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How to Do Competitive Analysis For Email Marketing

by Chloe Dougherty , Email Marketing Specialist

7 Min. January 4, 2024

We all want to know what our competitors are up to, especially if we can find out what they’re up to before they do it.

Today, we’re talking about how to spy on your competitors’ email marketing strategy.

Here’s a question for you: What if we told you it’s not all about making up a fake email address and waiting around for your competitor’s monthly email to come through to your inbox anymore?

We’ve got four words for you: competitive email marketing analysis.

What is competitive email marketing analysis?

An email marketing competitor analysis is research into your direct competitors and their email marketing strategy and tactics.

This will not only help you spot new opportunities and offer inspiration, but it should pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses within your own email marketing efforts.

📍Next stop? Optimizing your 2024 email marketing strategy to make it the best, highest-converting bunch of emails you ever did see.

How to do competitor analysis for email marketing

1) Identify your email marketing competitors

Competition for your business can look like a lot of things – perhaps it’s a business that’s dominating the SERPs for your brand’s core keywords, maybe it’s someone stealing all your social media followers, or maybe, they’re better than you at emails.

Today, we’re focusing on the people who are crushing email marketing in your space.

Through competitor research, you’ll get a good idea of who your general competitors are – those selling the same products or services as you, as well as having the same target audience. But with email marketing, you can go broader than that.

Say you’re a finance software company – sure you want to know what emails your direct competitors are sending, but it would also be useful to follow others in the SaaS space generally.

To identify these specific competitors, you can use tools like:

Google Alerts
Send View
BuzzSumo

These tools will give you an idea of what topics they cover, and give you intel into what they include in their email marketing before it hits your inbox.

2) Find their target audience

We’ve established that these guys are good with their emails, but who are they targeting?

Let the social media stalking begin – but don’t just stop at Followers and Following lists, look into who’s engaging with posts and therefore (quite possibly) the brand as a whole.

Even if they’re complaining about a refund that hasn’t come in yet, there’s a strong likelihood they’re signed up to the brand’s emails.

However, to get a more thorough idea of who these competitors’ target audiences are, you want data. Real user data.

Similarweb offers the tools that provide this kind of data, including demographics for any website around the world.

You can even look into Audience Interests and Audience Overlap, comparing how you or other competitors (or both) stack up against each other.

Here you can see the overlap – or lack of – of the audience between Crocs, Timberland, Birkenstock, and Vans. This just shows how big the audience is Birkenstock, as a brand that has become a daily essential for many, versus Crocs, a brand that is very much one of a kind.

3) Reveal their email marketing strategy

Now it’s time to actually look at your competitors’ strategy. This includes:

What content they’re sending out (eg. drip campaigns, product updates, newsletters, partnership emails)
How frequently they push out emails (eg. weekly, monthly, bi-monthly)
Where recipients are being sent to (eg. through CTAs)
What their subject lines are (eg. straight to the point, fun, statistics)
Who they’re coming from (eg. the company, a marketing person, a subject specialist)

By opting in to their emails and analyzing each of these points, you’ll get a good idea of their email marketing strategy. For example, you will probably find your competitor sends out multiple types of emails per month – one for content distribution, one for product updates or news, and several for lead nurture. The CTAs will encourage them to check out the blog, or try out the features that were mentioned.

Ask yourself questions like:

What’s working for them in their email marketing?
How are you engaging with the content?
Is it visually appealing or enticing you to click on the CTAs?
What factors or elements stand out the most?
Where could they do better?

Now what? Well, it’s all well and good analyzing what’s strong and what’s not through your own opinion, but is it actually performing?

Use tools like Similarweb’s Marketing Channels to see just how much traffic your competitors’ email marketing brings them. Let’s take Hubspot as an example, which saw over 10% of its website traffic come from email marketing.

Not only that, but you can use our Website Category Analysis to see who in your industry are the top dogs in terms of email marketing, via Email Leaders.

It’s time to optimize your own email marketing strategy

You’ve done your competitive analysis, you’ve got all your findings, now what? Well, now it’s time to create – or optimize – your own email marketing strategy.

Using your competitor analysis, you will be able to:

Steal from your competitors’ strengths
Be wary of their weaknesses
Observe and act on opportunities
Prepare for competitive threats

In following the content your competitors push out, here are a few questions you need to be asking yourself now:

1) What content should I include in our emails?

The research into your target audience and research into your market (including your competitors) is crucial to choosing the right content for your email marketing. With this research, you can understand the type of content that is most engaged with, so you can see results from your email marketing efforts.

Value is key.

Consider what kind of value the content you’re sending out can offer your customers, and what goals you want to achieve. Is it educational for those being onboarded, is it touching on prospects’ pain points to push them down the funnel, will it help prospects or customers drive business success to encourage conversion or retention?

Your email marketing can cover all bases with long-form content, testimonials, social proofing, video, GIFs, and so on. You can be creative with your emails, but keep in line with what your audience would find valuable or gripping.

And don’t forget: make sure the content in your emails is optimized for mobile – that’s where most people are reading them these days. In fact, over 60% of emails are read on mobile.

2) What makes a good email subject line?

In terms of subject lines and general tone of voice, this – again – will very much depend on the target audience; who they are, but also what roles they have within companies. Ideally, your brand’s tone of voice should stay consistent with content across your website, blog, social media and any other platforms.

It’s important to note that your subject line needs to align with the goal and contents of the email too – not to mention fitting in with that dreaded character limit.

Sure, you can use click-bait and gimmicks to encourage opens but if people don’t take the next step, it’s worthless to you as a business.

3) What makes for a good CTA or call-to-action?

A good call-to-action should flow nicely with the rest of your content; as they read on and reach the end of your email, your audience should feel encouraged or persuaded to take the next action. That might be to read a blog post, try out a product themselves, book a meeting with sales, or hear what other customers are saying about your service.

Whatever the CTA may be, it’s crucial that your readers understand what action will occur once they click, so make it as clear as possible.

To foster this curiosity and want for more, there are a number of CTA tips:

Use strong and actionable verbs to begin your CTA
Provide value or incentive for your audience to act now
Create a sense of urgency
Keep it simple and concise, yet persuasive
Inject some energy and enthusiasm with creative wording

4) How often should I perform competitive email marketing analysis?

Now, we’re living in an ever-changing, and ultra-competitive landscape. That means strategies change; yours changes, so do your competitors’. To stay informed about what your competitors are up to, regular monitoring is essential.

Ensure your email marketing strategy remains adaptive and aligned to current trends and consumer preferences, keep your eyes peeled and make time for frequent competitive analysis for email marketing. Don’t get left behind.

Complete your competitor research with Similarweb

So, another box ticked in your competitor analysis to-do list (until next time). ✅

In fact, you may be interested in a few of our other guides to competitive research:

It’s almost like we really want to help you to outperform and outrank your competitors – how about that?

But here’s the thing, you can’t be competitive without knowledge of your competitive landscape, and that includes knowing all about what your competitors are up to. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

There are a number of ways Similarweb can aid your digital marketing efforts and give you more visibility into your market, as it offers one of the best competitor research tools and keyword research solutions on the market, all in one place.

But don’t take our word for it, try Similarweb for free today.

Outrank and outperform your competitors

Gain the competitive advantage with the power of data.
Try Similarweb free

FAQs

Why is competitive email marketing analysis important?

Competitive analysis is crucial for email marketing because it provides valuable insights into your competitors’ strategies. Understanding what works for them can help you identify opportunities, refine your own approach, and stay ahead in the constantly evolving landscape of email marketing.

What should I focus on when analyzing my competitors’ email campaigns?

Analyze the content, design, level of personalization, and frequency of their emails to gain a comprehensive understanding of their strategy.

How do I identify my main competitors in the email marketing space?

Start by researching businesses within your industry that share a similar target audience. Subscribe to their newsletters, monitor their email campaigns, and analyze their online presence. Tools like competitive analysis software and industry reports can also help identify key players in the email marketing arena.

What tools can assist me in conducting a thorough competitive analysis for email marketing?

There are several tools available to streamline your competitive analysis. Consider using tools like Similarweb to gather insights into competitors’ overall digital strategies, including traffic acquisition data.