Today, we’ll talk about how to get an edge on the competition by aligning your email marketing efforts to unique buyer personas to increase sales and create strong, lifelong customer relationships.
Just Imagine, you’re sitting alone or in office, trying to write a quality and interactive piece of content for your target audience, but you’re having a hard time finding the right idea or angle.
Sounds familiar?
This is a common problem among marketers. They don’t know who they’re writing for, meaning they haven’t considered their buyer personas. You might know that you’re writing for marketers or Tech users or entrepreneurs, but do you really know who they are and what they are looking for.
Having a profound understanding of your target audience is critical if you want to write better content, develop better products, and not to forget, write effective email campaigns.
If you’re craving more inspiration on email marketing campaigns, we’ve created this fondle (like a bundle but more fun) packed with our favorite email marketing campaigns to inspire your own.
Okay, so let’s dive right in, shall we?
Before you can write awesome emails, you need to find and create your buyer personas. If you’ve already defined your buyer personas, don’t leave just yet!
I’m sure you’ll learn a thing or two you hadn’t already thought of.
There are two types of data you must consider while creating your buyer personas.
They are:
- Demographic data
- Data
Let’s take a closer look at each one.
Demographic data is relatively easy to find because the information is easily accessible and can be collected without communicating with your audience. This data could be employment status, age, location, gender, and more. There are many ways to research buyer personas based on demographic data, and my favorites are through Google Analytics, customer service, and your contact database.
You’re probably already familiar with Google Analytics, so I won’t go into detail explaining where to find all the relevant data. The idea here is to get a quick overview and understanding of the basic demographic data of your targeted audience, in this case—your sessions.
Through Google Analytics overview of your audience’s demographics such as age, gender, and location, which will be the foundation for your buyer personas.
Now, I say buyer personas in plural because you’ll most likely need to create more than one buyer persona. So, create multiple buyer personas of your targeted audience that you can target with personalized content, rather than target one buyer persona with generic content.
Okay, where else can you find information on your buyer personas?
Your customer service department
They’re sitting on a true pot of gold when it comes to customer insights. They’re your people who talk to your customers and clients every day and learn about their problems and challenges they are facing in your industry.
Ask them what generalizations can be made About your customers through the interaction they have with your team, and if there are any recurring trend to be discovered.
Contact database
Your contact database or your contact management system is a great place to discover demographic data about your leads and customers. You must take interest in knowing what your targeted audience is interested in and what they think about your business. According to Optin Contacts research, Data Based Email Marketing Campaign has 70% more chances of Open rate.
Dive into the database you already have on your contacts, and search for latest trends and see if there are any changes to be made. You’ll be surprised to know how much you can learn by going through your existing database, and how you can use your data to create or refine your buyer personas. So that’s how you find demographic data.
Psychographic data
Psychographic data can be harder to find, but it also has more value for your business. This type of data allows you to connect with your targeted audience on a deeper level and create relevant content that resonates with them.
Psychographic data includes a lot of things but mainly the attitudes, interests, and values of your targeted audience. Let’s look at ways of collecting Psychographic data for your buyer personas. The era of interacting with your targeted audience through emails is not yet fully encouraged.
You should always encourage your audience to respond to your emails, whether it’s through direct questioning or a subtle allusion. Many startups and mid-size marketing companies have begun asking these types of questions in their emails to get to know their audience better and understand their point of view. You can also ask for feedback when customers churn when or potential customers don’t convert into customers.
Here is a Pro Tip? Getting people to respond to your emails also improves your deliverability and reduces your spam score.
Pretty awesome right?
Reddit is the best resource when it comes to gathering consumer insights and for consumer research. You can find information on ANYTHING. By searching for targeted keywords related to your product in Reddit, you can see what’s most important to your audience and what they’re struggling with.
For instance, there’s a popular subreddit called r/askwomen which has almost 20k active users in the USA alone, where women ask each other all kinds of questions from career advice to cleaning tips. I tried searching for: cleaning, and I found that most of the cleaning posts are requests for cleaning tips and hacks. As an online store selling cleaning products or equipment this would be a great topic to address in the content you’re publishing.
If you combine this information with your demographic data, you can create targeted cleaning guides for specific buyer personas based on this data.
Quora
Quora is the rallying of questions. You can research on pretty much every topic on Quora, including your audience. Let’s say you run an ecommerce store or website specializing in running equipment and product bases services.
You could use Quora to search for topics or trend and see what comes up. For instance, if you search for marathon, you’ll find that a common question related to this topic is how to prepare for a marathon. If you provide your enthusiastic buyer persona with information on this, they’ll be much more likely to convert into repeat customers.
When you’re collecting psychographic data, you should pay close attention to the exact words people Use because you’ll need it when you’re creating targeted content.
Once you’ve researched your buyer’s personas, it’s time to customize your email content to these personas. It’s no longer enough to let your targeted audience know that you understand them and can help them solve their problems using your product or services. You need to interact with your audience in the language they use and by the language I don’t mean English, Spanish or Chines. I mean you need to use strong words and phrases that your targeted audience is familiar with.
Every aspect of your email from the subject line to all the way to the PS needs to be consistent with your brand’s voice, and how you want to
Communicate with your specific buyer personas.
Another important aspect is to be unique.
Now, I know we say this a lot at Sleek note but being unique is the best way to stand out in your reader’s overcrowded inbox.
The key to a successful communication channel is sending:
The right email…
To the right person…
At the right time…
It’s all about relevance.
Images
According to research,93% of consumers consider visual appearance to be key when making a purchase decision. This information alone should convince most marketers to include images in their email campaigns.
But you can’t just include images and expect your conversion rates to skyrocket. If you’re using images in your email campaigns, you must include the RIGHT images. Once again, it comes down to relevance.
So, by including an image of a product in use and a strong testimonial, they address the pain points or concerns, their audience might have about the durability and cleaning of the product.
If you include images in your Email Marketing campaigns, make sure they’re there for a reason or purpose. Don’t just add them because they look good. Images should be relevant and support your story. Otherwise, they shouldn’t be there at all.
Final Thoughts
Creating targeted email Marketing campaigns for your buyer personas is a difficult job, but if done right, you’ll not only increase your bottom line but also create stronger relationships with your targeted audience.
When every email is relevant to the receiver, more of your emails will be opened and clicked—meaning more money in the bank.
About the Author
Ryan Smith is the Senior Marketing Manager at Optin Contacts Inc. He oversees Optin Contact’s online marketing strategy and implementation. Ryan has launched 8 successful marketing campaigns including a 12-month project for Optin Contacts Inc. that doubled monthly revenue, and a social media campaign that grew the company blog’s monthly traffic by 245%.
