Gregg Blanchard August 12, 2024
Tracking your competitors' email marketing campaigns and strategy can be a tricky challenge. It's a big reason why we built SendView so that talented marketers like yourself didn't have to wrestle with Gmail or Outlook just to glean even the most simple insights you're looking for when you subscribe to your competitors' emails.
But even with a snazzy tool like SendView, there are a few key tips and best practices to keep in mind to ensure you learn as much as possible from all of the competitors' emails you're hoping to monitor.
1) Realistic Expectations Around Email Volume
The first thing to remember is that every industry is different when it comes to how many emails a typical brand will send. In many corners of the B2B world, for example, you may only hear from a brand once a month. Political candidates, on the other hand, will sometimes send 5-10 emails per day! In some cases, many companies will have an email sign up for on their website but haven't actually been sending campaigns for months or even years.
Before you start an sort of competitor email tracking initiative, make sure your expectations are realistic about how much data you'll gather and how long it will take to gather it. But also remember that competitors that send few (or no) emails is an important data point that could indicate an opportunity to fill the market will regular, valuable campaigns.
2) Sign Up in Multiple Ways
Just like you don't always send every email to your whole database, your competitors may not do this either. When you sign up for your competitors emails, look for unique entry points where you can sign up multiple times. For example, look for things like:
- Generic email sign up forms
- Discount or contest forms
- Lead gen forms
- Create an account forms
- Support forms
The more places you can get your email address(es) into their system, the more likely you are to get as many of their campaigns as possible.
3) Use Different Email Addresses for Each Form
If you're using Gmail, add a "+[word]" between your username and @gmail.com to make each address unique (ie, myusername+something@gmail.com). If you're using SendView, create multiple addresses and add notes and tags to each one to categorize how you use them.
The benefit of doing this is that you'll be able to see the exact programs and ad-hoc campaigns that are sent based on each entry point. Getting different emails sent to email address you used with the newsletter form versus the form for that contest? That's competitive intelligence that you wouldn't get if you'd used the exact same email address for every form on your competitors' website.
4) Everything is Competitive Intelligence!
One of the biggest mistakes I see people make when they track their competitors' emails is mistaking expected data from insightful data. For example, let's say you used two different addresses to sign up for your competitors newsletter and lead gen form but, whomp whomp, they are sending the exact same campaigns to both addresses! Was signing up the way you did a waste of time? No way! You just confirmed that your competitors aren't doing very sophisticated segmentation or nurturing based on how emails are entering their database. That's good intel!
Is that one competitor not sending any emails? That's good intel! Is that other brand sending boring emails? That's good intel. Is that one competitor only sending once a month? That's good intel! Every data point should give you an important insight into your competitors' email marketing strategy that can highlight opportunities to beat them in this important channel.
5) Be Patient
My last tip is simply to be patient. Much of what you're looking for are patterns.
- Do your competitors send emails at specific times?
- Do your competitors send emails on specific days?
- Do your competitors use additional tracking in their emails?
- Do your competitors tend to promote the same things?
- Do your competitors reuse content?
These are just a few of the dozens of questions you might be asking when you subscribe to your competitors' emails, but all of these take time to get answers. Essentially, you're looking for patterns. And just like seeing "3 9" isn't enough to establish a pattern but "3 9 27 81" is, it will take time to get enough emails from those competitors to find answers to your questions and spot opportunities to smoke your competition in the inbox.
Have a tip or trick you love? Let me know. I'd love to hear.
And if you'd like to make tracking your competitors' email campaigns both easy and insightful, you may want to give SendView a closer look.