Blog: Website Personas - Poetry in Motion through Email Commotion
Mary Mary, quite contrary, how is your inbox flow?
With email spells, and spam sale trails, and reply chains all in a row.
The flood. Never stops. Email after email, notification after notification, the nearly torturous stream that no dam can stop. Not even a spam flag can block the tide, only curb it momentarily.
So how do we make our own email stand out from the rest? How do we make sure that our emails get the clicks, the engagement, the interest? It’s all about the persona. By making sure that your persona is clear in the title, header, and content, you will be able create effective email marketing that your audience will care about.
What is a persona?
A persona is a fictional character that is created to be the ideal customer for a brand. It includes likes, dislikes, habits, desires, wants, demographics, even what they care most about and how it relates to a brand. If you focus all your marketing efforts toward the persona, you will be more likely to connect with your target audiences as the personas and segments align.
But your persona will only be effective if you have a goal. Think about if you were to get in the car and drive to your friend’s house to hang out, but didn’t know where you were going. You’d drive around aimlessly, wasting time and gas--aka resources--trying to figure out how to get to your friend’s house when you could have asked for directions or the address all along.
That’s what a persona is: a roadmap, a blueprint, a plan, directions of how to directly target and communicate with your ideal customers in your market segments.
Ok...but why do personas matter?
So how effective is a persona in email marketing? Does it help break through the clutter that flows in and out of our inboxes, day in and day out? Turns out, it does. Segmented emails that are clearly defined and aimed at a target audience have a 15% higher open rate as they are relevant to the consumer (WordStream).
Your defined persona will feel compelled to open the email, interact with the content, follow calls to action, maybe even follow through to conversion--all because you have focused the content directly to them. A well-structured persona within the marketing plan will influence actual customers to do the same. Even to the point that relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than general broadcasted emails (WordStream).
So we know emails that are targeted will have better open rates and revenue streams. But we still don’t know how to make the persona come through in the email. Or even how to form them.
Right. Got it. I don't know where to start though, how do I make a persona?
The key to creating a strong persona is research. To create the character, you must have a clear understanding of your target audience. Until you understand their consumer behavior and what their habits are, the persona will lack its full potential of power.
Once you have completed your research, build your persona by determining the most important aspects of the character. The persona breakdown may read more like a resume, with bios, hobbies, personal experiences, brand affiliations, etc. Or the breakdown may also have more focus on psychographic or personality traits that affect likes, dislikes, wants, desires, and needs (MarketSplash). The goal is to create a unique, fictional customer who stands out from the general consumer to create goals--or a roadmap--to reaching your desired destination (MarketSplash).
I've got my persona. Am I done?
When you have fully researched your persona, your final step is to create the segmented email directly to the fictional customer. Focus on what your character values. Put yourself in your shoes. If you were your persona, what email headline would cut through the email chains that would otherwise lull you to sleep? What content or deals or even information does your character find important to their lives? Only by finding what your persona’s values will your email create engagement.
Be sure to connect all pieces of content to effective landing pages and that ad copy, email copy, and landing page copy all relate to the same call to action. The call to action should specifically focus on fulfilling a need or desire that the persona needs or wants.
No matter what, your persona should be the driving force in your email marketing. If you can focus your content and photos as if you are talking to your fictional character, it will be more effective and more engaging for your audiences. And it just might keep them interested for more than a few seconds. Maybe even long enough to entertain and delight them.
Flow, flow, flow your ads, get your emails clean,
Personas set solidly, no more of cluttering, no spam to be seen.
MarketSplash: https://marketsplash.com/persona-examples/ (Links to an external site.
