When teams speak the same persona: How using personas supercharges email effectiveness

Marketers often emphasize the importance of understanding a target audience before launching any marketing communication. However, teams typically have no idea who opens and reads emails. They create multipage PDFs of customer persona descriptions (wasting countless hours and resources) and never revisit them.

Without a clear understanding of relevant personas across all email marketing team members, email campaigns risk failing to convert. In this article, we'll explain the elements that make personas a truly effective marketing tool and how email marketing teams can use personas.

Key takeaways

1. Persona is a deep understanding of your target audience. You should view them as real people, not fictional characters, about whom you collect detailed data crucial to your marketing decisions.
2. Creating personas is a multistep process based on data, not assumptions.
3. Email is personal by its nature. Every message lands in a specific person’s inbox, which means it must feel relevant in content, tone, and design.

Why does understanding of persona in email marketing matter?

Understanding your target audience occurs at several levels, where you go from a general idea to a deep understanding. Using personas in email marketing significantly improves campaign effectiveness; it five-fold increases open rates and click-through rates. Personalized emails increase CTR by 14% and conversions by 10%.

Test your team’s knowledge of personas.

Try asking everyone on your email marketing team what personas they’re targeting. You’ll likely hear a wide range of answers, from a complete lack of understanding of what a persona is to a general description of a target audience segment. And that’s without even mentioning specifics: the number of personas and their pain points, motivations, and behavioral characteristics.

This suggests that personas either haven’t been defined, or the file has long been lost in company documentation and isn’t even being introduced during onboarding. The theory written in all the marketing books isn’t being applied because it often seems complicated and resource-intensive. Therefore, it’s important to simplify your persona processes.

What is a customer persona in email marketing? 

The first level involves creating target groups and describing the marketing-critical parameters for each group. For example, a target group might be “beginning email marketers who want to learn how to create engaging email campaigns without spending a lot of time on production.”

The next level of understanding your audience is a detailed description of the persona representing this group. You should view them as real people, not fictional characters, from whom you collect detailed data crucial to your marketing decisions.

A persona (customer persona or buyer persona) is a fictional yet fact-based representation of your ideal client. It gives the target group a face, name, age, marital status, profession, and interests and hobbies. You know how the persona lives, what motivates him or her when choosing products and services, his or her education level, values, fears, goals, desires, motivations, and lifestyle.

A persona isn’t simply a description of a typical buyer but rather an imaginary snapshot of the clients (people or companies) that perfectly match your products or services. While personas can be fictional, composite characters, the details behind their creation are based on real data, research, and customer feedback.

This is why personas are becoming incredibly valuable tools for email marketers. They help shape every aspect of a strategy — from design and copywriting to content selection, list segmentation, and email sequence development.

How to create personas for email marketing

Creating personas is a multistep process based on data, not assumptions. It’s important that a persona is data-driven and created based on reliable statistics and real customer feedback rather than relying on intuition combined with superficial experience.

The following steps are needed to create a customer persona for your company:

1. Collect demographic data: Age, gender, location, income, marital status, and employment status. These data can be obtained from Google Analytics, CRM systems, and your company’s customer support department.
2. Gather psychographic data: Values, interests, attitudes, fears, and lifestyles. This information can help you understand why and how customers make decisions. Sources include email responses, surveys, and forums, such Reddit and Quora, where you can find discussions related to your industry.
3. Conduct research and in-depth interviews: Data and short surveys will only provide incomplete information. Interview real customers to gain valuable insights.
4. Talk to customer-facing employees, such as sales, marketing, and support: These employees engage customers at different stages of their journeys. They may also have information about those who decided not to purchase from you, which can provide important insights.

What you should include in persona descriptions:

• start with general customer groups, such as aspiring marketers or dog owners, and break them down into more specific personas. A recommended number of personas is 3 to 10.
• give each persona a name and photo. Avoid generic names, as they make a persona less realistic. Use a realistic photo, not an avatar or stock image.
• describe the persona’s story. Write a narrative based on real customers’ stories that describe their journey to finding the solutions your company offers. Include key questions that the persona asked at different stages.
• focus on important details. Avoid unnecessary information. For example, it’s important to know that a persona has an MBA but not necessarily where he or she attended college. Focus on what influences their purchasing decisions.

Raymond Chen, founder and CEO of the 11 Agency, which helps DTC brands scale to 7-9 figures, told us that each persona goes beyond demographics, such as “25-35-year-old woman, urban, or mid-income.” 

In the 11 Agency, they document psychographic and behavioral details that are directly useful for email marketing, such as the following:

• primary motivation to purchase (e.g., discount-driven vs. quality-first)
• buying triggers and objections
• voice tone and subject line styles that resonate
• preferred content formats (e.g., storytelling, quick promos, and educational content)
• visual/design preferences (minimalist vs. bold/expressive)
• typical customer journey stage where he or she engages most (e.g., impulse buyer vs. repeat loyalist)

In addition, according to Svitlana Fursa, the following can be added to this list of questions:

• why they buy now, and what success looks like;
• price sensitivity, promotions (buy 3, pay for 2), interest in new products;
• delivery speed, warranty, social proof;
• do and don’t say words.

This level of detail ensures that copywriters, designers, and strategists can reference personas in their daily work, not just in strategy decks.

How to use customer personas for email production

Customer personas are a powerful tool in email marketing, but only if they’re built on real insights: analytics, customer feedback, and sales data. When you understand your customers’ email personas, you don’t just know what content they need; you also know how to talk to them — which wording, voice tone, and even design style will resonate.

Email, by its very nature, is already personal. Every message lands in a specific person’s inbox, which means that it must feel relevant in content, tone, and design. Personas make this possible: Instead of writing to “everyone,” you write as if you know exactly who’s reading — because you do.

It’s important here to separate a few concepts:

• tokenization is the technical step of inserting a name or data point (“Hi, Helen!”). Many confuse it with personalization, but it’s not the same.
• personalization goes deeper. It’s about addressing recipients’ pain points, needs, and motivations, and shaping your message so it feels meaningful to them.

When we talk about automatic personalization, it doesn’t mean creating millions of unique versions for every individual. In practice, most teams start with a handful of well-defined personas. Then, instead of one “catch-all” email, you create several variations — each crafted for a particular persona group. The copy might shift slightly; the visuals might change tone, but the essence is that each persona receives a message that feels like it was written for him or her.

Here’s where teamwork matters. Building persona-driven campaigns isn’t a solo job. Copywriters, designers, strategists, and product marketers all contribute their expertise to make a final email consistent. Personas become the shared language that helps everyone remain aligned: the writer knows which pain points to highlight, the designer knows what style will connect, and the strategist knows how to segment the database.

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Tokenization vs. True personalization in email marketing

The practical applications of personas by different email team members can be as follows:

• Strategists

One of the most powerful ways to use personas is to segment lists and personalize email sequences based on persona attributes. You can divide subscribers into groups based on personas and create automated email sequences for each group. Each sequence should target the unique pain points, goals, and motivations of each persona, helping to nudge leads in the right direction.

• Copywriters

Personalize content: Craft subject lines, CTAs, and content that reflect a persona’s needs, vocabulary, and pain points. Use the language (slang) of your persona. To connect with your audience, speak their language.

• Designers

Adapt layouts, colors, and visuals to persona preferences (e.g., a minimalist design for B2B executives vs. a playful design for Gen Z shoppers). Choose relevant images. Personas will help you understand which visuals your audience will respond to best. 

• Email marketers

Adjust the sending time and frequency of email campaigns based on your customer personas’ preferences.

Svitlana Fursa shared some examples of how personas influenced copy, design, or segmentation in a specific campaign in the Promodo agency.

Electronics retailer, back-to-school campaign

For an electronics retailer, the back-to-school campaign focused on a segment of 30–45-year-olds — family-oriented customers looking for affordable options. The copy used empathetic, conversational language like “Equip your kids without breaking the bank,” addressing parents’ real concerns about school expenses. The design supported this message with warm, friendly colors and playful, kid-centered visuals that created a caring, family-first atmosphere and made the offer feel both practical and emotionally relevant.

Tires eCommerce, pre-season

For a tire eCommerce brand, the pre-season campaign targeted subscribers who hadn’t made a purchase in over 12 months. The copy opened with an attention-grabbing line like “Winter is coming”, a simple reminder with a sense of urgency. The design stayed clean and practical, featuring infographics that explained tread patterns and helped customers choose the right tires. This straightforward, informative approach built trust and effectively re-engaged inactive buyers.

Medical clinics or online pharmacies, May–June

For medical clinics and online pharmacies, the May–June campaign focused on parents buying products for their children. The emails encouraged them to “Be prepared for summer camp and take care of your kids,” combining practical advice with gentle reminders. The content featured essential seasonal products, SPF, and after-sun care, stomach remedies, and anti-allergy solutions, presented in a clean, helpful layout. This approach not only boosted sales but also positioned the brand as a caring, reliable partner for families during the summer.

How to use personas depending on business type (B2C vs. B2B)

For B2C: Personas are often defined by demographic data and lifestyles. Segmentation allows you to avoid mass emails and send relevant offers. For example, you shouldn’t send an email about children’s vitamins to someone interested in muscle-building sports nutrition.

For B2B: The decision-making process is more complex because it involves multiple people. Therefore, it’s necessary to create personas for different positions (e.g., an engineer, IT director, or CFO). The content for each persona should be tailored to his or her specific needs, such as technical information for an engineer and case studies and testimonials for a decision-maker.

Wrapping up

Personas are the foundation for a well-thought-out, effective email strategy. They can enable you to transition from mass emails to targeted, personalized communication that builds customer loyalty and increases conversions. In the next article, you'll discover the most effective ways to store persona information, making it easy to update and share with your entire team.