Hosted by: Adam McQueen

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Adam is joined by James Raffield, the Director of Competitive Intelligence at Druva, to talk about how he manages to serve different audiences with his competitive intelligence newsletter. Here are his three biggest tips for writing a competitive intel newsletter

1️⃣ Tell the story and continue the saga 1️⃣

The battle between you and your competitors might not actually be an epic saga. But the more you tell the story in your competitive intelligence newsletter as if it were, the more you’ll hook your audience.

And as James puts it, the main characters aren’t just you and the competition. It’s the people in your organization who do the work every day.

“I want to set up the narrative early on so I can train the AEs, SEs and Directors to be part of that narrative and not just watch it from the outside.”

Epic saga or not, your newsletter can and should have all the elements of a good story: a compelling backstory of how your competitor got to today, detailed accounts of the moves they’re making today and where those moves might take them in the future.

Check out more great tips from experts like James and others in our Competitive Intel Newsletter Guide & Template

2️⃣ Leverage the saga to get your audience engaged 2️⃣

The all-important culture of compete only takes form when your colleagues are actively sharing intel. And in order to get there, you need to engage them.

“I’m using that narrative to get them engaged with the story. What I find is when I do that, they come back with more intel.”

At a high-level your storytelling in the newsletter will get stakeholders involved and interested in your compete program.

After all, connecting dots and drawing insights that directly help your audiences be better at their job should be the main driver of your program.

But specifically, you need to be celebrating and acknowledging your colleagues who share intel. This will create a knock-on effect, spurring others to join in the fun.

Watch Matt Tyrer break down his best tips for building a competitive intel newsletter

3️⃣ Now that they’re engaged, it’s time to inspire 3️⃣

Including engaging content in your newsletter will inspire your team to keep coming back for more.

Actionable insights is one example of engaging content. But it doesn’t end there.

“We’re always tracking how we might have taken market share or how we took an account from a competitor. I’m using intel like that to inspire and engage.”

Big win stories, tough loss stories — not only do they provide valuable case studies for your team to leverage, they elicit emotion.

That painful loss and that huge win inspire action. And if you’re accomplishing that with your competitive intel newsletter, you’re doing it right.