How To Track Your Competition’s Email Marketing (2025)

The best marketers in the world stand above the rest.

But, they’re not looking down at the competition with superiority.

They’ve got their binoculars out and they’re spying on their competition to learn from them.

If you want to get the best results, you need to study your competitor’s email marketing.

In this guide, you’ll learn everything you need to check your competitor’s email marketing to double down on your own performance.

Let’s begin!

Why You Need to Study Competitors’ Email Marketing

If you want to be the best, you’ve got to learn from the best.

This means understanding what your competition is doing to see how you can replicate and improve upon their strategies.

Why not just figure it out on your own?

Well, consider these three quotes from legendary copywriters about the importance of studying the competition:

“I have a confession to make. I collect ads. If they’re good enough to get my attention, they’re worth saving. You never know when they’ll come in handy.”

- David Ogilvy

“You should collect good ads and sales letters. Then, when you’re stuck for ideas, use them to create your own masterpiece. That’s how you go from a blank page to something great.”

-Gary Halbert

“The ideas that have worked before will work again. Save every proven headline, every successful piece of copy, and study them until they become second nature.”

-Eugene Schwartz

So, how does this apply to email marketing?

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

Simply look at what others are doing well and build upon that.

Why Listen to Me? I’ve generated over $1 million with email and written over 1,000 blog posts. I run Storey Time, a newsletter where I teach people how to become freelance copywriters. Feel free to reach out to me on X anytime!

What Email Marketing Elements Should You Study?

Okay, so you’re ready to analyze the competition.

Now what?

What exactly should you be looking at?

Here are the main elements you need to study:

1. Email Content and Copy

First things first, you're going to look at your competition’s content.

Email content is the heart and soul of any email marketing strategy.

You could get everything right with your email marketing, but if your content is bad, your marketing won’t work.

You want to analyze your competition’s content and copywriting.

Ask yourself:

• Is their content better than yours?

• Is it more engaging?

• Does it hook you in? 

• Do they use templates?

• Do they follow copywriting frameworks like problem, agitate, solution (PAS), or attention, interest, desire, action (AIDA)?

• How is their tone of voice?

• Is their voice consistent?

• Do they send the same style of email every time or do they switch it up?

• Do they mix in content and promotional copy? Or do they send one type?

• Are they text-heavy or image-heavy emails?

• How does their style of copy differ from yours?

• Do they use polls to ask their audience for feedback on their content?

2. Subject Lines

Next up, let’s talk about subject lines.

If you get these wrong, you’ll never hook your audience into your emails.

Ask yourself:

• What kind of subject lines is my competition using?

• How are they hooking their readers in?

• Are they using storytelling?

• Do they use intriguing, curiosity-driven subject lines?

• Are they making use of the preview text?

• Do they make promises or answer-driven subject lines?

• Are they short or long?

• Do they use emojis?

3. Design

Nailing your email design is crucial to attract, engage, and convert your readers.

Ask yourself:

• How is my competition’s email design?

• Do they use email templates?

• Are they using consistent design?

• Do they use any design at all?

• Are they sending strictly text-based emails?

• Do they re-use the same template each time or do they switch it up?

• Do they switch between design-heavy and text-based emails?

• Are they using different fonts, styles, colors, etc.?

• Are they leveraging images?

• Are they adding in GIFs?

4. Calls-to-Action (CTAs)

Your email marketing won’t bring in results if you don’t ask your readers to take action.

Whether you’re driving your audience to click a sponsored ad, buy your product, or simply follow you on social media, you need to ensure you’re placing calls-to-action (CTAs) in key places throughout your copy.

Ask yourself:

• Is my competition placing a CTA in every email?

• Do they place just one CTA or do they place multiple CTAs?

• Do they hyperlink their CTAs in the body copy?

• Do they add buttons for their CTAs?

• What kind of copy are they using?

• Where are they placing their CTAs?

• Are they adding links to images?

• Where are they typically sending people? To products? Other content?

5. Sending Frequency & Send Times

You need to ensure you’re consistent with your sending frequency and send times.

It’s not a good look if you send your audience sporadic emails. It won’t cut it to send once or twice a month either. 

But, just how often should you be sending?

Ask yourself:

• How often is my competition sending emails?

• Are they sending weekly?

• Are they sending daily?

• Are there times when they send more frequently like during Black Friday Cyber Monday?

• How often do they run promotions? Once a month? Once a quarter? Every day?

• When are they sending emails?

• Do they send on a specific day each week?

• Do they send at a specific time of day like morning or afternoon?

6. Automations

The best email marketers in the world send both one-off (broadcast) emails and automated emails.

Ask yourself:

• Is my competition sending automated emails?

• What kind of automations are they sending?

• Do they have a welcome email series in place?

• How many emails do they send in their welcome series?

• Do they have any email series in place that get sent after downloading a lead magnet?

7. Email List Growth

You could send the best emails in the world, but if you don’t know how to grow your list, you won’t get far with your email marketing.

Ask yourself:

• Where are my competition’s signup forms on their website?

• Do they have a dedicated subscribe landing page?

• Are they using a growth-focused email marketing platform like beehiiv?

• Do they offer lead magnets like free guides or discounts?

• What kind of lead magnets do they have?

• Do they have popup forms enabled on their site to capture new subscribers?

• Do they have recommendations or beehiiv Boosts enabled once you sign up?

• Do they have a referral program?

• Are they running paid ads to grow their list?

• Do they have active list growth ads in Facebook Ad Library?

8. Monetization

Email marketing isn’t just about getting people to click on (and read) your emails.

It’s about revenue.

The average return on investment (ROI) of email marketing is 36:1. This means for every $1,000 you invest in email, you should generate about $36,000 in revenue.

But, without a great offer, that money won’t come easy.

Ask yourself:

• How is your competition monetizing their email list?

• Do they generate revenue with sponsored ads?

• If they’re running sponsored ads, what brands are they partnering with?

• Do they have affiliate links?

• Do they promote their own products?

• Do they promote a service?

• Do they always promote the same offer?

• Do they switch up their offers?

• Do they promote products or services in every email?

• Do they Boost other publications?

• Do they offer a premium newsletter subscription?

Best Practices: How to Check Your Competitors’ Email Marketing

So, now that you know what to look for when analyzing your competition’s emails, let’s talk about best practices.

Here are a few tips to optimize your email marketing efforts by analyzing the competition.

1. Sign Up to Their Email List

So, how do you start tracking your competition’s emails?

It’s simple.

Sign up to their email list!

You don’t need to use any fancy software to get started. Just go to their website, and click “subscribe.”

From there, it’s best to create a folder (and filter) in your email provider for your competitors.

Think of this like an email swipe file.

Then, whenever you get an email from your competition, it’ll automatically land in your swipe file folder.

So, when you spend time each month analyzing the competition, you can just hop into that folder and start taking notes (without having to hunt down their emails in your main inbox).

2. Use a Burner Email

It’s okay to spy on the competition.

But, if they find out, they might kick you off their list.

So, don’t subscribe to the competition’s emails with your work or business email.

Instead, create a “burner email.” This is just an email address you create specifically to spy on the competition.

3. Intentionally Trigger Their Automations

You don’t just want to sign up for the competition’s email list.

You also want to try to trigger their automations to analyze those as well.

For example, when you initially sign up, you’ll know if you get a welcome email series or not (the first automation a new subscriber typically receives).

If you’re in e-commerce, the next thing you want to try to trigger is their abandoned checkout email automation.

To do this, simply head to their website, add something to the cart, head to checkout, and wait.

If they have an abandoned checkout automation in place, you’ll typically receive an email within 24 hours reminding you to complete your purchase.

Then, wait to see if they have any more. Email marketers will often send 3-5 abandoned cart or abandoned checkout emails.

Similarly, you could also test to see if they have an abandoned cart and browse abandonment series.

Add something to the cart and wait to trigger the abandoned cart.

Then just browse (without adding any products to your cart) to see if they send a browse abandonment email.

If you want to take things to the next level, you could always purchase a product to see if they have a post-purchase automation in place (It might feel weird supporting the competition! But, it’s incredibly valuable research.).

4. Analyze Swipe File Resources

Have you analyzed all your competitors' emails?

Well, you shouldn’t stop there.

If you want to level up your email game, then you should also look beyond your direct competitors and look at other successful email marketing campaigns.

The best place to start?

Public swipe files.

Here are some resources to find the best emails:

• Milled

• Swiped

• Swipe File

• Really Good Emails

• Marketing Examples

For more examples of top email newsletters to learn from, check out our favorite email newsletters from 2023.

Level Up Your Email Marketing With beehiiv

Your competition isn’t your enemy.

They’re your learning opportunity.

Instead of trying to figure email marketing out on your own, you should study your competition’s emails.

What are they doing right? What could be improved? 

How can you take what’s working and optimize it in your own email marketing?

If you’re ready to take your email marketing to the next level, then you need to leverage the right email marketing software.

That’s where beehiiv comes in.

Beehiiv is the newsletter platform built for growth:

• Create engaging emails with the world’s most user-friendly editor

• Grow your list with the Referral Program, Recommendations, and Boosts

• Monetize from day one with the Ad Network, Boosts, or a paid newsletter

Ready to dominate your email marketing strategy in 2025?

Get a 30-day free trial of beehiiv now.