Wait 1 day

Email 2: Your brand story or origin — why you exist, what makes you different. This email earns permission for future marketing by investing in the relationship first.

Wait 2 days

Condition: Did contact make a purchase? If yes, remove from welcome series and add to post-purchase workflow. If no, continue.

Email 3: Bestsellers or most popular products. Show the range with clear imagery and direct product links.

Wait 2 days

Email 4: Social proof — reviews, press coverage, user photos. Address the hesitation of a prospect who has not yet purchased.

Wait 2 days

Email 5 (for non-purchasers): Final push with your welcome incentive, expiry reminder, and a simplified one-CTA layout. Remove from welcome series after this email regardless of outcome.

In Brevo’s workflow builder, add a condition check for purchase before Email 3, 4, and 5 to prevent subscribers who converted from receiving irrelevant “buy now” messaging.

Abandoned Cart Workflow

Brevo’s abandoned cart trigger requires the e-commerce plugin (for WooCommerce, Shopify via third-party connector, or direct API integration). Once configured, the trigger fires when a contact with a known email address adds items to cart and does not complete purchase within a defined delay window (typically 30–60 minutes).

A three-email abandoned cart sequence in Brevo:

Email 1 (1 hour post-abandonment): Reminder email with the specific cart contents. Pull the product name, image, and price dynamically using Brevo’s personalisation variables. No discount. The message should feel like a helpful reminder, not a sales push.

Wait 20 hours

Condition: Did contact purchase? If yes, exit workflow. If no, continue.

Email 2 (24 hours post-abandonment): Add social proof to this email — a review of the specific product in cart, or a trust element (free returns, guarantee). Consider a 5–10% discount on this email if your margins support it.

Wait 48 hours

Condition: Did contact purchase? If yes, exit workflow. If no, continue.

Email 3 (72 hours post-abandonment): Final recovery attempt. Combine urgency with your strongest value proposition. Keep the email short and focused on a single CTA. After this email, exit the contact from the workflow — continuing to chase after three emails reduces future deliverability.

Post-Purchase Workflow

Set the post-purchase workflow trigger to the purchase event from your e-commerce integration. Add a filter to exclude contacts already in a post-purchase workflow (for repeat purchasers, you may want a separate shorter sequence).

A core post-purchase sequence:

Email 1 (Day 1–2 post-fulfilment): Thank you email. Acknowledge the purchase, set delivery expectations, and include helpful content — product care, setup guide, or usage tips relevant to what they bought.

Wait 7–14 days (product-dependent)

Email 2: Review request. Keep this email focused on one action. Link to your review platform. Use a personal tone: “We’d genuinely love to know how you’re getting on.”

Wait 14 days

Condition: Did contact make a second purchase? If yes, exit. If no, continue.

Email 3: Cross-sell recommendation based on purchase category. Manually curate the relevant complementary products for each product category — automated recommendations are less reliable in Brevo without deep API customisation.

Wait 30 days

Email 4 (for single-purchasers only): Replenishment reminder or “what to try next” email. Add a loyalty programme CTA here if relevant.

A/B Testing Within Brevo Automations

Brevo supports A/B testing within automation workflows — a feature that many ESPs either lack or gate behind premium tiers. To set up a test inside a workflow, add an A/B split action at any point in the flow. Brevo will distribute contacts between variant A and variant B according to your defined percentage split.

You can test email subject lines, content variations, send timing, and entirely different email designs. Brevo will report open rates, click rates, and unsubscribes for each variant.

The limitation is that statistical significance reporting is not as robust as dedicated testing platforms. For most e-commerce brands running automations, this is acceptable — you are testing directional hypotheses rather than running formal experiments. Use a minimum of 500 contacts per variant before drawing conclusions.

Practical tests worth running in your welcome series:

• Subject line personalisation (first name vs no name)
• Discount timing (email 2 vs email 4 for the first-purchase incentive)
• Email 1 format (text-heavy brand story vs visual product focus)

Analytics for Measuring Automation Revenue

Brevo’s automation reporting shows open rate, click rate, and unsubscribe rate per workflow email. For revenue attribution, you need the e-commerce integration to be passing order data back to Brevo so that purchases can be attributed to email touchpoints.

Inside each workflow’s analytics view, Brevo shows the number of contacts at each stage, drop-off rates between steps, and completion rates. Use this to identify where contacts are exiting workflows prematurely — a high drop-off after Email 2 in your welcome series, for example, suggests that email needs revision.

For a composite view of total revenue generated across all automations, you will need to run a custom report or use Brevo’s revenue dashboard if your e-commerce integration is configured to pass transaction values.

Where Brevo’s Automation Excels

Brevo’s automation is particularly strong for brands that need:

• Combined transactional and marketing automation on one platform (Brevo handles both natively)
• CRM-triggered email flows (deal stage changes, contact attribute updates)
• Multi-channel automation including SMS and WhatsApp
• Cost-effective automation at medium list sizes (Brevo’s pricing is based on email volume, not contact count — a meaningful advantage for large lists with variable engagement)

The constraint compared to Klaviyo is less granular e-commerce event data and fewer native shopify-specific features. For WooCommerce brands or those using API-based integrations, Brevo is a very competitive option.

How Excelohunt Builds Brevo Automation Programmes

Getting Brevo’s automation working at full capability requires the right technical setup — e-commerce integration, web tracking, custom event configuration — combined with the strategic knowledge of which sequences to build and how to sequence them.

The Excelohunt team audits and builds Brevo automation programmes for e-commerce brands, from initial setup through ongoing optimisation and A/B testing.

---

Related Excelohunt Services

Looking to implement these strategies with expert support?

• Brevo — learn how we implement this for clients
• Email Automations — learn how we implement this for clients Get a free audit →