Semrush is not an email marketing platform in the traditional sense, but it is one of the most powerful tools you can use to build, inform, and improve your email marketing strategy. For marketing professionals worldwide, Semrush is a top name in online visibility management, offering more than 55 online marketing tools as a cloud-based SaaS platform. If you want to know how to do email marketing with Semrush, the honest answer is: you use Semrush to make every other part of your email program smarter, from audience research and content ideation to competitor intelligence and performance tracking.
Email marketing campaigns have an average ROI of 36 times, meaning businesses earn $36 for every dollar they spend. That return is only possible when your campaigns are grounded in real data, not gut instinct. That's exactly where Semrush earns its place in your email stack.
Key Takeaways
Semrush does not send emails directly, but its research and intelligence tools inform every stage of your email marketing strategy.
The Traffic Analytics Email Dashboard shows how competitors drive website traffic from email, revealing what content and landing pages work.
The Keyword Magic Tool and Topic Research help you find email content ideas your audience is actively searching for.
The EyeOn tool monitors competitor content and sends weekly updates you can use to stay ahead of campaign trends.
Semrush's SEO Writing Assistant improves email copy readability and relevance before you hit send.
What Semrush Actually Does for Email Marketing
Before diving into tactics, it helps to be clear on what Semrush is and is not. Email marketing platforms are software designed to create, send, and optimize email campaigns, typically offering template design, automation workflows, contact list segmentation, A/B testing, and analytics. Semrush does not do those things.
What it does is something different and genuinely valuable: Semrush's competitive research tools can inform your email marketing strategy in several ways. By analyzing competitors' content marketing approaches, you can identify trending topics and content gaps in your own email campaigns. The keyword research features help you understand what your audience is searching for, allowing you to create more relevant email content.
Semrush is not an email marketing platform in the traditional sense, but it is one of the most powerful tools you can use to build, inform, and improve your email marketing strategy. For marketing professionals worldwide, Semrush is a top name in online visibility management, offering more than 55 online marketing tools as a cloud-based SaaS platform. If you want to know how to do email marketing with Semrush, the honest answer is: you use Semrush to make every other part of your email program smarter, from audience research and content ideation to competitor intelligence and performance tracking.
Email marketing campaigns have an average ROI of 36 times, meaning businesses earn $36 for every dollar they spend. That return is only possible when your campaigns are grounded in real data, not gut instinct. That's exactly where Semrush earns its place in your email stack.
Key Takeaways
Semrush does not send emails directly, but its research and intelligence tools inform every stage of your email marketing strategy.
The Traffic Analytics Email Dashboard shows how competitors drive website traffic from email, revealing what content and landing pages work.
The Keyword Magic Tool and Topic Research help you find email content ideas your audience is actively searching for.
The EyeOn tool monitors competitor content and sends weekly updates you can use to stay ahead of campaign trends.
Semrush's SEO Writing Assistant improves email copy readability and relevance before you hit send.
What Semrush Actually Does for Email Marketing
Before diving into tactics, it helps to be clear on what Semrush is and is not. Email marketing platforms are software designed to create, send, and optimize email campaigns, typically offering template design, automation workflows, contact list segmentation, A/B testing, and analytics. Semrush does not do those things.
What it does is something different and genuinely valuable: Semrush's competitive research tools can inform your email marketing strategy in several ways. By analyzing competitors' content marketing approaches, you can identify trending topics and content gaps in your own email campaigns. The keyword research features help you understand what your audience is searching for, allowing you to create more relevant email content.
Think of Semrush as the intelligence layer that sits behind your email platform of choice. It tells you what to write, who to target, what your competitors are doing, and whether your efforts are working.
Step 1: Research Your Audience Before You Build a List
The biggest mistake most email marketers make is building their list first and thinking about audience fit second. Semrush reverses that.
You can research competitor audiences to help define your own. Open Semrush's One2Target tool, enter up to five competitors' domains, and you will see a complete overview of the audience's demographics, socioeconomics, online behavior, and more. This data tells you who is already engaging with brands like yours, which helps you build list-building campaigns and lead magnets that attract the right subscribers.
Once you know your audience, you can use that profile to shape:
Step 2: Use Keyword Research to Drive Email Content
The most consistent complaint from email subscribers is irrelevant content. Semrush's keyword tools solve this by anchoring your content to what your audience actually cares about.
Semrush's Keyword Magic Tool is one of its most powerful features, tapping into a database of over 20 billion keywords and offering endless possibilities for finding keyword ideas tailored to any niche.
Here is how to apply this to email:
Enter a broad topic relevant to your industry into the Keyword Magic Tool.
Filter by question-based keywords to find what subscribers are trying to learn or solve.
These reflect how people naturally ask questions in a search engine, and increasingly, how they prompt AI tools. Answer-style content built around these questions can help a website get visible on both traditional rankings and AI citations.
Use those same questions to structure your email newsletters, subject lines, and body content.
Topic Research is another powerful option. It helps you move beyond exact keyword phrasing and into broader themes, headlines, and related questions that people already care about.
The result: emails that feel timely, useful, and directly relevant to where your subscribers are in their journey. Strong subject lines that connect to real search intent also perform better. For more on that, read our guide to email subject line best practices that boost open rates.
Step 3: Spy on Competitor Email Strategies Using Traffic Analytics
This is where Semrush becomes genuinely hard to replicate. The Traffic Analytics Email Dashboard lets you see how competitors drive traffic from email campaigns, without access to their accounts.
The Email dashboard reveals how competitors generate website traffic from email marketing campaigns, helping you uncover effective email strategies, landing page tactics, and traffic patterns to inform your own strategy.
Specifically, you can use this dashboard to:
Study Trending Pages to understand what types of offers and content convert well in email campaigns, then develop similar resources with your unique value proposition.
Use the Traffic Trend data to identify when email engagement increases during specific seasons or events, and plan your email calendar accordingly.
Examine which pages competitors promote via email to discover content gaps in your own email strategy.
The Traffic Distribution section includes a dedicated dashboard for each traffic channel, including Email. Each source has its own trend lines, device splits, top sources, trending pages, and more.
To access this data: go to Traffic Analytics in Semrush, enter a competitor's domain, and navigate to the Traffic Distribution section. Select the Email channel tab to isolate email-driven traffic data.
Step 4: Monitor Competitor Campaigns with EyeOn
Staying current with what competitors are publishing is manual, tedious work without the right tool. Semrush's EyeOn handles this automatically.
Just enter your top competitors into the EyeOn tool, and you will begin receiving weekly email reports that include info on new blog articles, new website pages, summaries of their search ads, and social media posting trends.
For email marketers, this is valuable in two ways:
Content inspiration: Use EyeOn to monitor competitors' latest blog and social content so fresh ideas keep coming without starting from scratch each month. New content your competitors publish often reflects what they are also emailing to their lists.
Timing intelligence: If a competitor just launched a new product, promotion, or ad campaign, daily traffic patterns can reveal how effective it is and which channels are driving the results.
The EyeOn app allows you to create a list of up to 10 domains to watch, and it tracks their activity and sends weekly updates straight to your inbox. This keeps your finger on the pulse of your category without requiring you to check reports manually.
Step 5: Improve Email Copy Quality with the SEO Writing Assistant
Semrush's SEO Writing Assistant is not just for blog posts. Semrush's content analysis tools can improve your email performance significantly. The writing assistant checks your email copy for readability, tone, and SEO optimization.
Before you send any email, paste your body copy into the Writing Assistant to check:
Readability score (aim for Grade 8 or lower for broad audiences)
Tone consistency
Keyword density and relevance
Originality
This is especially useful for email sequences that double as content, such as onboarding flows and newsletters that drive traffic back to your blog. Speaking of which: improving your email list segmentation strategies means better targeting and higher engagement, which the Writing Assistant can help you maintain across segments.
Step 6: Tie Semrush Data to Email Performance Metrics
Bot-driven phantom engagement has made open rates unreliable, pushing high-performing teams toward revenue per email, list churn, and lifetime value as the metrics that matter. Semrush supports this shift by helping you measure the downstream impact of email, not just inbox engagement.
Here is how:
Use Position Tracking to monitor whether the topics in your email campaigns are gaining search traction over time.
Use the Traffic Analytics Email dashboard to track whether your email-driven landing page traffic is growing relative to competitors.
Use One2Target to verify that your audience profile is consistent with the subscribers converting from your list.
By regularly analyzing the Email dashboard, you can develop a data-driven approach to building valuable email marketing campaigns that drive real business outcomes rather than vanity metrics.
Step 7: Use Semrush Mailchimp Integration for Reporting
If you use Mailchimp as your email platform, Semrush now connects directly to it. Semrush offers powerful integrations including Mailchimp, enabling you to deliver value-driving insights and key metrics from top digital marketing tools in one place, with the ability to automatically summarize data using AI-powered widgets.
This integration means your Mailchimp performance data can sit alongside your SEO, social, and competitive data in a single Semrush report, giving you a holistic view of how email fits into your overall channel mix.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Semrush have an email marketing tool built in?
Semrush does not have a traditional email sending platform. It does offer an AI PR Toolkit with email campaign functionality for PR outreach, and a Link Building Tool with email templates for outreach sequences. In the AI PR Toolkit, you can create and send personalized PR pitches to your chosen media, starting from scratch, drafting with AI, or summarizing an existing press release into an email. For full email marketing campaigns, you pair Semrush's research tools with a dedicated platform like Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, or Klaviyo.
How do I use Semrush to find email content ideas?
The keyword research features help you understand what your audience is searching for, allowing you to create more relevant email content. If certain keywords are driving traffic to your competitors, consider incorporating related topics into your newsletters. Start with the Keyword Magic Tool, filter for question-based queries, and build your editorial calendar around the topics with the highest relevance to your audience.
Can Semrush show me what my competitors are sending in their emails?
Not directly. Semrush cannot intercept or display actual email content. However, the Email dashboard reveals how competitors generate website traffic from email marketing campaigns, helping you uncover effective email strategies, landing page tactics, and traffic patterns. Paired with EyeOn for content monitoring, you get a strong picture of what they are promoting and when.
How can Semrush improve my email open and click rates?
Semrush improves these rates indirectly. Better audience research (via One2Target) means more relevant content. Better keyword-informed subject lines align with subscriber intent. Better copy quality (via the Writing Assistant) reduces confusion and friction. Brands that regularly A/B test their emails achieve 83% higher ROI than those that never test. Companies that never test report average ROI of 2,300%, while those that often test achieve 4,200%. Use Semrush's competitive and content intelligence to inform what you test, then let your email platform run the experiments.
Think of Semrush as the intelligence layer that sits behind your email platform of choice. It tells you what to write, who to target, what your competitors are doing, and whether your efforts are working.
Step 1: Research Your Audience Before You Build a List
The biggest mistake most email marketers make is building their list first and thinking about audience fit second. Semrush reverses that.
You can research competitor audiences to help define your own. Open Semrush's One2Target tool, enter up to five competitors' domains, and you will see a complete overview of the audience's demographics, socioeconomics, online behavior, and more. This data tells you who is already engaging with brands like yours, which helps you build list-building campaigns and lead magnets that attract the right subscribers.
Once you know your audience, you can use that profile to shape:
Step 2: Use Keyword Research to Drive Email Content
The most consistent complaint from email subscribers is irrelevant content. Semrush's keyword tools solve this by anchoring your content to what your audience actually cares about.
Semrush's Keyword Magic Tool is one of its most powerful features, tapping into a database of over 20 billion keywords and offering endless possibilities for finding keyword ideas tailored to any niche.
Here is how to apply this to email:
Enter a broad topic relevant to your industry into the Keyword Magic Tool.
Filter by question-based keywords to find what subscribers are trying to learn or solve.
These reflect how people naturally ask questions in a search engine, and increasingly, how they prompt AI tools. Answer-style content built around these questions can help a website get visible on both traditional rankings and AI citations.
Use those same questions to structure your email newsletters, subject lines, and body content.
Topic Research is another powerful option. It helps you move beyond exact keyword phrasing and into broader themes, headlines, and related questions that people already care about.
The result: emails that feel timely, useful, and directly relevant to where your subscribers are in their journey. Strong subject lines that connect to real search intent also perform better. For more on that, read our guide to email subject line best practices that boost open rates.
Step 3: Spy on Competitor Email Strategies Using Traffic Analytics
This is where Semrush becomes genuinely hard to replicate. The Traffic Analytics Email Dashboard lets you see how competitors drive traffic from email campaigns, without access to their accounts.
The Email dashboard reveals how competitors generate website traffic from email marketing campaigns, helping you uncover effective email strategies, landing page tactics, and traffic patterns to inform your own strategy.
Specifically, you can use this dashboard to:
Study Trending Pages to understand what types of offers and content convert well in email campaigns, then develop similar resources with your unique value proposition.
Use the Traffic Trend data to identify when email engagement increases during specific seasons or events, and plan your email calendar accordingly.
Examine which pages competitors promote via email to discover content gaps in your own email strategy.
The Traffic Distribution section includes a dedicated dashboard for each traffic channel, including Email. Each source has its own trend lines, device splits, top sources, trending pages, and more.
To access this data: go to Traffic Analytics in Semrush, enter a competitor's domain, and navigate to the Traffic Distribution section. Select the Email channel tab to isolate email-driven traffic data.
Step 4: Monitor Competitor Campaigns with EyeOn
Staying current with what competitors are publishing is manual, tedious work without the right tool. Semrush's EyeOn handles this automatically.
Just enter your top competitors into the EyeOn tool, and you will begin receiving weekly email reports that include info on new blog articles, new website pages, summaries of their search ads, and social media posting trends.
For email marketers, this is valuable in two ways:
Content inspiration: Use EyeOn to monitor competitors' latest blog and social content so fresh ideas keep coming without starting from scratch each month. New content your competitors publish often reflects what they are also emailing to their lists.
Timing intelligence: If a competitor just launched a new product, promotion, or ad campaign, daily traffic patterns can reveal how effective it is and which channels are driving the results.
The EyeOn app allows you to create a list of up to 10 domains to watch, and it tracks their activity and sends weekly updates straight to your inbox. This keeps your finger on the pulse of your category without requiring you to check reports manually.
Step 5: Improve Email Copy Quality with the SEO Writing Assistant
Semrush's SEO Writing Assistant is not just for blog posts. Semrush's content analysis tools can improve your email performance significantly. The writing assistant checks your email copy for readability, tone, and SEO optimization.
Before you send any email, paste your body copy into the Writing Assistant to check:
Readability score (aim for Grade 8 or lower for broad audiences)
Tone consistency
Keyword density and relevance
Originality
This is especially useful for email sequences that double as content, such as onboarding flows and newsletters that drive traffic back to your blog. Speaking of which: improving your email list segmentation strategies means better targeting and higher engagement, which the Writing Assistant can help you maintain across segments.
Step 6: Tie Semrush Data to Email Performance Metrics
Bot-driven phantom engagement has made open rates unreliable, pushing high-performing teams toward revenue per email, list churn, and lifetime value as the metrics that matter. Semrush supports this shift by helping you measure the downstream impact of email, not just inbox engagement.
Here is how:
Use Position Tracking to monitor whether the topics in your email campaigns are gaining search traction over time.
Use the Traffic Analytics Email dashboard to track whether your email-driven landing page traffic is growing relative to competitors.
Use One2Target to verify that your audience profile is consistent with the subscribers converting from your list.
By regularly analyzing the Email dashboard, you can develop a data-driven approach to building valuable email marketing campaigns that drive real business outcomes rather than vanity metrics.
Step 7: Use Semrush Mailchimp Integration for Reporting
If you use Mailchimp as your email platform, Semrush now connects directly to it. Semrush offers powerful integrations including Mailchimp, enabling you to deliver value-driving insights and key metrics from top digital marketing tools in one place, with the ability to automatically summarize data using AI-powered widgets.
This integration means your Mailchimp performance data can sit alongside your SEO, social, and competitive data in a single Semrush report, giving you a holistic view of how email fits into your overall channel mix.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Semrush have an email marketing tool built in?
Semrush does not have a traditional email sending platform. It does offer an AI PR Toolkit with email campaign functionality for PR outreach, and a Link Building Tool with email templates for outreach sequences. In the AI PR Toolkit, you can create and send personalized PR pitches to your chosen media, starting from scratch, drafting with AI, or summarizing an existing press release into an email. For full email marketing campaigns, you pair Semrush's research tools with a dedicated platform like Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, or Klaviyo.
How do I use Semrush to find email content ideas?
The keyword research features help you understand what your audience is searching for, allowing you to create more relevant email content. If certain keywords are driving traffic to your competitors, consider incorporating related topics into your newsletters. Start with the Keyword Magic Tool, filter for question-based queries, and build your editorial calendar around the topics with the highest relevance to your audience.
Can Semrush show me what my competitors are sending in their emails?
Not directly. Semrush cannot intercept or display actual email content. However, the Email dashboard reveals how competitors generate website traffic from email marketing campaigns, helping you uncover effective email strategies, landing page tactics, and traffic patterns. Paired with EyeOn for content monitoring, you get a strong picture of what they are promoting and when.
How can Semrush improve my email open and click rates?
Semrush improves these rates indirectly. Better audience research (via One2Target) means more relevant content. Better keyword-informed subject lines align with subscriber intent. Better copy quality (via the Writing Assistant) reduces confusion and friction. Brands that regularly A/B test their emails achieve 83% higher ROI than those that never test. Companies that never test report average ROI of 2,300%, while those that often test achieve 4,200%. Use Semrush's competitive and content intelligence to inform what you test, then let your email platform run the experiments.
