Using GMAIL and Google Content Network to Spy on Target the Competition.

I was surprised to learn that GMAIL has become the #3 most often used email provider.
Last August Comscore reported on unique user traffic (USA only) the big four email domains in July 2009 were:

• Yahoo! Mail – 106 million
• Windows Live Hotmail – 47 million
• Gmail – 37 million
• AOL Mail – 36.4 million

So the following must be true:

1. Your competition has a mailing list which they send out.
2. Chances are some of those prospects get those emails on GMAIL and read them.
3. Google allows you to directly target GMAIL on the placement network.
4. Some of those subscribers may actually forward the message to other GMAIL email users (bonus).

Here’s what you do:

1. Subscribe to your competitor’s mailing list. Make a note if the competition requires the user to qualify your registration, this will help you better target this type of channel.
2. When you get an email, you must work fast – as the email will most likely be picked up in next 24-48 hours.
3. Check the keyword density of the email message, note the URL’s and other key identifiers of the email. Company names, products & services. You should be able to easily extract a keyword list. Use a maximum of about 50 keywords or phrases.
4. In the Google Content Network create a Placements only Group – Text Ads. To target Gmail only enter manually: mail.google.com (Which is the GMAIL location) Name the group by the header of the email – and the date. PS: I truly believe Google looks at your group names for semantic purposes to better target your Ads so make sure you do this word for word.
5. Your bid should be fairly high, for maximum chance of exposure, since you know these are more qualified prospects, this is not the time to be shy. You should tag this group, so your analytics package can identifier clicks & impressions “competitor prospects”.
6. Your AD text should address the email directly; use keywords from the header of the email. Don’t bother with Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI). It doesn’t work on the content network.
7. Repeat these steps with every email! Yes there will be repetition but the Content Network does not penalize you for duplicate keywords across ADGROUPS on the Content Network, as opposed to Google Network & Google Search Network.
8. Optional: If you can build a landing page fast enough to directly address the email this would be a bonus.

Eventually you are going to build a comprehensive list of words based on your competitions email blasts. It will be easy to notice patterns and act on them. If your competitive intelligence is correct you will be able to get a sense on how many people are viewing his emails on the Gmail channel!

If any of you out there know technique for doing this YAHOO MAIL or MSN on those respective networks, let us know.

Searchengineman

Kudos:

I would like to thank Perry Marshall for Tweeting out the initial tip.

And Dan Spransy for his video which inspired this.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 3:15 PM and is filed under Pay Per Click. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.