Learn from Competitors’ Email Campaigns

Observing your competitors’ email campaigns is a great way to learn from their digital marketing strategies. Sign up for their emails and create a separate inbox to get an at-a-glance view of their campaigns.

You’ll be able to analyze everything from the content they send to their subscribers, to how they grow their list and how they use automation and personalization. Learn from their strategies so you can improve your own.

Content

A key part of email marketing is creating compelling and engaging content that resonates with your audience. One way to gain inspiration is by analyzing competitors’ email campaigns. This can help you identify industry trends, find best practices, and avoid common mistakes. In addition, it can provide insights into how your competitors use different content formats and call-to-actions to achieve their goals.

To start analyzing your competitor’s email campaigns, subscribe to their lists using a tool for such. Then, take note of the type and frequency of emails they send. Once you have a complete list, begin comparing and contrasting their content. Look for common themes and a clear definition of their value proposition, as well as how they communicate that in their content. You should also pay attention to their tone and voice and how they interact with their audience through their email content.

Once you have a good understanding of your competitors’ email marketing strategies, it’s time to think about how to make them better. Consider the following areas of their emails to identify opportunities for improvement:

Subject line

Your subject line is the first thing your audience will see when they open your email. It’s important to stand out in the inbox and a great way to do that is with a unique, creative subject line that grabs attention.

Image selection

Taking the time to select high-quality images can significantly impact the success of your campaign. Make sure your email images are relevant to the content of the email, and that they add value for your audience.

Subject lines

A strong subject line can dramatically increase the likelihood of your email being opened. To improve your own subject lines, try to use actionable words that evoke emotion or include a call-to-action.

Design

The design of an email can have a major impact on engagement and conversion rates. Observing how competitors present their offers and content can give you ideas for how to improve your own emails. For example, if your competitors use images and videos to capture attention and make their emails stand out in a busy inbox, you could try using these tactics in your own campaigns. You can also learn from your competitors’ subject lines and call-to-action copy to create more effective subject lines that encourage subscribers to take action.

Another area to focus on when analyzing competitor emails is their overall personality and branding. What type of tone and language do they use? Do they employ marketing tricks like creating urgency or solving immediate problems? Observing how your competitors brand themselves in their emails can help you figure out what type of personality and voice to incorporate into your own campaigns.

It’s also important to note how your competitors manage privacy concerns and legal issues in their emails. If they use opt-in forms or other methods to collect customer data, observing how they handle these issues can teach you new ways to protect your own subscriber data and comply with email marketing regulations.

As the email marketing landscape continues to evolve, advanced personalization is becoming more and more common. Observing how your competitors implement these personalization tactics can give you ideas for incorporating them into your own campaigns. For example, if your competitors include personal details in their subject lines, you might consider adding a personalized greeting to your own emails.

As the number of people using email grows, maintaining high deliverability rates becomes increasingly challenging. By observing how your competitors manage their email lists and list hygiene practices, you can get insights into how to optimize your own email strategies and stay competitive.

Personalization

As more companies focus on building relationships with their subscribers, it becomes increasingly important to personalize email marketing messaging. Personalization is an effective way to increase email open rates and engagement, which in turn helps businesses achieve their marketing goals. By using a variety of personalization techniques, such as including the subscriber’s name in the subject line and salutation, as well as customizing content based on past purchases or website behavior, businesses can create highly targeted and relevant emails that resonate with their audience.

While it is not necessary to copy your competitors’ email campaigns, analyzing their content can provide inspiration for your own. Identifying unique angles that they haven’t explored, as well as presenting information in different mediums like infographics or podcasts, can help you develop compelling and engaging email content.

Another important thing to look for in competitor email marketing is how they segment their email lists. Segmentation is the process of dividing your email list into smaller, more homogeneous groups based on various criteria, such as demographics, behavior, and preferences. Analyzing your competitors’ email segments can give you insight into how they segment their list and what kinds of criteria and methods they use to determine which subscribers belong in each group.

You can also learn a lot from observing your competitors’ deliverability rates. By understanding what they’re doing to ensure their emails reach their subscribers’ inboxes, you can improve your own deliverability rates and avoid getting blacklisted by spam filters. It is also helpful to understand how they manage their sender reputation and email list hygiene practices, as these are key factors in maintaining high deliverability rates, and with this, it’s vital to see what your competitors are doing.

Finally, it’s always a good idea to keep an eye on your competitors’ conversion rates and revenue generated from their email marketing efforts. These metrics can provide valuable insights into their strategies for achieving and measuring success, and can serve as a benchmark for your own performance.

Automation

When you learn from your competitors’ email campaigns, you can apply those lessons to improve your own email marketing strategy. This is a vital part of any business that relies on email to stay connected with customers and increase revenue.

The first step to analyzing competitor emails is to subscribe to their lists using a separate email account or a tool like Airtable. This will ensure that you get a full representation of their triggered, welcome series, cart abandonment, and other campaigns without risking your primary email inbox. You should also create three different email accounts for this process to help you identify A/B or multivariate tests that your competitors may be running.

Once you’ve collected a sufficient amount of competitor emails, categorize them based on their purpose, frequency, and format. You can use a spreadsheet or tool like Airtable to organize your collection and label each email according to the type of campaign it is, such as a newsletter, discount offer, product launch, testimonial, survey, etc. Then, you can view and analyze competitor emails based on these categories.

Another important aspect of analyzing competitor emails is to identify their list growth strategies and conversion tactics. You can find out how they grow their list by looking at their opt-in forms and landing pages. You can also find out how they convert their list by looking at the content of their email newsletters and other promotional emails.

Lastly, you should examine your competitors’ email subject lines to see how they use keywords and other persuasive language to increase open rates. While you shouldn’t copy their subject lines, examining their techniques can inspire ideas that you can test and optimize for your own email campaigns.

Whether you’re looking at competitor email campaigns from the perspective of a customer or an internal team member, it’s important to look for strengths and flaws from both perspectives. For example, if a competitor has a strong call to action that makes it easy for subscribers to follow through with their purchase, you should consider doing the same. This will encourage more conversions and ensure that your own offers aren’t falling flat.