Creating a persona for your core audience may take time, but in the end it is well worth it. It is recommended that you make three to five personas to represent your audience so you can cover the majority of them with still be specific to their needs. Creating a marketing persona template is useful when understanding the job title, demographics, goals and challenges, values/fears, and the marketing message you are trying to pitch. Digging deeper into more specific information can be useful depending on the business and if their hobbies, blogs they read, and where they get their news from could provide that additional information you needed.
Now I will provide the steps you need to take to create a marketing persona that will set you up for success!
Where do your visitors come from?
Figuring out where your visitors came from, what keywords they searched for, and how long they spent once they reached the site plays an important role in forming data that is key for personas as it reveals what desires and interests your audience are looking for. You can then use this tool to decide how to market and include information that stands out.
Become friends with Social Media
Do your research and find your potential customers asking questions or incorporating products or likings through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or even Snapchat and Instagram. People of all ages use social media to communicate and boast about products they like and dislike. So why not use them in your favor?
Use your entire team to collaborate
Not only should the marketing team be in charge of strategizing the best ways to price, promote and place the product within its competition but involving customer growth, development, and more should be involved when creating the persona that will entice your customers. Having multiple perspectives brings more ideas to the table which will better serve the audience.
Know your audience
Use surveys and interviews to get to know your customers better. They build a useful marketing persona, so you can fully understand them. Interviews is the most important because they are able to reveal deep insights into your customers goals, values and pain points that will resonate with each and every one of them.
Once you have built and understood your marketing persona, it’s time to focus on incorporating those in email marketing…
Never strive to email to a whole bunch of people who are subscribed, instead write as if you’re emailing to one person because it makes them a whole lot more personal. While doing so it is also important to only send the email out if it conveys an important message because no one likes junk mail. We first can start off with creating an outstanding subject line that will attract attention from the beginning. Using power words, numbers, cleverness, and being unique when creating the email will give you a better chance at getting the email opened by all customers. Next, we will have to cultivate the readers by creating engaging emails. Keep emails short and to the point so that readers don’t get overwhelmed and stop reading. Key tips in doing this includes using the word you, adding personality, stay away from boring writing, and don’t be cold-hearted when creating an email that should care about the readers.
Now let’s put the two together to incorporate a buyer persona within an email campaign:
Create an effective emailing strategy: Now that we will have a clear buyer-persona we can create an email strategy that builds trust and increases brand awareness. It is important to talk about the core values the buyer-persona can relate to the most and shape them to the buyer persona’s goals.
Understand the buyer’s journey: Align the email campaign to notice the problem and look for solutions to overcome their needs. From here, the buyer goes into consideration and looks for other options. Lastly, the purchasing part is the most important part because you want the buyer to take action. Knowing your buyer persona will help you frame emails to keep the buyer within the journey and follow your call to action.
Personalize the email to stand out: Standing out among good and bad email campaigns falls within personalizing and sending out a great email copy that they can relate to and will have a high open rate. If the email can achieve these things, then most customers will follow through and purchase what you have convinced them to buy.
I hope these pointers help build personas within your email marketing and result in a better experience for both the customer and the business.
Citations:
Duistermaat, HennekeHenneke. “37 Tips for Writing Emails That Get Opened, Read, and Clicked.” Copyblogger, 11 Oct. 2018, https://www.copyblogger.com/37-email-marketing-tips/.
Lee, Kevan. “The Beginner’s Guide to Creating Marketing Personas: Buffer.” Buffer Marketing Library, Buffer Social Blog, 30 Nov. 2018, https://buffer.com/library/marketing-personas-beginners-guide.
Marrs, Megan. “The 9 Best Email Subject Line Styles to Increase Your Open Rates.” WordStream, https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/03/31/email-subject-lines.
Petterson, Mathew. “All about Email Open Rates.” Campaign Monitor, https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/2018/06/all-about-email-open-rates/.
Team, SalesHandy. “The Significance of Buyer Persona in Email Marketing.” SalesHandy, 3 Sept. 2019, https://www.saleshandy.com/blog/buyer-persona-in-email-marketing/#Frameand.
