Gregg Blanchard January 27, 2023
Competitor Tracking in Email Marketing
Let me guess; you subscribed to all of your competition’s newsletters, and now your inbox is bloated. You save them to a folder, only to feel overwhelmed by them later. You haven’t looked at any of them anyway. all it did was make it harder to get to inbox zero.
You’ve analyzed your email marketing strategy more than once, but you’re stumped. You still feel like you’re not doing it right, but you’re not sure why. There’s a better way.
Here’s the thing, you’ve started tracking your competitors, but you didn’t make a plan. Using a regular email inbox and folders to monitor competitor’s emails might be the most time-consuming way to approach it. To effectively use competitor tracking in email marketing, you need to know which data to look at, how to organize it, and–most importantly–how to use it to make smart email marketing decisions.
Ready to change the way you gain competitive intelligence? Read on to learn more about monitor competitor’s emails, how to get actionable competitor data, and which software to use.
What is competitor tracking?
Competitor tracking is the process of monitoring the activities and strategies of your competitors in the industry. It’s a crucial part of any successful business strategy.
With competitor tracking, you can identify opportunities and create strategies to help you get ahead of the competition. You can use it to inform how your business can approach marketing, sales, and target audience competitively.
Why You Should Be Tracking Your Competitors’ Email Marketing
No matter what industry you’re in, you should be tracking your competitors. Direct competitors your most immediate threat. You can use the competitor data you gather from monitoring their email marketing to find opportunities to improve your digital marketing efforts.
When you track your competitors’ email marketing tactics, you can monitor these factors to inform your content strategy.
- Solidify your value proposition
- Find essential benchmarks
- Get a bird’s eye view of the competitive landscape
- See the best days and times to send
- The most effective templates and designs
- Where your competition is missing the mark
- Subject lines and preview text
- KPIs like open rates, click-through rates, and spam stats
How To Track Your Competitors’ Email Marketing
If you have dozens of emails from your competitors flooding your inbox every day. Let me introduce you to competitor email monitoring tools.
Our favorite is SendView, of course. You just add the companies you want to track to the tool. Then, use their auto-generated email address to sign up for their emails.
Once you’ve signed up, you can view your competitor’s emails in real-time. SendView’s built-in dashboard with KPIs, source code, DKIM/SPF, and more allows you to see actionable data all in one place. You can even create collections, tags, and filters to organize.
5 Strategies for Competitor Tracking in Email Marketing
Generally, the most effective competitive analyses are executed using the SWOT method. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Read our complete guide to competitor analysis to learn more.
There are four parts of your competitor’s emails that you can monitor to gain insights into both you and your competitor’s SWOTs. Read on to find out which ones you should focus on.
1. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
KPIs are a great place to start identifying your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s easy to spot because they’re quantitatively measured. In SendView, you can view these on the company’s dashboard.
In email marketing, key performance indicators include these data points.
- Open rates: open rates are influenced by subject lines, sender name, sending frequency, deliverability, and send times.
- Click-through rates (CTR): CTRs are affected by calls to action, copywriting, positioning, functionality, and design. They indicate engagement rate.
- Spam statistics: also called deliverability, this percentage might indicate the need for double opt-ins, a better welcome series, or email volume.
2. Copy and Content
The copy and content of your emails may determine how persuasive they are and how enticing they are to open. The writing in your competitor’s emails can help you differentiate your voice, keep up with market trends, and what value they’re adding. You can also get a sense for their brand messaging and target audience.
Competitor’s content includes the…
- body text
- images or graphics
- logos
Competitor’s Copy includes things like…
- Subject lines
- preview text
- calls to action (CTAs)
3. Templates & Source Code
Believe it or not, design affects the effectiveness of your email marketing. With SendView, you can view the source code and templates that your competitors are using. Like what you see? Save time and alter the code they’ve already created! Or see where their weaknesses are.
These fun facts will make you think twice about skimping on email design.
- The human brain can recognize and absorb information from images in just 13 seconds.
- Over 61% of emails are opened on mobile devices. But desktops are still used 39% of the time. So, responsive design is essential to cater to your whole audience.
- Good email design encourages higher click-through rates. Learn about the Serial Position Effect to improve your email’s functionality.
- 93% of consumers are influenced by color and appearance when making a buying decision.
4. Split Test
One of the best things about SendView is that you can see more than just your competitor’s regular marketing emails. You can create multiple addresses for one company to view their abandoned cart, win back, and segmented email marketing.
If you’re not already segmenting your audience or making efforts to have regularly scheduled, automated abandoned cart and win back emails, your competitor’s examples can be a great place to get ideas. Or, if you’re finding yours aren’t as successful as you want, take inspiration from others!
5. Scorecard Comparison
What is a competitor scorecard? It’s a synopsis of a business’s direct competitor used to analyze and compare marketing practices. It typically includes a detailed analysis of competitors’ products and services, pricing, market share, and customer base.
The scorecard also tracks the competitor's marketing strategies, such as advertising, email tactics, KPIs, pricing, and competitors’ product distribution. A competitor scorecard allows a business to identify areas of strength and weakness among its competitors at a glance.
An easy, side-by-side way to check out your competitor’s email marketing strategy is a quick scorecard analysis. You can find your competitors’ scorecards in the SendView competitor dashboard.
The Top 5 Competitor Tracking Tools
Competitor monitoring isn’t just for email. You can use competitor analysis tools in any aspect of your business’ digital marketing plan to maintain a competitive advantage. These are the best apps you can use to track your competitors.
1. Email Competitor Monitoring: SendView
With SendView, you can subscribe to your competitors emails without bloatign your own inbox. You'll get dashboards full of insights, trends, and opportunities. Streamline and simplify the way you monitor competitors for email marketing.
2. SEO Competitor Tracking: Ahrefs
Not only can you find a complete guide to improving your search engine optimization in Ahrefs, you can also, analyze your competitor’s keywords and backlinks. Plus, you can analyze competitor websites for keywords and domain rankings. They offer a powerful toolset for content marketing that’ll have you mastering SEO.
3. Social Media Competitor Analysis: Sociality
Want an automated social media competitor analysis report? Sociality can do that. Get hashtags, follower counts, best posting times, and more. Stop cluttering your social media feeds with competitors and use a separate app to gain actionable, data-based insights.
4. Influencer Marketing Tracker: Refersion
If you’re adding influencer, ambassador, or affiliate marketing to your stack of tactics, you’ll need a way to track those metrics. Refersion works with almost every e-commerce platform you could need.
5. Content Marketing Tool: Buzzsumo
If you’re in the market for an all-in-one tool, Buzzsumo might be right for you. It offers content monitoring, influencer collobaroation tools, and market research tools for content marketers.