Steffen Schebesta of Sendinblue: How to Effectively Leverage The Power of Digital Marketing, PPC, & Email to Dramatically Increase Sales

An Interview With Orlando Zayas

Stay hungry — in digital marketing, it is about getting the little wins, not about one thing that will change the whole company strategy. Stay focused on getting the last bit to the top of the funnel for an impact on the broader performance of the company.

Marketing a product or service today is easier than ever before in history. Using platforms like Facebook ads or Google ads, a company can market their product directly to people who perfectly fit the ideal client demographic, at a very low cost. Digital Marketing tools, Pay per Click ads, and email marketing can help a company dramatically increase sales. At the same time, many companies that just start exploring with digital marketing tools often see disappointing results.

In this interview series called “How to Effectively Leverage The Power of Digital Marketing, PPC, & Email to Dramatically Increase Sales”, we are talking to marketers, advertisers, brand consultants, & digital marketing gurus who can share practical ideas from their experience about how to effectively leverage the power of digital marketing, PPC, & email.

As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Steffen Schebesta.

Steffen Schebesta is the CEO of North America at Sendinblue. He has over 15 years of experience as a business and digital marketing leader. Prior to joining Sendinblue, Steffen was the founder and co-CEO of Newsletter2Go, the leading email marketing provider in the German market. Under Steffen’s leadership, Newsletter2Go became one of the fastest-growing tech companies in Europe. In 2019, Newsletter2Go was acquired by Sendinblue and Steffen earned the title of co-CEO in Germany. Steffen holds a master’s degree in business and electrical engineering from The Technical University of Berlin.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

As young as 12 or 13, I have been fascinated by programming and computer science. Since my father brought home a 486 computer and taught me a bit of Turbo Pascal programming, I took to it like a fish to water. Immediately, a friend and I began creating basic games — it certainly kept us busy and even began to grow in popularity with other students and teachers interested in our more developed games. Later in life, that friend and I would become business partners, co-founding a small web agency called Heart Code.

I have always wanted to be a company founder. Even in high school and applying for a scholarship — it was the first time I pitched myself as wanting to have a startup. From there, I continued on the same path. My friend and I started Heart Code in our 20s, where we took on light projects to finance our studies, mostly web-based applications, and websites. It was fun, relatively easy money and gave us a sense of freedom that sparked our enthusiasm for entrepreneurship. After Heart Code, we founded Newsletter2Go, an email marketing platform designed to meet digital marketing needs. Newsletter2Go was later acquired by Sendinblue, which led me to where I am now.

Can you share a story about the funniest marketing mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?

In the first year of Newsletter2Go we went to a founder’s event and had printed hundreds of postcards with a — from our point of view — witty picture and slogan. A chick wearing sweatbands getting ready to fly titled “Ready for take-off?”. We scattered them everywhere in the venue, but nobody picked up any of them. So, we started collecting them and ended up putting them in the fridges under the beer bottles at the event “optimizing” their location. Of course, it didn’t help much but got us a couple of surprised laughs.
A key takeaway was that no matter how well your intentions are and how well you think you figured out a great strategy, it really comes down to the audience’s perception. Plus, it demonstrated that one shouldn’t put all eggs in one basket but rather experiment and learn from the engagement that is received.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

I’ve had many mentors in my life — almost too many to mention. Though I will always be grateful to my father for bringing programming into my life. Learning how to code sparked my interest in problem-solving and ultimately led me on the path I’m on today.

Another person who has influenced my career journey is Jim Collins. His books have given me a fresh perspective on how to run a successful business. In his book, “Good to Great”, he talks about the flywheel effect, a concept I was particularly drawn to early on in my career. It’s all about process and building momentum to affect the longevity of a business. This concept, along with Jim’s other insights around team building and the value of experimentation, has influenced the way I approach business strategy.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

When the pandemic hit in March last year, we were approached by a farmer from rural France. His family used to sell their produce in weekly markets for years. Amid the lockdown, they suddenly weren’t able to do that anymore and were struggling to survive (like many other small and local businesses).

Using Sendinblue, they built a small landing page, accepted online orders, started emailing their customers and even implemented basic order tracking via SMS. Within days, they had transformed their business from purely offline to mostly online and suddenly had a future-proof business model that would weather the storm to come.

Enabling small and medium companies to digitize easily and quickly and to become stronger than ever before — that’s what Sendinblue is all about and how we stand out. We’re committed to helping businesses of all sizes have a seamless digital transition and experience.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

• Humble

I truly believe that it’s extremely important for a business leader to be down to earth. Talk to your employees as often as possible, go for lunch with them, get operationally involved and listen to their feedback and treat it respectfully, even if you don’t agree. I try to take the time and make sure I am speaking with new hires as they are adjusting, and something I often hear is that they are most excited to be in an atmosphere where everyone is treated with respect. Different perspective helps you see the gaps a company may have, and by listening to all employees at all levels, you’re able to work towards solutions and keep a strong and happy workforce.

• Enthusiastic

When you start something from scratch, you better be passionate and enthusiastic about it. And you know what? That kind of attitude is contagious. One of my best memories from the early days was the night shift I had mentioned earlier. The whole team committed and worked straight for 36 hours before the big launch event. We all pulled through and it ended up being an amazing experience for everyone. There was so much hard work in the air that night, and we really were united as a team with one goal in mind. Carrying along your employees, sparking ambition with enthusiasm and excitement — that is really what leadership is about.

• Analytical

When your business grows over time — especially when you go from start-up to scale-up — it becomes more and more important to be very data-driven and analytical. Like my university professor used to say, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” The moment we really understood our unit economics — customer acquisition costs, lifetime value, retention, etc. — we were able to pour large amounts of money into the right channels and really scale the business.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

There are a few things in the works on the product roadmap side. While I can’t share too many details at this time, what I can say is these plans will have a positive impact on small businesses and how they communicate with customers and drive sales online.

Ok super. Now let’s jump to the main questions of our interview. As we mentioned in the beginning, sometimes companies that just start exploring with digital marketing tools like PPC campaigns often see disappointing results. In your opinion, what are a few of the biggest mistakes companies make when they first start out with digital marketing? If you can, please share an example for each.

One of the biggest mistake’s companies make when first diving into digital marketing is communicating without purpose. Many companies feel a need to send mass emails out every two weeks to have a touchpoint with customers. But communicating just for the sake of communicating isn’t the right strategy. In fact, it will lead to more unsubscribes and actually work against your desired goals. Providing value comes from understanding who your audience is, what they are interested in, and what will drive them to view your brand as a valuable source.

Additionally, companies can make a mistake by not taking the time to personalize emails and segment contact lists. Combining personalization with communication with a purpose will create a targeted digital marketing approach that companies can find success with.

If you could break down a very successful digital marketing campaign into a “blueprint”, what would that blueprint look like? Please share some stories or examples of your ideas.

While every marketing campaign is different, all successful campaigns are driven by data. As marketers, data helps us make strategic decisions about what type of content to share, why, with who, and when — the main “blueprint” hones in on each of these factors. Without analyzing historical data, it’s nearly impossible to run a successful marketing campaign. Another element is relevant content. You can spend hours working on the design elements of a marketing campaign but without the right content, you won’t garner the attention or interest you may be looking for. Nowadays historical data in conjunction with the “blueprint” (addressing why, who and when) can garner attention and create content that stands out from the noise.

Let’s talk about Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC) for a bit. In your opinion which PPC platform produces the best results to increase sales?

I think that Google AdWords is one of the more well-known and dependable industry standards for PPC. As far as the volume of keywords for B2B needs, Google AdWords is my go-to.

Can you please share 3 things that you need to know to run a highly successful PPC campaign?

1) Your Audience — it’s critical to have a deep understanding of who they are. As your business grows, you will have more than one core audience and persona, and at that point, you will need to segment your PPC campaigns to drive ROI.

2) Keywords — research and select relevant keywords that are representative of your business. You can start by looking up the keywords your competitors use.

3) Know Your Budget — have your priority items outlined to align with budget constraints. In an ideal world, you get everything you want, and your budget is not a static number, but rather based on your customer acquisition costs (CAC). In reality, budget can sometimes impact the full range of what you can accomplish in a PPC campaign. One workaround is to try to increase the PPC budget as much as you can afford liquidity wise. You can do this as long as your CAC falls under your budget constraints.

Let’s now talk about email marketing for a bit. In your opinion, what are the 3 things that you need to know to run a highly successful email marketing campaign that increases sales?

First, use customized messaging to directly add value for the customer by addressing a specific need or interest. Second, optimize email sending times through automation tools or by analyzing email subscriber data. Finally, segment your audiences. Segmenting audiences for email campaigns helps ensure you are sending the right messages to the right people, which in turn, results in stronger leads and conversions.

What are the other digital marketing tools that you are passionate about? If you can, can you share with our readers what they are and how to best leverage them?

Of course, I recognize that I’m biased but one of my favorite marketing platforms is Sendinblue because it has all the tools needed to carry out a successful marketing campaign. But outside of that, Semrush and Google Analytics are great tools to use for tracking web mentions, keyword monitoring and gaining insights into competitor behavior.

Here is the main question of our series. Can you please tell us the 5 things you need to create a highly successful career as a digital marketer? Can you please share a story or example for each?

1) Understand the customer/audience — the most basic and most important thing needed for a successful career as a digital marketer.

2) Be very data-driven — nowadays, analytics and data go a long way, tracking everything through the funnel and knowing the touchpoints will allow for customized interactions throughout the process.

3) Be creative and experimental — try new channels and get creative with how you market to different audiences.

4) Industry knowledge and background — in a constantly evolving industry, continuous learning is vital to staying on top of your game. Knowing about new tools, rules, and platforms will allow for quick adaptation to change within the industry.

5) Stay hungry — in digital marketing, it is about getting the little wins, not about one thing that will change the whole company strategy. Stay focused on getting the last bit to the top of the funnel for an impact on the broader performance of the company.

What books, podcasts, videos or other resources do you use to sharpen your marketing skills?

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been really drawn to Jim Collins’ books on leadership and building successful companies. I also recently read “Crossing the Chasm”, which opened my eyes to how to manage the adoption curve and the critical jump from innovators to the majority. I am constantly reading on topics around team building motivation in addition to marketing innovation and business books.

Thank you for all of that. We are nearly done. Here is our final ‘meaty’ question. You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I’m an entrepreneur at heart. I believe that we should have more people out there creating innovative products and business models by taking their hearts in their own hands. That’s why I always encourage people around me to listen to that inner voice, to take that risk and to follow their passion.

In the end, entrepreneurship is basically problem-solving. There are so many problems out there, some smaller, some bigger, that are yet to be solved. If more people found their passion and applied it or committed to solving challenges, they could drastically improve the world.

How can our readers further follow you online?

Readers can connect with me on LinkedIn, and could also follow Sendinblue on Twitter!

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this!