How you can take advantage of Sendinblue's lifetime deal (yes, they have a lifetime plan)

I'd be hyper-rich if I earned $1 every time someone said "email marketing is dead" but the truth is email isn't going anywhere.

Our product journey involves a lot of emails. From building a waitlist to transactional emails and post-purchase nurturing. Email marketing takes different forms during each stage but it sure as hell helps a lot.

As IndieHackers though, it might be restrictive for us to invest in a reliable email marketing platform. Service providers like Sendinblue offer free plans but that's limited and for most of us it's expensive to hop on one of their paid plans (free is limited, the paid plans have essential features). They start at $25 and $65 recurring monthly for only 10k and 20k emails respectively.

But... fortunately...

Sendinblue has a lifetime plan. That means you don't have to pay for it every single month. You can instead buy it once and use it forever or as long as you like. You can purchase it now for $79 one-time fee and own it for life.

I'll tell you how you can make use of it.
👉 Possible indie hacking use cases include idea, pre-launch, launch and post-launch stages, and newsletters.

Features that you can make use of include landing pages, signup forms, marketing automation, chat widgets, CRM, 10,000 monthly emails, no limit on contacts, no daily limits, transactional emails and more. All for just a $79 one-time fee.

Idea stage

Important aspects - validation, growing email list, relationship building
Sendinblue's signup forms to collect email from visitors

5 landing pages are included in this lifetime deal. Quickly put together a neat-looking landing page without using code. Describe your product information in detail to educate your visitors or keep it short to build suspense
Add signup forms to your landing page and actively ask users to signup and hear about your product
Share the landing page (with the signup form) with your immediate network. Never cold email at this stage, only reach out to your close friends. Share on communities, tell how you came up with the idea and ask for genuine feedback
Setup a marketing sequence and literally speak to subscribers. Ask for feedback and ask what type of features they expect in your app
Build a great relationship with people who trust you at an early stage such as this with the CRM included Sendinblue
If you'd like to automate the process remember that Sendinblue offers a personalization feature. Use that

Pre-launch

Important aspects - gathering feedback, growing email list, collecting payments in the form of pre-orders and relationship building
Sendinblue's landing page feature to share with your audience

Your audience will have questions, they'll have feedback to share with you, they might have ideas that you need to hear, sometimes they might just wanna say "thank you" for building this project (yeah, this happens when you're solving a pressing issue for them) -- time to address them. Install Sendinblue's chat widget on your landing page. When your visitors use the chat widget you get to see their interactions from your dashboard and address their queries in a unified inbox. The good thing is all your visitors' interactions are logged into the built-in CRM.
Share the landing page you built with Sendinblue to your audience -- your audience might be in different communities, Slack workspaces, Telegram groups, good-old forums etc -- meet them there with your product
Check if your signup forms are working. You must have done this already but it wouldn't hurt to check them again
When it comes to validation, there's no better way to validate your product than collecting payments. If someone is ready to pay during your pre-launch stage (without even seeing/trying your product), then your chance to succeed in this venture is much higher. Now that you have a landing page, all you need to do is create Stripe payment link and add this link to a 'pay/purchase product' button on your landing page. That's it. You're ready to collect payments from your visitors. Don't expect what you're expecting now (I know exactly how much you were thinking $$$$). Keep your expectations low.
This is the time to engage with your audience. If you shared your product effectively with your audience you may get anywhere from 50 to a few hundred or a few thousand visitors for a few days. You can expect around 1 - 10 interactions per 100 visitors.
You'll now have leads coming in from the chat widget, signup forms and the Stripe payment links you added to your landing page. Speak to them, answer their questions, greet paying customers -- these are your super-early users who trust in you and your product without even trying your product, treat them with the utmost respect as you always do.

Launch and post-launch

Important aspects - onboarding sequences, visitor interactions, customer engagement, transactional emails, nurturing campaigns... At this stage, you should put your product at the front and start using email as a growth hacking/marketing tool
Sendinblue's marketing automation feature to automate campaigns

Onboarding emails are one of the most popular ways to engage with customers. Leverage marketing automation feature from Sendinblue's lifetime deal to set up automated onboarding sequences. Spread them out by adjusting the frequencies and schedule emails a few days apart from the last email. First email, send email 2 days later, send email 5 days after the last email for example. Make sure you sound genuine and don't spam
Same thing as onboarding above applies to nurturing campaigns. Only the goal here is to speak with a prospect (from the chat widget) instead of a customer. If you have any ongoing offer/discounts share it with them and highlight in your emails
Use Sendinblue's Transactional Platform for sending transactional emails and SMSes
Develop a habit of going into the CRM and speaking to contacts from time to time. When I say "speaking", I mean it. Literally, speak to them and ask how their subscription/purchase is working out for them personally or for their business

Newsletters

Important aspects - sharing stories and lessons, creating a beautiful newsletter that's visually appealing, engaging with your subscribers, being able to respond to replies
Sendinblue's drag and drop email builder to build emails faster

Forget about tech/coding. Your focus should only be on writing emails and sending them. Use the drag and drop email builder to build a great email. When you're done, send them or schedule them for later
Use design blocks to add image and media content to delight your subscribers. Draft a beautiful responsive email that works on most email clients
A/B test email content (just in case if you're on a battle between choosing different variants)
Add a "reply to email" the mail and directly receive responses of your subscriber
Effectively use the built-in CRM and the inbox feature to build a long-lasting relationship with your subscribers

Everything I said for only $79 one-time payment. Offered by a reputable business such as Sendinblue, which has been around for a long time now, it's a no-brainer and great investment if you ask me. Most importantly, this deal is listed on AppSumo, purchase there are refundable for 60 days (they have no question asked policy). So buy it for just $79, try it and refund it on the 59th day if it doesn't make sense for you. Get their lifetime deal now for only $79 →

So that's it from me for now.

(but hey, you'll find more super deals and how you can use them for indie hacking in this SaaS Deals groups. Join this group below 👇 if you need to learn more about useful SaaS deals. You know, you can share your product's lifetime deals and discounts when you launch)