Marketers build and optimize their email campaigns to be effective. One of the criteria of the campaign effectiveness is being able to outperform competitors. Monitoring your competitors’ email marketing strategies is a great way to measure their strengths and weaknesses and to gain insight into your own. You need to be just as aware of the tactics your competitors are trying out in their campaigns to see what you could do better.
Keeping on top of your competitors’ latest posts will ensure all the email marketing elements that form your brand experience are better than those of your competitors. If you see something that doesn’t seem to be working, could the same be said of your marketing? Modern consumers may receive dozens of marketing emails every week, and it’s getting more challenging for businesses to stand out from the vast array of promotional content their audiences see every day. Adjust accordingly and determine the most effective ways to engage your customers.
Most of your competitors’ newsletters are public, so you can easily track them. Usually, people are creating “false” emails to subscribe to competitors’ email data without drawing attention to their “real” business email. Anyhow, capturing, and analyzing each competitors’ email from your inbox can be a struggle. You’ll have to go over every email, and it could be challenging to see the whole picture, especially when you have a big number of competitors.
To be genuinely data-informed, you’ll have to find an automatic method to track and collect all emails sent by a competitor to their mailing list. On Competitors App, you’ll receive a notification whenever a competitor sends an email to their customers, so you’ll never lose your competitors’ promotion campaigns, offers, or more. You’ll not be just reading emails, and you’ll get to understand the strategy behind every single campaign.
Benefits of monitoring competitors’ emails
see things from the perspective of a customer within your industry;
gain inspiration to make better emails and see best practices;
uncover new ways to connect with customers;
understand how your competition drives conversions;
learn and analyze your competitors’ email behavioral;
spot trends over time;
spot opportunity in when to send your emails;
examine their marketing tactics, personalization strategies, keep tabs on their offers and promotions;
follow the acquisition and retention strategies in your industry
Email types
There are two types of emails: account emails and newsletters.
Account emails are usually sent for email alerts on accounts, opportunities, cases, contacts, contracts, and any custom objects that are relevant to the associated account object. The goal of such emails is to engage in direct interaction with existing users.
Newsletters inform companies’ news, deals, and certain notifications aimed at keeping the subscribers engaged and converting them into customers. Often such emails offer incentive proposals with trials/free offers to test the product. Here are a few engagement tactics used in such emails:
send a motivational nudge to inactive users;
teach people about themselves;
celebrate user achievements;
send targeted recommendations;
tap into social or industry cycles
Use-cases for email monitoring
Startups usually start from the ground and need to create their marketing strategy from scratch. By monitoring emails of their competitors, they can see an optimized funnel that brings valuable insight into their email marketing campaigns. There are a few things startups can monitor, which we will discuss in the following use-cases.
Access transactional and triggered emails
understand how your competition drives conversions;
inspire your marketing efforts with great copywriting, design & promotions;
receive personalized emails from your competitors based on your email preferences and the details you provide;
follow the acquisition and retention strategies in your industry.
Discover your competitors’ email insights
Identify the market trends: monitor the strategies and successful campaigns;
boost strategy & creativity: get inspiration, find new ideas and calls to action;
gather global insights: evaluate how different strategies perform in different countries and languages.
Compare broadcast and targeted email messages
learn a competitor’s segmentation strategy and get ideas for your own targeting game;
compare your emails against competitors and spot new opportunities;
compare your emails against those of your competitors’ to see what you’re doing right and what needs fixing:
– arrival date, time and frequency;
– email subject line;
– email content;
– any custom design;
– CTAs;
– if an email was triggered;
– your initial reaction to the email.
Experience any brands’ subscriber journey.
envision the subscriber journey from onboarding to cart abandonment to the purchase experience without having to fill up your inbox;
stay up to date on your competitors’ activities and understand how your activities compare to your competitors at a glance;
analyze and compare the most important statistics for your competitors’ and followed brands.
Tips on increasing email relevance
There are a few things you can do to increase your email relevance or “attractiveness”:
Allow subscribers to opt-out of specific types of email. Make this process as easy and intuitive as possible. Customers are more likely to stay engaged if you let them choose what they want to receive. The customer controls his email inboxes, not you.
Honor the preferences of your recipients and stick with them. Most people don’t like to receive tons of emails from the sender during a short period. Consider combining emails into one digest when possible. “Annoying” your customers will hardly bring any benefits to your brand, so try not to be pushy.
Send subscribers relevant and expected mail. Provide only the types of email which the user opted-in to receive. Do not embed large amounts of marketing content into newsletters or transactional mail. If you turn all of your content into an advertisement, you will again get the opposite effect than intended.
Be clear about who the email is coming from. Be consistent in terms of the “from,” “reply-to,” and “subject” lines. Identify your brand well to make it recognizable. Send emails from white-labeled domains. Build a good reputation and make it easy for users to distinguish your messages from the others in their inbox.
Test your email sending parameters. All the contents of your emails should be thoroughly tested. Together they represent your brand to the subscriber. Run A/B tests to compare single parts of your message to determine what resonates best. Track the results and stick to the best performing result.
Prune your mailing lists. Filter out the unengaged and uninterested users and let them go. In truth, only engaged customers are valuable. Check user engagement regularly. Send re-engagement emails to the unengaged recipients and drop them from your mailing lists unless they respond positively.
The above techniques are designed to ensure the messages you send out are likely to get opened. If you continue to target the uninterested recipients, you will negatively impact your ability to reach those who are interested. And it is good to remember that the better your content and CTAs are, the more likely users will be to click through to your site and convert to customers.
Competitors’ emails can help you see things from the perspective of a customer within your industry. Analyzing your competition newsletters will give you insights into their creative style, tone, so you’ll know better, which are your gaps and what you could improve on.
Email monitoring is an important part of your overall marketing strategy. Tracking your competitors’ emails takes some time, but it’s well worth it! These metrics can help you make better decisions with your email campaigns, which can ultimately save you time and money and bring your audience close to you.
Start tracking your competitors’ newsletters and email account with Competitors App automatically. Claim your 15 free days trial period and get email notifications each time a competitor sends an email.
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