3 Expert Insights About Knowing Your Audience (September 2024)

Sending a sales email without knowing your audience is like throwing darts in the dark with your eyes closed and a blindfold on.

You might hit, but probably not.

If you want to grab your reader’s attention and get a response, you need to know your audience, who they are, and what their problem is.

Here are 3 expert insights that can help you meaningfully connect with your audience.

Nail down your buyer persona

As Yurii Veremchuk explains, poorly defined buyer personas can torpedo an email’s chances of conversion before it even sends.

Many design their personas using their target audience’s demographics, but this is a trap. Sometimes it works, but sometimes it backfires.

Consider the case of King Charles III and Ozzy Osborne.

Identical demographics. 2 very different people.

They may be audience lookalikes, but it’s unlikely you’ll be able to convert both of them with the same approach.

You’ll need to dig deeper and use high-level personalization that shows you get your audience.

How you can apply this

Your first step is to break up your buyer persona into smaller, more specific segments.

A good approach to start with is their level in the company. That’s because cold emails should be different for:

• C-level
• Managers
• Non-managers

This allows you to write copy and tailor emails to their role more effectively. C-level and managers typically prefer company-based personalization while non-managers appreciate individualized content.

Then, before you click “Send”, ask yourself these 5 questions:

• What’s in it for the prospect?
• Are you being clear and concise in the email?
• Why should the reader want to respond right away?
• Does the prospect get away with ignoring the email?
• Do you show you understand your reader?

If you can’t answer these questions, revisit your email and adjust it so that you can answer them.

Don’t be afraid of bending the rules

As the story goes, Nike created a shoe they loved – Air Jordans.

There were two problems:

1. Air Jordans weren’t 51% white.
2. Air Jordans were meant to be worn by Michael Jordan, not the entire team.

Then somebody checked the fine print and learned that breaking these rules would only cost $5,000 in fines.

In return, they’d get 48 minutes of undivided attention from their target audience. It even gave them the “banned narrative” to leverage in their campaigns.

The crazy part? Nike asked Michael Jordan to keep wearing the shoes and they’d pay the fine each time. The exact amount Nike paid is unknown, but at 82 games in a season (excluding playoffs), Nike would have to pay $410K (in reality, this number is a lot less).

It worked though. By May 1985, Nike has sold $70M worth of Air Jordans. Flash forward ~40 years, and Air Jordans are among the most iconic shoes in the world. 

How you can apply this

There are two lessons of this story:

1. Don’t be afraid of bending the rules if the potential payoff is huge.
2. Check what’s at stake if you do bend the rules so that any losses don’t sink you.

Nike lost $410K but turned it into $70M+ in one year (and billions in the long run).

The hard part is figuring out which rules you can bend and which you can’t.

For example, you can’t skip mailbox warm-up if you plan on running cold email campaigns. Otherwise, your domains get blacklisted and accounts blocked. But you can shorten warm-up time with the right tactics.

Writing is another spot where you can bend the rules, whether it’s using an AI SDR to write emails for you or leveraging copywriting hacks to make language more engaging. After all, the best sales emails speak to people like a chat.

But you can’t break the language completely. Your readers need to understand your intent.

Give a name to your prospects’ problems

As Brendan Hufford tells, Copy.ai’s Kyle Coleman told two stories about giving voice to your audience’s problem:

• At Clari, the problem “revenue leak” resonated as their audience’s most expensive and urgent problem.
• At Copy.ai, “fast generative AI” fell flat, but what seemed to get results was “GTM bloat”.

In Coleman’s words, “If people know us for the problem we solve, that’s way more important.”

How you can apply this

A key component of personalization is knowing your audience’s main problems. Sometimes they might not even know they have a problem, let alone the name.

That’s why it’s important to figure out the name of the problem you’re solving.

In the case of AiSDR, which seems like a more compelling case to buyers:

1. That we’re an AI SDR that uses generative AI?
2. That we solve pipeline paralysis and opportunity drought?

Chances are you answered the second one.

Long story short, give prospects words to describe the frustrations they’ve felt for years, and they’ll choose you.