Brands don’t operate in isolation. Whether you're a fast-growing ecommerce brand, a DTC startup, or an established enterprise, you’re constantly competing for your audience’s attention.
Understanding what your competitors are doing, especially in their email marketing and advertising, is one of the most effective ways to sharpen your own strategy.
But competitive tracking isn’t always easy.
Manually monitoring ads across platforms is time-consuming, and subscribing to dozens of competitor newsletters quickly turns into inbox clutter. Yet ignoring competitor insights leaves you in the dark, unsure how to optimise your campaigns or identify industry shifts.
This guide breaks down actionable methods to find your competitor’s emails and ads, what to look for, and how tools like Panoramata simplify the entire process.
Why Competitor Tracking Matters
Competitor tracking, also known as competitive research or competitive analysis, is the practice of studying your competitors’ marketing activities to understand what’s working for them.
Why is it important?
- Your audience sees your competitors’ ads, emails, and landing pages, not just your own.
- Their branding, funnel structure, and messaging influence consumer expectations.
- Tracking helps spark new ideas and identify gaps in your own marketing.
- You learn which acquisition channels they prioritise and how they nurture leads.
- You avoid guesswork and make strategy decisions based on real data.
Tools like Panoramata, which automatically track your competitors’ ads, emails, funnels, and website updates, remove the manual burden and make competitive intelligence accessible for teams of any size.
Why You Should Track Competitor Funnels (Not Just Ads and Emails)
Many marketers focus only on ads or emails. But tracking the full customer funnel gives you deeper insights.
A complete funnel analysis includes:
1. Their Most Popular Ads
Identify which creatives and angles they’re pushing the hardest.
2. The Landing Pages Connected To Those Ads
Learn how they position their products and optimise conversions.
3. Their Checkout Or Purchase Flow
See how they eliminate friction and craft seamless buying experiences.
Top brands often build niche-specific funnels (personalised ads, cohesive email sequences, and targeted landing pages all working together).
Tracking these reveals where your competitors are investing, which angles they believe in, and how they guide customers from awareness to purchase.
Step-by-Step: How to Find Your Competitors’ Emails and Ads
Step 1: Define Which Competitors to Track
Before diving in, narrow down your target list. Not all competitors offer equally valuable insights.
Types of competitors worth monitoring
1. Industry Leaders and Big Brands
These companies provide high-level inspiration on creative strategy, ad formats, and scalable email systems.
2. Retargeting Experts
Brands that excel at retention campaigns, abandoned cart sequences, or automated flows are particularly valuable for email inspiration.
3. Heavy Ad Spenders
Competitors investing aggressively in paid acquisition often test more creatives and funnels.
Their ad ecosystems are goldmines for inspiration.
By choosing your competitors strategically, your analysis becomes more focused and actionable.
Step 2: How to Find Your Competitor’s Emails
Method 1: Sign Up for Their Newsletter (Manual Approach)
A classic approach. Just join their list and monitor what they send.
But this has drawbacks:
- Your inbox becomes overloaded
- You need a dedicated email address
- You only receive future emails, not past ones
- Tracking multiple brands becomes chaotic
Method 2: Use Panoramata (Automated Approach)
Panoramata signs up to competitor newsletters for you and updates your dashboard with every new email they send.
Benefits:
- Access to historical emails, not just new ones
- Real-time updates for every competitor email
- No cluttered inbox or burner accounts
- All emails sorted, searchable, and taggable
- Easier benchmarking and inspiration boards
For serious marketing teams, automated email tracking is a must.
Step 3: How to Find Your Competitor’s Ads
There are three primary ways to check your competitor’s ads:
1. Panoramata (All-in-One Ad Tracking)
Panoramata provides a comprehensive library of ads from thousands of brands across:
- Google Display
- TikTok
- YouTube
You can:
- View ads (even unpublished ones)
- Track landing pages connected to ads
- Create shareable lists
- Search by industry, language, asset type, or platform
- See ad trends over time
This eliminates the tedious task of manually searching ad libraries and saving screenshots.
2. Meta Ad Library
The Meta Ad Library lets you see current and past ads from any brand on Facebook and Instagram.
It shows:
- When ads were launched
- Which platforms do they run on
- Whether multiple variations exist
Great for high-level insights, but not ideal for multi-platform or historical tracking.
3. Google Ads Transparency Centre
Google’s transparency tool allows you to search ads running across Search, YouTube, and Display Networks.
You can filter by:
- Advertiser
- URL/domain
- Time period
- Location
Useful for understanding SEM and YouTube ad ecosystems.
Competitor Tracking Best Practices
Once you start collecting emails and ads, follow these best practices to get maximum value.
1. Set Up Alerts and Track Seasonal Shifts
Seasonal periods like BFCM, Christmas, or spring sales are when brands make fast-paced changes to ads, funnels, and email sequences.
With Panoramata’s automatic alerts, you can catch:
- New ad launches
- Landing page changes
- Funnel updates
- Fresh email campaigns
- Website redesigns
This allows you to time your campaigns strategically and learn from your competitors’ moves.
2. Track Strategic Marketing Shifts
Pay attention to major questions:
- When do competitors start seasonal campaigns?
- How do they differentiate holiday campaigns from regular ones?
- Which network is their biggest acquisition engine (TikTok, Meta, etc.)?
- What types of email sequences do they emphasise?
- What messaging angles do they repeat?
Spotting these patterns helps you understand the direction of your industry.
3. Monitor Their SMS and Email Flows
Don’t stop at individual emails.
Analyse:
- Welcome flows
- Cart abandonment sequences
- Post-purchase emails
- SMS campaigns
Seeing the order, structure, and spacing of competitor flows gives you a roadmap to optimise your own lifecycle marketing.
4. Analyse Ads and Landing Pages Together
Ads alone don’t tell the whole story.
Check:
- Messaging on landing pages
- Product positioning
- Offers and bundles
- Reviews used for social proof
- Page layout and UX
A high-performing ad is always paired with a smart landing page strategy. Tracking both reveals the complete funnel.
What To Do After Collecting Your Competitor’s Emails and Ads
Once you have your competitor’s marketing assets, it’s time to extract strategic insights.
Here’s what you can do:
- Create inspiration boards for your team
- Identify patterns in creative angles
- Build new funnels modelled after winning structures
- Spot positioning gaps in your market
- Adjust your offers to stay competitive
- Borrow messaging frameworks that resonate with your shared audience
Important: Don’t copy. Innovate.
Use competitor insights as inspiration, not templates. Your goal is differentiation, not duplication.
FAQs
How can I see what emails my competitors are sending?
You can subscribe to their newsletters manually or use Panoramata to automatically track emails from thousands of brands, including historical sends.
How do I check my competitor’s ads easily?
Tools like Panoramata collect ads across Google, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest.
You can also manually use the Meta Ad Library or Google Ads Transparency Center.
Final Thoughts
Competitor tracking isn’t about copying. It’s about understanding.
By monitoring your competitors’ emails, ads, and funnels, you gain a clear sense of market direction, customer expectations, and industry trends.
With tools like Panoramata, you no longer need manual spreadsheets, screenshots, or cluttered inboxes. Everything is automated, centralised, and easy to analyse, helping you build smarter campaigns and stay ahead in a fast-changing digital landscape.
Need a fresh perspective? Let’s talk.
At 360 OM, we specialise in helping businesses take their marketing efforts to the next level. Our team stays on top of industry trends, uses data-informed decisions to maximise your ROI, and provides full transparency through comprehensive reports.
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