Creating an Email Marketing Persona

Overview

You have a great business idea, but you only start making money when you find your audience and begin communicating with them. This guide explains the following:

• Building your business personas
• Researching your audience
• The basics of content strategy

You should at least have a general idea of your business plan, your product, and perhaps a vague notion of your audience. It’s time to dive deeper to find out who is theoretically the most excited about your product. Spending time now to research your audience will pay off later in your marketing decisions and product development.

When making decisions about brand colors, email content, email frequency, types of segments you want to create in Klaviyo, etc., you want to know your audience so that decision-making becomes a breeze. This phase is crucial, so do your utmost.

Building Your Audience Personas

Unless your product is extremely specific, you likely have a variety of customers, varying in familiarity with your product, motivations for using your services, income, etc. For example, for meal subscription boxes, there is an audience of young professionals who enjoy cooking, people who can't cook, and couples looking for a shared activity, but this audience may not be as relevant to teenagers or parents with young children.

Building your audience personas will help you understand who will be actively engaged with your product and who may not be as interested. The more focused the personas, the more targeted your marketing can be.

So how do you find out what your audience personas are? Download and fill out this table to get to know your audience. You want to develop at least three target user personas, but also consider building a few loose and non-user personas. If you find your scope is broad, try splitting your personas. For example, if your product is marketable to people aged 24 to 40, break them down into four groups—women aged 24 to 32, women aged 33 to 40, men aged 24 to 32, and men aged 33 to 40—and build your audience personas around each smaller group.

Want an example? Go here for an example of a target audience persona for a beer glass manufacturer.

Researching Your Audience

Once you’ve identified your personas, find them in real life and start living a day in their shoes. Follow the social media influencers they follow, watch their TV shows, and consult those who know the group well. Want to really get inside your customers' heads? Watch TV shows and read books/magazines where your personas appear, both currently and at different stages in their lives (when they were teenagers, in their 20s, as parents, etc.).

During that research, jot down commonly used phrases and references that you might incorporate into your messaging. Be sure to answer the following questions about your different target audiences:

• What do they think about day-to-day?
• What do they feel?
• What conversations do they have with their friends and family?
• What information are they receiving from the media?
• Where do they spend their time?

Basics of Content Strategy

Now that you have a good understanding of your business plan, audience, and product, it’s time to develop a content strategy. A content strategy answers the following questions:

• Why are you creating content?
• Who is the audience for the content?
• Why do they need your content?

Creating a content strategy should naturally flow from your personas and your audience. Download this table and fill it out to get an idea of what your content strategy should look like. The key is to create a cohesive message throughout your marketing efforts.

Before sending information to your audience, ask yourself the following questions:

• What message are you trying to convey?
• What is the goal for your message?
• How does your message align with the rest of your brand?

Your content strategy is crucial for building your brand. Refer to it often and conduct tests with your messaging to understand how best to communicate with your intended audience.

Additional Sources

• Manual - For Developing a Content Calendar
• Manual - For Building a Brand Voice