There is plenty of gold to mine when analyzing qualitative insights.
In this UPDATED 2024 article, we will uncover the key elements to analyse when conducting competitor analysis. Competitor analysis is all about discovering what everyone else is doing to identify new opportunities for optimization.
WHY COMPETITOR ANALYSIS?
Competitor analysis involves researching, analysing, and comparing your business to others within the same industry. It enables you to gain a comprehensive understanding of your company's unique selling points, strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement.
Conducting a competitive analysis can provide your business with a marketing edge over your competitors, regardless of your business's stage.
By conducting an email marketing competitor analysis, you can uncover the following.
- The strengths and weaknesses of your business and competitors;
- The market landscape;
- Industry trends;
- Growth benchmarks to target;
- Your value proposition;
- Strategies to remain relevant and
- Increase conversions.
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS VS TESTING
In the beginning of your brand’s email marketing, you want to find out:
- Best sending time
- Best subject lines
- Best offers
- Best core segment
- Best copy style
Extensive competitor analysis could be a good springboard into the above, but it's essential to remember: what works for your competitors might not work for your brand.
The only way to truly optimize your email marketing efforts is through testing.
Always be testing
TOOLS AND USE CASES
Throughout this article, we'll be using a bunch of free and paid tools to showcase practical ways in which you can conduct effective competitor research to feed your email and SMS marketing strategies.
Take note that we are not affiliated with any of the below tools.
Tool used throughout the article:
- SendView (Paid)
- Emailpreview (Free)
- Builtwith (Free)
- ChatGPT (Free/Paid)
- Koala Inspector (Free/Paid)
SENDVIEW
OVERVIEW:
Easily track your competitors' email marketing tactics with SendView. Subscribe to your competitors' emails, and instead of a bloated inbox you'll get dashboards full of insights, trends, and opportunities.
Short summary of what the tool allows you to do:
- Monitor their content calendar, word clouds, and more
- Benchmark yourself against your competitors
- Monitor adoption of email technology and tactics
- Identify most common send times and days
- See key stats and technology behind each campaign
- Track how many days pass between emails
- Automatic screenshots of the campaigns you favorite
Source: Sendview
OVERVIEW:
Saving emails is a dreadful task. Email Preview makes it easy with the click of a few buttons.
Competitor Research: EmailPreview
Short summary of what the tool allow you to do:
- Preview and download any of your competitors emails for future reference
Source: https://emailpreview.io/
BUILTWITH
OVERVIEW:
With coverage of over 67,747 internet technologies, including analytics, advertising, hosting, CMS, and more, BuiltWith provides insights into the ever-changing landscape of internet technology usage. It's a valuable tool for monitoring the marketing tech stack employed by your top competitors in the industry.
Competitor Research: Builtwith
Short summary of what the tool allow you to do:
- Identify the analytics and tracking stack used by any store
- Identify market widgets used by any store
- Identify eCommerce stacks and apps used
- Identify payment gateways used by any store, and more
- Make better decisions on tools and software subscriptions by analysing usage trends over time
Source: Builtwith
CHATGPT
OVERVIEW:
Your AI-powered conversational assistant and so much more! Harnessing the power of advanced natural language processing technology, ChatGPT enables you to engage in human-like conversations with a sophisticated chatbot. But that's just the beginning. And when it comes to competitor research, ChatGPT truly shines. It provides you with valuable insights and assistance, making it an indispensable asset in your quest for success.
Short summary of what the tool allow you to do:
- Extract customer reviews about a competitor brand
- Generate email and SMS copy
- Buyer persona research to help you with better messaging
- Tool comparisons for when you are looking to change software in our tool stack
- Analyse any competitors products, product pricing and unique selling propositions, etc.
Example prompt that could be used:
Prompt 1Task 1: Identify relevant websites and platforms where customers may have left reviews for https://www.examplestore.com/.Task 2: Search for Example Brand reviews on Google.com.Task 3: Extract customer reviews from the identified sources using web scraping or other data extraction techniques.Output: Organize and analyze the extracted reviews in tabular format:Column 1: Common themes,Column 2: Sentiments, Column 3: Examples of customer reviews (minimum of 5 for each common theme), Column 4: Overall satisfaction levels of customers
Prompt 2Do a full buyer's empathy map for https://www.examplestore.com/. Output tabular format.
Source: ChatGPT
KOALA INSPECTOR (GOOGLE CHROME PLUGIN)
OVERVIEW:
In one click you can reveal some strategies a store owner uses, the best-selling products, and pricing. No matter if you use Etsy, WooCommerce, or any other eCommerce platform, now you have the opportunity to follow and track any Shopify store you’d like.
Competitor Research: Koala Inspector
Short summary of what the tool allow you to do:
- It is best used to scrape Shopify data to conduct competitor analysis
- Detect ad campaign and analyse a store's traffic data
- Detect which Shopify apps a store has installed
- Identify any online stores theme
- Uncover details about a stores products, including last added, highest priced item as well as finding out which retailers are stocking their products
- Tap into their ad campaigns to gather ideas into how you can adjust your email/SMS messaging
Concluding Thoughts
Let's wrap things up here before we close:
- Competitor research is a handy tool for any email and SMS marketing team, but always do your own testing.
- Tapping into the technology usage of your competitors can help drive your decisions in picking new software.
- Having a handle on your competitors' products, pricing, and other details will serve as a baseline for your own expansions.
- If you want to remain relevant and spot new industry trends, you need to use the correct set of tools to gather the required details.
Conducting a competitive analysis can provide your business with a marketing edge over your competitors, regardless of your business's stage. Learn how to use it correctly, and you'll become a Jedi at email and SMS marketing.
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Related Reads Handpicked for You
- Creating the Perfect Email Automation Strategy with Data
- Data series: Part 1: Using Google Analytics to enhance your email/SMS strategy
- Data series: Part 2: How to use Shopify to feed your email/SMS strategy
- Data series: Part 3: Using competitor analysis to enhance your email/SMS strategy
- Data Enrichment Points over Email
further in depth reading
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