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How to Build Subscriber Personas that Drive Better Email Results (and Understand What Your Audience Truly Wants)

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RE:markable is the weekly email about emails. Dropping the latest email marketing news, updates, insights, free resources, upcoming masterclasses, webinars, and of course, a little inbox mischief.

 

 

Subscriber personas might sound like something from a Criminal Minds episode, but every great marketer needs a persona, and this is doubly true for email marketing.

If you want your emails to actually land and resonate, you need to go beyond names and email addresses.

You need to build subscriber personas.

But how do you start knowing what your audience truly wants, and how can subscriber personas drive better results?

Let’s (deep) dive in!

 

What are subscriber personas?

You might be thinking of marketing personas, but subscriber personas are slightly different.

In short, a subscriber persona is a semi-fictional profile of your email subscribers based on real data, behaviours, motivations, and demographics.

The reason a subscriber persona is slightly different from a marketing persona is that it goes deeper, focusing specifically on how people engage with your emails.

Unlike a marketing persona that tends to be focused on the top/middle of the funnel and on attracting and converting customers, a subscriber persona uses data from those already opted in as subscribers to tailor content for engagement and retention purposes.

A subscriber persona helps you to understand:

  • Why someone subscribed
  • What they expect from your content
  • How your audience behaves in their inbox
  • What motivates them to engage, click, or convert

When done well and thoroughly, subscriber personas will help you to:

  • Send the right content, at the right time, in the right tone
  • Improve segmentation
  • Reduce unsubscribes and spam complaints
  • Drive higher open and click-through rates
So, basically all of the boxes you want to be ticking for your email marketing!
 

 

Step-by-step: How to build subscriber personas

Now that you know what a subscriber persona is and why they’re so important for your email marketing research (and wider email segmentation strategy), how do you get started on building subscriber personas?

Here’s how we’d do it, step by step.

 

Step 1: Start with the data you have

The good news is that you can start with what you already have!

You can use the data already in your CRM, email platform, and analytics tools, including:

  • Open and click data
  • Purchase or conversion history
  • Website behaviour
  • Subscription source (lead magnet, form, etc)

For B2B:

Additional data like job roles, industries, company sizes, and buying cycles are useful and relevant.

For B2C:

Look at lifestyle indicators, income ranges, and purchasing behaviours.

If you have gaps in your data, ask!

Use surveys, polls, or follow-up emails to gather:

  • Why did they sign up?
  • What content do they want more of?
  • What problems are they trying to solve?


Step 2: Analyse for deeper insights

This is the stage where you start to uncover the why behind the clicks.

Once you’ve gathered all of the necessary data, it’s time to ask:

  • What are their pain points?
  • What motivates them to open or engage?
  • When are they opening? What do they ignore?
  • Are they here to buy, learn, or explore?

All of this information can be used to fine-tune your content, timing, and even subject lines — pretty important stuff for your email marketing strategy, right?


Step 3: Build the persona profiles

By gathering together all of the insights from the first two steps, you can begin shaping them into 2-4 key profiles.

You want to include:

  • A memorable name or label
  • Key goals and challenges
  • Favourite content types or topics
  • Typical engagement behaviour (e.g., ‘only clicks product updates’)

Don’t worry about perfection. Start with your best assumptions and refine as you learn more (trial and error is the backbone of most great marketing, after all!).

 

Step 4: Apply your personas to your strategy

It’s time for you (and your personas) to put in the work!

Your personas can be used to create segments in your ESP, and you can start to adapt tone, messaging, frequency, and content type for each persona, too.
It’s not about saying just what you want to say, it’s about telling your audience what they need to hear (when they need to hear it).

One of the biggest benefits of subscriber personas is that you can not only do just that, you can also prioritise high-converting segments with the most potential because you’re basing your decisions on data, not guesswork!

 

Start learning what your subscribers actually want

Too many email marketers make the mistake of thinking that they know their audience.

Knowing isn’t guessing or assuming, or doing it a certain way because “we’ve always done it this way.”

True, meaningful insights come from asking and listening.

 

Ask better questions upfront

Rather than crawling around on your hands and knees for scraps of information you never even asked for, make your life easier by optimising your forms from the get-go.

That means not just asking for a name and email, but asking why people are signing up, what content they’re interested in, and using motivational data to shape their onboarding.

And don’t be afraid to keep on asking questions, too. That data isn’t going to refine itself!

You can use plenty of different methods to keep gathering important information:

  • Feedback emails
  • Polls and quizzes
  • One-question surveys
  • A simple “hit reply and tell us…”


Track behaviour and spot patterns

Your data doesn’t just sit gathering dust (or it shouldn’t, anyway).

Your data can be used to better understand which type of content is and isn’t resonating, and even when your audience is engaging the most.

It’s also important to keep track of the metrics that aren’t as satisfying, like when your engagement rate drops or unsubscribes or spam complaints rise — your metrics are there to guide you and to make your email marketing better over time.

If you’re sending a salesy follow-up to a discount code and you’re getting unsubscribes, it’s a sign.

If people love your educational content but ignore your product promos, that’s also a clue!

 

Understand motivations (not just demographics)

If you want to know what your audience wants to see, then you need to know what motivates them.

Did they subscribe to learn, or to buy? Are they solving a problem, or chasing value? Are they new to your world, or a longtime follower?

Once you know what it is that motivates your subscribers, then you won’t be selling to people who aren’t ready or educating people who want to buy.

 

Read the room marketing: The final layer

Reading the room is about the holy trinity of email marketing: tone, timing, and context.

Even with a great persona and strong data, your email might fall flat if:

  • It arrives at the wrong time
  • The tone doesn’t fit the moment
  • It ignores what your audience is going through

So, which signals should you be looking out for to help you read the room?

  • Drops in opens or clicks
  • Increases in unsubscribes or complaints
  • Low engagement from previously active segments

Remember: external context matters! If you’re in the middle of an industry crisis, global event, product recall or other wider-world-related-problem, a hard sell following up a bad news cycle is about the worst thing you can do.

Focus on building trust with thoughtful, helpful messages instead. 

 

The questions you need to ask to “Read the Room”:

  • Are my metrics dropping across the board?
  • Am I still delivering on what I promised when they subscribed?
  • Are my segments still relevant?
  • Am I asking for feedback regularly?
  • Does my current messaging match their current mindset?
It’s all about meeting your audience where they are with what they need most in that moment — if you’re not checking in on your data regularly and adjusting accordingly, you’re not reading the room!


Quick tips for smarter subscriber engagement

  • Set up automated alerts for engagement dips

  • Run regular feedback loops

  • Train your team to adjust tone when needed 

  • Watch news, trends, and audience behaviour shifts

  • Reassess personas at least twice a year

  • Provide value first, sell second

  • READ. THE. ROOM!



Final thought: Real people, not just email addresses

Your emails land in real inboxes, opened by real people, with real emotions, pressures, goals, and distractions.

If you want to improve results, sending more isn’t the answer.

You need to send better.

That means building personas based on truth, not assumptions, and making sure you’re regularly asking questions to know what your audience wants so that you can adapt to their behaviour and the wider context.

Sending with empathy, precision, and purpose is at the heart of reading the room, and it’s the best way to treat your subscribers like real people rather than robots.

It’s also how email becomes less about ‘just marketing’ and more about being human!

 

Need help making CRM work in your business?

We help brands turn CRM from a passive tool into a powerful growth function.

Book a CRM strategy session with Beth to find out more about how we can help!

 

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RE:markable is the weekly email about emails. Dropping the latest email marketing news, updates, insights, free resources, upcoming masterclasses, webinars, and of course, a little inbox mischief.
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