How to use buyer-typologies for email creation and segmentation

If you would want to follow a German online retailer’s email communication, I’d suggest OTTO (subscribe). OTTO is always in the forefront when it comes to experimenting with new things. Like e.g. PlayUp! Video-Mails (here), Employee-generated Content (see here & here), image personalization (here), interactive email creatives (here) and more. The latest strike: a psychological personality-profiling questionnaire.

Subscriber-personalities for segmentation?

Some days ago, email marketing blogger Remy Bergsma wrote an interesting introductory post on four basic personality structures. He called them personas. AFAIK it’s a topic that has hardly been discussed in connection with segmenting subscribers or just how to viewing them. So what’s is about? Well, basically it’s an approach to better incorporate all the unconscious things into our marketing efforts, that highly determine the process of decision-making. It’s important to map that because neurosciences tell us that in many areas most part of decision-making is done subconsciously. (Some neuromarketing-studies tell that the implicit part makes up to 95%.) Furthermore, it’s an interesting segmentation criterion, because personality stays rather stable during human life.

One concept: NeuroIPS

There are several of those frameworks available to map personalities; some of which identify four core types. Like those, Remy described on emailblog.eu. Respectively 4 quadrants in a 2-dimensional space, where each dimension is either low or high. For example NeuroIPS® is one of those frameworks that identifies four core personalities (see figure 1 below). All got a different desire for the 2 dimensions information (I) and order (O):

  1. The economist
    (high I, low O, needs data, facts and strives for efficiency, …)
  2. The relationship-orientated
    (high I & O, strives for harmony and trust, …)
  3. The trendsetter
    (low I, high O, creative, searches opportunities, relies on his guts, …)
  4. The strategist
    (low I & O, visionary, quality-orientated, thinking aesthetically, …)

And those four basic personalities can be further subdivided by 16 types. One use in email marketing now is that we know all segments differ in how they are addressed best. We could optimize newsletters by tailoring design, key visuals, length of copy, colors, arguments and writing style for instance (see figure 3 below).

Visual questionnaire to determine types

But how do you map all the complex mental structures of your subscribers into those 4 or 16 “quadrants”? One way I explained yesterday on emailmarketing.de with regards to an email from OTTO. OTTO sent me a so called visual questionnaire (ViQ) which aims exactly for doing that. It’s a quite simple image-based psychological test that doesn’t take more than 5 minutes to answer. The basic idea of the ViQ is to draw conclusions from individual visual perceptions (see figure 2 above) to the underlying personality. Because different personalities prefer different color schemes, forms et cetera. And this personality determines decision-making – “do I read more”, “do I click”, “do I buy”,…

Below you see the email invitation plus 2 questionnaire-examples (find more here):

What do you think of that – does this have some potential?

Enjoyed this one? Subscribe for my hand-picked list of the best email marketing tips. Get inspiring ideas from international email experts, every Friday: (archive♞)
Yes, I accept the Privacy Policy
Delivery on Fridays, 5 pm CET. You can always unsubscribe.
It's valuable, I promise. Subscribers rate it >8 out of 10 (!) on average.

One Response to How to use buyer-typologies for email creation and segmentation

  1. How to use buyer-typologies for email creation and segmentation http://t.co/1ffW1Ufz

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.