A buyer persona describes the person inside a company who feels the problem you solve and can act on it: their job, what they're measured on, what frustrates them and how they like to be approached. The ideal customer profile picks the company; the persona picks the person.
What to write down
- Typical job titles and seniority.
- What they're responsible for and how their success is judged.
- The problems in their week your offer touches.
- What they'd need to believe to take a call, and what makes them delete an email.
Using personas in cold email
Write a different email for each persona. A founder cares about growth and time; a head of sales about pipeline and quota; an operations lead about cost and risk. The same product, framed for each, reads as more relevant than one email for everyone.
Keep it real
Build personas from conversations with actual customers and from the replies your campaigns get, not from guesses. Update them as you learn.