How to See What My Competitors Sent Last Black Friday
Posted By Peyton Fox | October 12th, 2023
The holiday season is fast approaching, and for businesses, that means one thing: Black Friday. It’s the day when consumers flood online and stores in search of the best deals, making it a critical time for retailers to stand out and capture the attention of eager shoppers.
But how do you gain an edge in this highly competitive landscape? One valuable strategy is to gain insights into what your competitors are planning. Knowledge is power, and understanding what your rivals sent out last Black Friday can help you craft a winning email marketing strategy for this year’s shopping extravaganza.
In this blog post, we’ll take you through the steps to uncover the email marketing secrets of your competitors Black Friday emails from years prior. So, if you’re ready to gain a competitive advantage and boost your Black Friday marketing efforts, let’s dive in and discover how to see what your competitors sent during the last Black Friday.
1. Visit Milled.com
Start by going to Milled.com, a valuable resource for analyzing your competitors’ email marketing strategies. Milled is an excellent resource for email marketing professionals due to its comprehensive database of email marketing campaigns. It offers valuable insights by showcasing real-world examples of email campaigns from various industries, providing inspiration and benchmarking opportunities.
This is where we will begin to dig and find our competitor’s Black Friday email sends.
Additionally, Milled allows users to track competitors’ email strategies, aiding in the development of effective marketing strategies. Its user-friendly interface and regularly updated content make it a go-to platform for staying informed and improving email marketing efforts.
2. Identify Your Competitor
In the top right corner of Milled’s home page there is a search bar. In the search bar you can locate your primary competitor in your industry.
For example, if you’re a coffee brand, let’s say your main competitor is Chamberlain Coffee.
Once your type in your competitor’s name in the search bar you will then find their sending profile, which is the icon to the left of the screen. Keep in mind that smaller brands may not appear here but you can still search similar brands by typing in specific keywords!
3. Explore Their Email Archive
Once you’ve found your competitor’s sending profile, click their brand icon. The icon will then bring you to their page of most recent emails they have sent out and even their archived ones from years past.
Use the email archive to go back to specific years and months, especially focusing on the previous Black Friday season – November!
4. Gather Valuable Insights
By accessing Milled’s email archive, marketers can examine critical elements such as subject lines, preview lines, sending times, email frequency, email duration, alt text, links, and full email designs.
This wealth of information allows for a comprehensive understanding of what tactics are employed successfully in the industry.
Furthermore, Milled aids in monitoring competitors’ sending times, an essential aspect of email marketing strategy. Keeping records of when competitors send their promotional emails can help marketers optimize their own sending schedules for better engagement and open rates.
Additionally, the platform allows users to track email frequency, enabling them to gauge how often competitors send emails during specific marketing campaigns. Understanding this frequency is crucial for avoiding email fatigue and ensuring that promotional messages are well-timed and received positively by subscribers.
Milled also facilitates the observation of promotional campaign durations, shedding light on how long competitors typically run their promotions. This insight is valuable for planning the duration of your own campaigns effectively.
Lastly, Milled empowers marketers to analyze the use of alt text and links in competitors’ emails. This scrutiny provides key insights into the competitor’s strategies, helping marketers refine their own email content to better engage and convert their audience.
5. Create a Google Competitor Tracking Sheet/Google Drive (Optional)
Set up a Google Sheets document to organize your findings and keep track of your competitors’ past emails. In your tracking sheet, make a note of the elements that you liked about your competitor’s email. Alongside your notes, brainstorm on how you could have made those emails different or added your unique style to them.
You can even capture screenshots of the emails you find inspiring and save them to your Google Drive for reference as well!
Feel free to use our basic outline here to start building your tracking sheet, just make a copy.
Conclusion
By following these steps and maintaining a structured competitor tracking sheet, you can gain valuable insights into your competitor’s email marketing tactics and use them to enhance your own email campaigns.
If you need help planning your Black Friday strategy or just need a trusted team to take it off your hands, don’t hesitate to book a call with us below and check out our email design work.
Schedule Your Call
In our meeting together, we will run through your current email marketing setup, the hurdles you are facing, and more. At the end of our call, I’ll be able to detail how my team and I could help.
When booking, you’ll see a few questions that must be answered prior to our call. We are very selective about what brands and clients we work with to ensure we can succeed with your email marketing.
