Group22 Strengthens Client Relationships and Expands Its Services with Sendinblue

A team of dedicated advertising experts

With a long history in design and advertising, the team at Group22, led by Stephen Ludwig and Gary Schechner, offers a wide range of services to their clients including branding, strategy building, advertising, public relations, video design, and packaging.

Since 2015, the agency has shifted its approach to work with a smaller team of experts dedicated solely to an exclusive portfolio of clients. For this reason, they needed to leverage different tools to accelerate their projects with clients in various sectors. “There’s no particular industry we specialize in, but we prefer to work with other passionate teams, and people who are willing to take risks, to keep an open mind, and trust we will deliver the best possible service,” tells Stephen. 

In search of an all-in-one solution to serve their client portfolio

The team at Group22 was looking for a tool that could offer a lot of functionality and value to their clients for a favorable price. The agency was using various software and platforms for different marketing activities, which in the end proved inconvenient and costly. 

“For instance, some of our clients needed a CRM tool for basic tasks of contact management. For many of them, the top CRM solution in the market represented a big investment, not only financially, but timewise, since it required training to be able to use the solution. It wasn’t worth it for what they actually needed,” explains Stephen. 

Additionally, their previous email marketing solution wasn’t providing them the best user experience, and they found it expensive for the benefits it offered “Our previous email provider charged per contact, which wasn’t a great fit for us or our clients. We needed a tool that could scale with our clients’ businesses. Also, we noticed the reports were not accurate and many times the numbers were inflated or the results wrongly counted. As an agency, we need to have accurate data for our clients,” emphasizes Gary. 

A confident team with a reliable solution

Both Gary and Stephen were convinced there was a solution on the market that could offer great value for an excellent price point. After researching and evaluating different options, Stephen suggested they try out Sendinblue. “The first thing we noticed about Sendinblue is that it has a lot of great features even as part of the free plan. With other platforms, many of these tools would normally be accessible only after an upgrade.”

Stephen also gave Sendinblue high marks for its user-friendly platform, which was one of the strongest selling points for the Group22 team. “The onboarding experience and how intuitive and easy-to-use the platform is is something we haven’t experienced with any other solution, not just for email marketing, but for CRM or content management”. 

For the agency, it was key to have a solution that could cover as many needs as possible. “Since we work with many small and medium-sized businesses, we are aware that our clients don’t always have the resources or skills to access and manage one solution for each need. We truly appreciate everything that we can do with Sendinblue and the fact that we can cover all our clients’ needs,” explains Stephen. “Using Sendinblue we feel confident to either work with our clients and guide them in their process, or give them full autonomy to continue their activities on the platform.”

With Sendinblue, the team at Group22 also feels more confident when it comes to reporting, tracking, and analyzing their results. The same goes for customer support. “The reporting capabilities are on point. I couldn’t ask for a better user experience or more accurate data!” says Gary. “The support here in the USA has always been great. Not only are our tickets solved promptly, but we feel the platform is always evolving, in terms of features, documentation, channels for client support, etc. We notice and appreciate that there is an active effort on making things better,” explains Stephen. 

Expanded service offering as part of Sendinblue's agency program

Shortly after the adoption of Sendinblue, the team at Group22 started reaping the benefits of having all tools centralized in just one place. For the agency’s clients, this translated into increased efficiency, easier onboarding, and overall dependability for their digital activities.

“Now 8 of our clients are using Sendinblue. It’s great that we can use many of the features of the platform for our clients, and leverage the tools that will bring them the most value. It’s opened up several new opportunities with existing Group22 clients, as well as given us greater confidence in pitching new business,” emphasizes Stephen. 

The director also explains how Sendinblue has allowed them to help their clients with the consistency of their messaging and branding across multiple channels. “With our client, Sterling Transportation, we use the contact management feature, as well as email automation, which have helped us grow and improve their sales funnel. This is thanks to the automated messages sent to leads according to the stage of the customer journey in which they are in, and the type of deal they are negotiating,” reveals Stephen. “Mithos USA (a custom motorcycle racing leather brand) is another one of our clients that uses Sendinblue exclusively for building their automated workflows and tracking these messages as well.” 

The agency is eager to test and work with more Sendinblue features and to use plugins with their clients to leverage data for transactional and SMS sending. “We are very keen to test transactional SMS. We are aware of how important this channel is nowadays for all business transactions,” says Stephen. The team is also thrilled with the strategic partnership provided by Sendinblue’s Agency Program and the benefits it offers to Group22, “For us, it is definitely an advantage to be considered as part of this partnership. The team at Sendinblue is very accommodating, and actively reaching out to us, getting our feedback. It is great to count on this outstanding service and reap the benefits the program represents for us,” concludes the director.