Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Competitors Subscribing To E-newsletters

Posted by Anonymous on 2/9/2011 at 12:20 PM ET 25 Points
I send out a monthly e-newsletter for my engineering and professional services company. The purpose of the e-newsletters, which contain two original articles each month, is to stay engaged with clients and prospects and deliver valuable content that maintains our reputation for providing knowledgeable experts that help produce results. I've noticed that a lot of employees from competitors have signed up. It feels like we are just feeding our good ideas to competitors. Does anyone "unsubscribe" known competitors from e-newsletters?
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RESPONSES

  • Posted on 2/9/2011 at 12:24 PM Accepted
    Heck yes you can. And when you sign up for their newsletters, be sure to use an address they won't recognize.
  • Posted by michael on 2/9/2011 at 12:27 PM Accepted
    Certainly you can do that. Before I did so, my next newsletter would have an article asking why the competition would need to learn from your newsletters.

    Michael
  • Posted on 2/9/2011 at 12:49 PM Accepted
    okay, I really don't mean what I'm about to say, but... why not create a "special" edition and send that version only to your competitors. Think of the fun you can have when they read of your new product launches, acquisitions, new hires, expanding markets.... I'm just saying.
  • Posted on 2/9/2011 at 1:35 PM Accepted
    Catherine,

    I have read with interest the comments made above to your question and there are merits to them.

    I train clients in email marketing and the first thing I tell them to do is to is sign up for the competitors newsletter. This will enable you to get intelligence on their activities and strategies.

    This inevitably poses your question of competitors seeing your content. If it is commercially sensitive then do not publish it.

    Personally i see the competitors signing up to my twitter account and my posting as a compliment to our superior quality and delivery as they are evidently watching what we are doing.

    Remember that the newsletter is for customers and if your competitors see what you have written then take pride in it. Do not put any commercially sensitive information in it make these announcements after they have been done not before and keep on posting.

    I would not suggest Terry’s suggestion of putting false information to the competitors as it will reduce your credibility with your sector.

    Good luck with the newsletter and keep sending them.

    Kind regards

    Nigel T Packer
  • Posted on 2/9/2011 at 11:34 PM Member
    Sure, you can unsubscribe your competitors and/or selectively send them information. But do you really think you're smarter than your competition by signing up to their newsletters using a gmail account and they wouldn't do the same thing? I'd rather have them sign up under their real name and affiliation than under a cover and waste may lead nurturing resources.

    I also follow Nigel's advice and consider my posting as a compliment to our superior quality. I actually take it one step further and use it to my advantage. For example, I've reported competitors activity to my CEO, demonstrating that our competitors consider our content valuable and possibly superior. When talking to prospects I will tell them about our differentiators and tell them that our competitors apparently agree since they participate in our events and read our newsletters (and I may actually drop names). And most fun of all I find it to call out competitors during live webinars.

    How often does this happen? Ever single week. I'm managing the marketing teams of two partnering companies and run 4 newsletters every month and over 100 webinars per year. Feel free to check us out at www.tkcarsites.com or www.kpaonline.com. Competitors are welcome :-)

    regards,
    Patric
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