You should always know what your competitors are doing. They’ll provide you with ideas and inspiration that you can use for your own email marketing campaigns. Even more importantly, you can see what’s working and not working for them, and gain insight into your audience’s preferences.
Here’s how to improve your email marketing by observing the competition:
Create an Email Address for Competitor Research
Before you start signing up for competitors’ lists, create a free email account solely for this purpose. You won’t want your regular email flooded with marketing messages. Also, if you create a dedicated email address, it will make your research more focused and distraction-free.
Study Subject Lines
Subject lines are extremely important because they are what motivate subscribers to open and read messages. If you subscribe to several competitors’ lists, you can look at your inbox and easily compare all the subject lines to see which ones capture your attention. Study the winning subject lines to figure out what made you click.
Email Marketing Topics
See what topics your competitors cover in their emails. You’ll quickly get a sense of which are engaging and which aren’t. Some businesses send too many promotional emails. Make note of the competitor emails you enjoy reading or find interesting, and which ones you skip past. Analyze why this is and improve upon them.
Like you, your competitors choose topics based on the tastes and interests of their target market. You can use them to gain insights into your own customers and borrow ideas.
Special Offers
Businesses use email marketing to make exclusive subscriber-only offers. You can learn a lot by joining your competitors’ lists and seeing what they’re promoting to their audience.
Compare their offers to yours: If you were a customer, which one would you choose? What makes their offer so enticing? For example, you might notice that the content of the offers is essentially identical, but your competitor has imposed a time limit that motivates customers to buy immediately.
Post-Purchase Follow-ups
Although you don’t want to support your competitor, it’s well worth it to buy a product and then see how they handle their customers post-purchase. This stage is a critical time for building relationships and engaging further. You can observe and make note of the language they use and the follow-up offers they make.
Look at their cross-sells and upsells: Can you use these strategies with your own list?
Find Your Competitors’ Blind Spots
One of the best bits of data this research can yield is the blind spots your competitors have in their email marketing. Which essential topics are they not covering? Where are they missing opportunities and leaving money on the table?
Once you discover the gaps in their marketing, fill them in. Through your research, offer the best email marketing experience for your subscribers, incorporating the best ideas from each of your competitors.
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