Whether you’ve already tested out some inbound marketing services or not, one thing should be very clear about the world of inbound. Inbound is all about this marriage of context and content. The reason that inbound marketing works so well is because it’s based on the fact that people are drawn to content that matters to them. An email marketing service is one type of promotional channel that can help you get the right content out to the right people. What should be emphasized here is the right PEOPLE part.

To really see the results that you’re looking for with email marketing, you need to make sure you’re making the time to understand your audience, and more specifically, buyer personas.

The Basics of Buyer Personas

Simply put, buyer personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers based off of research and some select educated speculation. Buyer personas aren’t just target markets or specific real people. They tell the story of your prospect’s common behavior patterns, shared pain points, and universal goals.

Buyer personas will help you really get in the mindset of your prospects, so you can be sure to attract and reach them in the right way. With inbound, it’s all about speaking the same language as your personas and making sure you’re helping them find the solutions to their problems.

Buyer personas may seem intimidating, but they don’t have to be. It’s important to start simple and to expand from there. You’ll learn quickly that you probably have more than one buyer persona, but don’t complicate it. Take the time to clearly understand the differences between your different personas because it will be the starting point for how you decide to segment them.

Segmentation is what will be the key to your email marketing. When you divide your contacts into smaller groups based on similarities, it lets you use context to make your content more relevant and engaging. So what do you segment by? It’s probably obvious by now – you segment by your buyer personas.

Buyer Personas Help You Write Better Emails

So, how does this foundational idea help you write better emails? Consider this example. Let’s say you’re working for a catering company and looking to sell your services. Your ideal customer, your buyer persona, is a middle-aged person who is recently engaged and looking to get married. They’re interested in quality and something they can customize, but their pain point is sticking to a budget and making sure the quality matches the pricing. They tend to compare options online before making big purchases since they want to be confident in their decision. They love to read reviews.

A clear definition of your buyer persona helps you define your audience. Now that you know the above buyer persona, you have a good idea of who will be on the other side of an email send and reading your message. Use buyer personas to guide you in slicing and dicing your contacts into the right segments.

Create Targeted Emails for Your Buyer Personas

Are you convinced that buyer personas might be the missing piece to your email marketing strategy? Great! Now every time you create an email, think about which buyer persona you are going to be sending this to and make sure you have a segmented list.

These types of targeted emails are what can help your open and clickthrough rates skyrocket. At HubSpot we did an experiment with persona-based segmentation. We learned that that targeting emails by persona increase email clickthrough rates 16%.

Now it’s your time! Start first by researching your buyer personas. Whether it’s interviewing your current customers or doing some online research, uncover who your buyer personas are and developing those segments. Buyer personas are a continual process, so they won’t ever be finished. The more email marketing you do, the more you’ll even learn about these buyer personas.

And to help you on your way, click on the image below to download our Buyer Persona Template!