Without knowing our targets, we cannot make a strategy or execute. We are explaining how defining buyer persona for email marketing can end up becoming a differentiator between a failed and a successful email outreach campaign. Imagine an archer aiming his arrow wearing a blindfold. What do you think are the chances that he will hit the target he is aiming for? I know it’s pretty obvious that he might not hit his target.
Likewise, for your email marketing efforts, chances of it becoming effective, generating leads as well as increasing ROI without analyzing the buyer’s persona would not give you the result you are aiming for. Your email campaign might not achieve the customer bases it is aiming for. Creating a buyer’s persona gives your email campaign a direction and makes it more effective.
Here’s another way to think about it: without a buyer’s persona your marketing campaigns, emails campaigns do not have an insight on who are their potential buyers. Let’s start with the basics first!
A persona is a profile which is created to replicate a personality of the typical customer of the product to understand the potential customer’s needs, pain point, interests, budget and priorities and more of a specific type of user.
A buyer’s persona is a significant person in a B2B organization. They have a say in the purchasing process. Usually a buyer’s persona represents various influencers and decision makers within a company, who might not even use the product themselves.
Example: If you are an education institute who wants to impart education to students of high school. Now to create a persona you have to ask this question: Who are your customers ? What do they care about ? Where do they spend their time so we can engage with them ?
So, let’s find out how we are going to create a basic buyer persona answering this question. Here, students’ parents are the customers, they care about good results of their kid’s education and they spend most of their time watching news channels or are influenced by word of mouth.
From the above discussion we can conclude the educational institute should focus on
- Creating awareness of their product
- Should gain credibility via past results of their students and their achievements and use customer feedback for more impact.
- Mass media ad campaigns like television, emailing campaigns can be used to do so.
You may think that the product will be used by the student then why are we creating a burger’s persona of parent. So, let me clarify why student persona is not the target audience:
- They are not the key decision makers when it comes to paying tutorial fees
- They will be the target audience when the institute is developing the course they want to teach, then the institute should create a user’s persona to get good results from their students.
So, now you can understand the importance of a user’s persona. Over 90% of companies using persona have been able to gain a clearer understanding about who their potential buyers are.
Generate more qualified leads with cold outreach!
What are the different types of persona?
When a company launches its major product, which is the core product of the company then the marketers create various persona to understand their target audience better and form different personas like:
- In B2B businesses marketers focus on creating persona keeping in mind the different personnel in the organization who are in authority to make the purchase decision and usability of their product.
- Whereas in B2C business where products are sold directly to retail customers the persona will be created considering factors like affordability, their interest and influences, demographic and more.
How to create a detailed buyer’s persona?
By now, you would have a good idea about what a buyer’s persona is. So, let’s see how to create a buyer’s persona and use it to improve your understanding of the product. Almost 44% of B2B marketers already use buyer’s persona for marketing. A buyer’s persona is a representation of deep market research, customer data and the insight it provides businesses of its potential buyers. It is the combination of research, surveys and interviews that an organization collects to create customer data.
Many people confuse target audience with buyer persona, because there are similarities both of them. Though, they are very much different. A target audience is like a team but a persona as a single person of the team. So, when you look at the target audience it’s a group with similar interest and within the same age range whereas when you consider a persona it’s about an individual member’s goals, pain point, priority i.e. more detailed analysis of the individual potential buyer’s.
Here are some ways in which you can gather data to create a buyer’s persona.
- Identifying the age, demographic, income level and sources of the income, pain point of your buyer’s will help you understand a customer. This data will give you a wide platform on which to base your decision and concrete data with which to make a good decision.
- Tracking the buyer’s journey will give you insights on why the buyer purchased your product. These metrics can help you with that. These metric can help you with that:
- Email open rate
- Call to action
- Email conversion rate
- Tracking your buyer’s journey
- Click through rate
Analyzing the patterns emerging from your data will help you to draw conclusions.
- Know where your lead spends their time which will help you increase your engagement and direct your marketing efforts. Example: If your buyer’s are young and tech savvy, put your marketing efforts on website interface, cold emailing and if your buyers belong to the age range that is not to be found online then go for cold emailing, direct emailing would increase your engagement.
Mistakes made while defining buyer’s persona
- Don’t base your buyer’s persona on a single buyer’s
- The bases of your buyer’s persona should be data- driven and not on any stereotype
- Be consistent with the formation of your persona like (i.e) make it real as a person
- Know the difference between creating a persona and a target audience.
Importance of buyer's persona in email marketing
From the above discussion you did get a fair idea of what a buyer’s persona is and how to create a buyer’s persona. Now lets see how you can make your email campaign more effective and increase your conversion rate with the help of buyer’s persona.
When you have an in- depth knowledge about your potential buyer’s you know where you can find them, which will help you generate leads. After you have a list of potential leads, your initial approach is a key factor that determines their forward movement in the marketing funnel.
One way is to approach your prospect via email campaign and increase awareness about your product and services. These can be achieved by personalizing your message. But personalization at scale is an important job. With automated drip email you can achieve your outreach at scale and with insights on buyer’s persona you can personalize your email at scale. 56% of companies have generated high quality leads using personas.
- While drafting your email subject line is an essential factor that determines that your email will be read or not. Buyer’s persona helps you understand the mind frame of your buyer. A data-driven insight can help you understand which subject line would work for you. By analyzing the open rate of your email you can gain insight on a perfect subject line for your prospect. Using persona increases email open rate up to 2-5 times.
- Once your leads enter your sales funnel he becomes your prospect. Know he is someone who is considering your product and services as a solution to the issues he is struggling with. At this stage you have to present them with a solution that matches their need and requirement as well as keep them in loop so that they don’t lose contact with you. With automated follow-up you can be consistent with your engagement with the prospect and by tracking the prospect’s journey you can avail them with information and offers that meet their need. Persona based content increased prospect engagement up to six fold.
- A better understanding of the content appealing to your prospect and efficiency of your call to action can give you an insight on what would add value to your buyer’s. Click-through-rate which measures click as percentage of all emails delivered can tell you the efficiency of your email content with respect to its engagement with the prospect. Buyer’s persona can increase click-through-open rate by 14%. Click to open rate looks at clicks as a percentage to email that were opened which will assess the effectiveness of your call to action and landing page.
- Now that your prospect has moved to the bottom of the sale he has potentially made his mind to purchase your product so knowing their trigger point, and presenting them with potential gains that will come their way by choosing your service, you can convert them into a potential client. Buyer’s persona can be a lot of help to you as it will help you know what are the trigger points of your prospect that can lead you to close the deal.
So, I would leave you with the thought that having an organized email marketing can generate what you are expecting and also helps you increase personalization in your engagement with the client. The better you know your prospect the better you can understand their struggles and carter them this will increase trust as well as optimize your sales engagement.
Buyer persona in your email marketing will not only help you to achieve better results directly. But, it will also help you to write clear messages for your prospects as well.