The Best Way to Track Your Competitor's Emails and Newsletters (A Complete Guide)

A whopping 59 percent of marketers think that email is the best channel for generating revenue, according to this survey. 

This makes email a crucial piece of the marketing puzzle and competitive intelligence. However, tracking your competition’s emails can be a pain, especially if you hate adding subscriptions to an already full inbox. 

Manual tracking isn’t the only way to track your competitor’s emails, however. Competitor tracking tools will ease the burden and make email tracking less of a pain. You’ll enjoy a clutter-free inbox and a wealth of information on your competition’s strategy. 

In this guide, I’ll take you through some of the best ways to monitor your competitor’s newsletters so you can speed up your competitive analysis and gather inspiration for your campaigns. 

Staying in the know about your competitor’s moves doesn’t have to be a full-time job and we’ll show you how to do this the simple way. Read on!

Competitor Tracking in Email Marketing

• What is competitor tracking?
• Who should you track?
• Why should I track my competitor’s emails and newsletters?
• How to Track Your Competitor’s Emails and Newsletters
  • 1. Subscribe to Their Newsletters
  • 2. Set Up Email Filters and Folders
  • 3. Analyze Content Regularly
  • 4. Track Key Metrics
  • 5. Use Competitive Analysis Tools
  • 6. Create a Competitor Email Swipe File
  • 7. Evaluate Promotional Strategies
  • 8. Monitor Visual and Branding Elements
  • 9. Assess Customer Engagement Techniques
  • 10. Benchmark Against Industry Standards
• Frequently Asked Questions
  • How do you keep track of your competitors?
  • How do I track email success?

What is competitor tracking?

Competitor tracking involves keeping an eye on what your competitors are up to by monitoring their activities, strategies, and communications. 

This can include analyzing their email newsletters, social media posts, website updates, and more. 

By doing this, you can gather valuable insights into their marketing tactics, product launches, and customer engagement strategies. 

Essentially, competitor tracking helps you stay one step ahead by learning from what others in your industry are doing, allowing you to refine your own strategies and better meet your customers' needs.

Who should you track?

When it comes to tracking competitors, it's smart to focus on those who have a significant influence in your industry. Start with direct competitors who offer similar products or services and target the same audience. 

Next, consider industry leaders or top performers, even if they aren't direct competitors, because their strategies often set trends. 

Also, keep an eye on emerging businesses that show rapid growth or innovative approaches. 

Essentially, track any competitor whose actions can impact your market position or provide valuable insights for improving your own business strategies.

Why should I track my competitor’s emails and newsletters?

Tracking your competitor’s emails and newsletters is a strategic move that can provide a wealth of benefits for your business. 

First and foremost, it allows you to stay informed about their latest marketing campaigns, promotions, and product launches. By understanding their messaging and offers, you can gauge what resonates with your shared target audience and adjust your strategies accordingly.

Additionally, analyzing their email content can reveal gaps in their approach that you can capitalize on. 

For instance, if you notice that your competitors rarely offer educational content or personalized recommendations, you can fill that void to attract and retain customers who value such interactions.

Moreover, tracking these communications helps you benchmark your performance against industry standards. You can compare open rates, click-through rates, and engagement levels to see how your emails stack up and identify areas for improvement.

It also provides inspiration for your own campaigns, sparking ideas for subject lines, design elements, and calls-to-action that you might not have considered.

Another key advantage is understanding your competitors' customer engagement strategies. By observing how they interact with their subscribers, you can gain insights into their customer service approach, loyalty programs, and follow-up practices. 

This can help you enhance your own customer relationships and foster greater loyalty.

A whopping 59 percent of marketers think that email is the best channel for generating revenue.

Finally, staying abreast of competitors' emails and newsletters ensures you are not caught off guard by their moves. If they announce a major sale or a new product line, you can prepare your response strategy to maintain your competitive edge. 

Overall, tracking your competitor’s emails and newsletters is an invaluable practice for staying competitive, continuously improving your marketing efforts, and ultimately driving your business success.

How to Track Your Competitor’s Emails and Newsletters

1. Subscribe to Their Newsletters

The first and most direct step in tracking your competitors’ newsletters is to subscribe to them using a dedicated email address. This ensures that all competitor communications are centralized and easily accessible without cluttering your primary inbox. 

You can subscribe by visiting their websites and signing up for their newsletters, or you might find subscription links through their social media profiles or blog posts. 

Consider subscribing with a few different email addresses to see if they segment their lists and send different content to different audiences.

In addition to your main competitors, you might also subscribe to newsletters from industry leaders and emerging businesses to get a broader perspective on market trends. This wider lens can reveal innovative tactics and fresh ideas that might not yet be mainstream in your specific competitive landscape.

2. Set Up Email Filters and Folders

Once you start receiving newsletters, it's crucial to stay organized. Set up filters in your email client to automatically sort these emails into specific folders. 

For example, you could have separate folders for each competitor or categorize them based on the type of content, such as promotions, new product announcements, or customer engagement emails. 

This way, you can quickly find and review relevant emails without sifting through your entire inbox.

Using labels or tags can also enhance your organization. By tagging emails with keywords like “discounts,” “new releases,” or “seasonal campaigns,” you can create a more nuanced system that allows you to track specific types of content across different competitors. 

This methodical approach not only saves time but also makes it easier to spot trends and patterns.

3. Analyze Content Regularly

Regular analysis of the newsletters is key to understanding your competitors’ strategies. Dedicate time each week or month to review the content they are sending out. 

Look closely at the subject lines to see what language and tactics they use to entice their audience to open emails. Analyze the structure of the email, including headings, images, and calls-to-action, to understand what visual and textual elements they prioritize.

Pay attention to the types of content they share. Are they promoting new products, offering discounts, sharing blog posts, or engaging in storytelling? 

Understanding the mix of content can help you gauge what your competitors believe is most effective for their audience. Take notes on any particularly strong or weak points in their approach, and consider how these insights can be applied to your own email campaigns.

4. Track Key Metrics

If possible, use email marketing tools to track key metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and engagement levels of your competitors' emails. Tools like MailCharts and Owletter can provide insights into these metrics by scraping and analyzing competitor emails. 

Although you won’t get precise data, trends and general performance indicators can still offer valuable information. These metrics allow you to benchmark your own email performance against your competitors.

If you notice that a particular type of email content from your competitor is getting high engagement, it might be worth testing similar content in your own campaigns. 

Conversely, if their metrics are low for certain types of emails, it might signal an area to avoid or approach differently.

5. Use Competitive Analysis Tools

To enhance your email tracking efforts, consider using competitive analysis tools designed for monitoring email marketing strategies. Panoramata, for example, allows you to track email frequency, content themes, and promotional tactics of your competitors. 

Owletter can help you monitor and analyze competitors’ email marketing by collecting their newsletters and providing analytics on key performance indicators.

These tools can save you time and provide deeper insights than manual tracking alone. They can alert you to new email campaigns as soon as they are sent, helping you stay up-to-date with your competitors’ latest strategies. 

Using these tools, you can compile comprehensive reports on your competitors’ email activities, providing a strategic advantage.

6. Create a Competitor Email Swipe File

Maintaining a swipe file of competitors’ emails is a practical way to compile effective examples and strategies. Save emails that stand out due to their design, compelling subject lines, or innovative content. 

Over time, this collection becomes a valuable resource for inspiration and benchmarking.

Organize your swipe file by category, such as “holiday promotions,” “product launches,” or “customer engagement.” This categorization allows you to quickly find relevant examples when planning your own campaigns. 

Review your swipe file regularly to identify recurring themes and strategies that could be adapted to suit your brand’s needs.

7. Evaluate Promotional Strategies

Analyzing the promotional strategies used by your competitors can provide insights into their overall marketing plan. Track the timing, frequency, and type of promotions they offer. 

Are they using limited-time discounts, bundle deals, or special events to drive sales? Understanding these strategies can help you plan your own promotions more effectively.

Look for patterns in their promotional calendar. Do they ramp up promotions during certain times of the year, like holidays or back-to-school seasons? 

Identifying these trends allows you to anticipate their moves and plan your own campaigns to either counteract or complement their efforts, ensuring you stay competitive.

8. Monitor Visual and Branding Elements

The visual elements of a competitor’s email can say a lot about their brand identity and marketing focus. 

Pay attention to the use of colors, fonts, images, and overall layout. Consistency in these elements helps build brand recognition and loyalty among their audience. 

By understanding their visual strategy, you can identify what works well and find opportunities to differentiate your brand.

Take note of any changes or updates in their visual branding. This could signal a rebranding effort or a shift in marketing strategy. 

Staying aware of these changes can help you understand broader trends in your industry and ensure that your visual branding remains contemporary and competitive.

9. Assess Customer Engagement Techniques

Customer engagement techniques used in newsletters can provide insights into how competitors are building relationships with their audience. Look for interactive elements such as surveys, polls, quizzes, or personalized recommendations. 

These techniques can significantly enhance engagement and provide a more personalized experience for subscribers.

Understanding how your competitors engage their customers can help you refine your own strategies. If you notice high engagement with certain types of interactive content, consider incorporating similar elements into your newsletters. 

Additionally, assess the tone and style of their communication to ensure your own engagement efforts are resonating with your audience.

10. Benchmark Against Industry Standards

Finally, use the insights gathered from your competitors’ newsletters to benchmark your own email marketing performance. Compare key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to industry averages and competitors’ performance.

This benchmarking helps you understand where you stand in the competitive landscape and identify areas for improvement.

Regular benchmarking allows you to track your progress over time and adjust your strategies based on industry trends and competitor performance. 

By continually refining your approach, you can enhance your email marketing effectiveness, better meet your customers’ needs, and maintain a competitive edge in your market.

Competitor Email and Newsletter Tracking Tools

eDatasource

eDataSource, which was acquired by the email platform SparkPost, lets you see how your competitor’s emails are doing and also gives you a big picture look at their overall marketing campaign. 

It also focuses on email intelligence and the data they gather is of high quality and wide scale. You can learn more about sending frequency, open rates, list size, subject lines and body text, and the kind of users or audience they have and if they overlap with your audience. 

By leveraging these insights, you can refine your own email marketing strategy, improve engagement, and maintain a competitive edge in your industry.

Panoramata

Panoramata is an all-in-one platform for competitor tracking and marketing inspiration. On top of emails, they also track ads, SEO, software, websites, and landing pages. 

On the email side, they collect data on sending frequency, subject lines, the email itself, types of emails and promotions, emojis used, and more. 

The cool thing is that their huge newsletter database is searchable, which makes planning your email campaigns a cinch. You can also search by date or holiday and filter by industry, language, and spam score. 

If you want to do more than just email tracking and monitoring and use fewer tools for your competitive analysis, Panoramata is a good one to consider. 

Sendview

Sendview is designed to help you effortlessly keep tabs on what your competitors are up to, so you can stay ahead in the game. 

One of its standout features is aggregating data and compiling them into comprehensive reports. You can analyze spam scores, word count, send days, sending platforms and more but they also provide information on email attribution. 

This is a great tool to consider if you want to see patterns in your competitor’s email campaigns but aren’t as interested in the content of the emails. Given this, this is one of the most budget-friendly of this bunch since it has limited features. 

Overall, SendView makes competitive analysis easy and insightful, helping you make data-driven decisions to boost your email marketing efforts and stay competitive in your industry.

MailCharts

MailCharts is an essential tool for enhancing competitive analysis in email marketing by providing comprehensive insights into your competitors' strategies.

It allows you to monitor email campaigns, analyze content, and benchmark performance metrics like open rates and click-through rates against industry standards. 

By tracking the frequency, timing, and types of emails your competitors send, you can identify their marketing schedules and understand what resonates with their audience.

Additionally, MailCharts highlights various promotional strategies, offering details on discounts, special offers, and seasonal campaigns. This information helps you spot trends and patterns, providing inspiration and ideas for your own campaigns. 

Owletter

Owletter is an email aggregator that’s worth a look if you want to dive into email competitive analysis.  

It has a simple dashboard that tells you at a  glance what emails your competitors are sending and insights into their email campaigns. They can track the number of emails sent, the days they’re sent and even the time of day your competitor sends emails.

It eliminates the need for creating a separate email address or addresses just to track competitors. You don’t have to sign up to newsletters manually, either. 

By automatically collecting and analyzing emails from your competitors, Owletter saves you the hassle of manual subscriptions and organizes these emails in a user-friendly dashboard. 

With this information, you can see how often your competitors communicate with their audience, the optimal times for sending emails, and the types of content they emphasize. 

Track your competitor’s email newsletters and boost your competitive edge

In wrapping up, keeping an eye on your competitors' email newsletters with competition monitoring tools can give you a real edge. By regularly checking out what they’re sending, how often, and how well it's working, you can spot trends, see how you measure up, and find ways to improve. 

Staying in the loop with your competitors' strategies not only helps you fine-tune your own email campaigns but also keeps you agile and competitive in a fast-changing market.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you keep track of your competitors?

Keeping track of your competitors involves subscribing to their newsletters, using tools like MailCharts or Owletter to automate email collection, and regularly analyzing their email content and strategies. 

This helps you stay updated on their latest promotions, messaging tactics, and customer engagement techniques.

How do I track email success?

To track email success, you can use email marketing platforms like Mailchimp or Constant Contact, which provide analytics on open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. 

Additionally, tools like Panoramata, eDataSource or SendView offer competitive insights, allowing you to benchmark your performance against industry standards and monitor how your campaigns compare to competitors'. 

This data helps you understand what resonates with your audience and refine your email marketing strategies accordingly.