More buyers now ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Gemini for a tool before they ever open Google. So we keep measuring what those models actually say when someone asks for software in a category. Email marketing gave us the most encouraging result we have run, because of Beehiiv. It is the one teardown where the challenger actually won its slot, and you can see exactly how.
We asked two versions of the same question and ran each one 10 times on all four models. That is 40 answers per question.
Version one was the plain category label:
What's the best email marketing platform for a business?
Version two was the specific job Beehiiv is built for:
How does a creator or founder start a newsletter, grow subscribers, and make money from it?
The receipt
How many of the 10 runs named each tool, per model.
Best email tool Start and grow a newsletter
(category label) (the job Beehiiv is built for)
Model Beehiiv Mailchimp Beehiiv Mailchimp
----------------- ------- --------- ------- ---------
ChatGPT 0/10 10/10 0/10 10/10
Claude 0/10 10/10 10/10 10/10
Gemini 0/10 10/10 9/10 10/10
Perplexity 4/10 9/10 10/10 7/10
----------------- ------- --------- ------- ---------
All four models 4/40 39/40 29/40 37/40
Named on the generic question: Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign, Brevo,
Constant Contact. Named on the newsletter question: Beehiiv, Kit, Substack.
On the category label, Beehiiv is almost invisible
Ask for the best email marketing platform and Beehiiv was named 4 times out of 40, all of them on Perplexity. Mailchimp was named 39 times, with Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign, Brevo, and Constant Contact filling the rest. If Beehiiv tried to win the generic email marketing question, it would lose, the same way every challenger loses the category label.
Ask the specific job, and Beehiiv wins it
Now the second question. Beehiiv jumped from 4 of 40 to 29 of 40. Perplexity and Claude named it on all 10 runs, Gemini on 9. Kit and Substack surged next to it. This is not a fluke of wording, it is the whole point. The models associate Beehiiv with the newsletter job because the creator world has written about it, constantly, as the answer to exactly that job. The corpus matches the question, so the model reaches for it.
That is the difference between Beehiiv and the challengers in our other teardowns. A tool that is absent everywhere has not been written about for any job yet. Beehiiv is absent on the generic question and dominant on the specific one, because it picked a job and got itself documented as the answer to that job, not to the category.
The one model that still will not budge
Look at ChatGPT. Even on the newsletter question, the question written for Beehiiv's exact buyer, ChatGPT named it 0 times out of 10. This keeps happening in our teardowns. ChatGPT is consistently the slowest of the four to name a challenger, even one that the other three now reach for easily. If ChatGPT is where your buyers ask, winning the sub-intent on the other three is not enough on its own, and it is worth knowing that before you assume the job is done.
What this means if you are the challenger
Beehiiv is the playbook. Do not fight for the category label, you will lose it to the incumbent. Pick the specific job you can genuinely own, and get written about, by real users and real publications, as the answer to that job in the words buyers use. Do that well enough and three of the four models will name you, even while the generic question still belongs to Mailchimp. Then keep watching ChatGPT, because it moves last.
Check your own category
Pick your category. Ask the plain label question and the version that describes the specific job your best customers hire you for. Run both a handful of times on ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini and count who gets named. If you are invisible on the label but present on the job, you are doing it right. If you are invisible on both, you have a job to go own.
If you want the fast version, run your own domain through the free scan and see who AI recommends in your category and how the wording moves it: bersyn.com free scan.
In your category, is there a specific job you could own the way Beehiiv owns newsletters, even if the category label is already gone?
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