How to Target Your ICP with Email Marketing Campaigns

Remember those extensive meetings where marketing, sales, and customer success leaders collaborated with stakeholders to define the ideal customer for your business? On a scale from 1 to 10, how effectively have you integrated the outcomes of those discussions into your business strategies? If your score is low, it’s time to reconsider.

Building Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) is a critical part of a thriving business strategy. Without them, you risk attracting leads that are unlikely to convert into customers, let alone loyal ones.

In this blog post, we’ll dive into the essentials of ICP marketing and show a simple, cost-effective way to target those profiles: email campaigns. Discover how to apply email techniques, including list growth, segmentation, and personalization, to earn the trust of your ICP and guide them on a journey with your brand.

What Are ICPs and Why We Need Them

An Ideal Customer Profile—sometimes found as client or buyer profile—is a detailed representation of a business or individual that would benefit the most from your product or services. Plus, ideal customers can provide maximum value to your business in return, from ROI to brand reputation.

The key characteristics to find your perfect B2B customer include:

• Geographic location and restrictions
• Industry and company size
• Team size and usage
• Annual revenue and budget
• Challenges and pain points
• Technology stack

But what about B2C? Characteristics typically include:

• Demographics–age, location, gender, etc.
• Psychographics–interests, values, behaviors, etc.
• Habits–preferences, spending patterns, etc.

ICP vs Buyer Persona

ICPs and buyer or customer personas are often used interchangeably. And while they both represent the audience you want to attract, they’re not the same.

What’s the difference between ICP and a buyer persona? The ICP defines the ideal segment a business targets. And the buyer persona represents a specific (fictional) person within that ICP. Coming up with personas helps you refine your messaging and targeting, as you have more specific characteristics in mind.

Let’s see the difference between ICP and customer persona with an example.

Imagine a company that develops a simple-to-use web design platform. Their ICP can include marketing professionals from 25 to 45 in tech companies up to 500 employees. On the other hand, their buyer persona can be Sara, a 40-year-old startup marketing lead from New York, looking for new mar tech solutions for the team.

Finally, businesses can have more than one ICPs and buyer personas, depending on their product and services.

Why Email Marketing Is Perfect for Targeting Different ICPs

Email marketing helps businesses attract and nurture decision-makers that meet their ICP criteria. With tools like customer segmentation and personalization (e.g., with custom fields), you can send highly targeted campaigns based on engagement level and browsing behavior.

These tips benefit various teams. From sales professionals who plan their next cold outreach, to account managers working relentlessly to keep loyal customers happy, to product developers seeking ways to meet customer needs.

It’s an affordable solution compared to other popular targeting techniques such as paid advertising. Plus, you have complete ownership of your database. All you need is to find the right email marketing platform, perfect for your budget and industry.

For instance, Moosend offers various premade email templates for different industries and needs to save time and design resources. You can use the audience segmentation and personalization capabilities to tailor your emails to the ICPs, including an intuitive automation builder to schedule emails in advance.

It also comes with pop-ups and landing pages to collect the email addresses of your next best customers, and analytics to monitor the campaign performance.

Try Moosend for free

Best Email Marketing Strategies to Reach Different ICPs

Let’s imagine that you have an eco-tech brand with two main ICPs: eco-conscious startups and large corporations committed to sustainability. Here’s how to attract, nurture, and convert potential customers in these segments using emails:

1. Create valuable content

To build a powerful email engine, you need to fuel it with great content. Each ICP requires a different content marketing approach to feel tempted. For startups, the focus is usually on acquiring cost-effective and innovative solutions. Blog posts, how-to guides, and case studies from current customers can do the trick.

On the other hand, large corporations need more complex content–within a longer sales cycle–to convert. Whitepapers, thought leadership resources, and industry reports are more attractive for these target customers.

Work with your content marketing team or agency to produce high-quality content that will outstand competitors. Then refine your email marketing messages, adjusting your tone based on the ICP.

For instance, this email campaign by Stripe is a great example of how to target larger businesses, full of valuable stats. The CTA button at the top redirects email readers to the report to nurture them further:

Subject line: [New report] Is your billing system holding you back?

Unsure about the effectiveness of your copy for your ICPs? Use an AI writer and type the right prompts to help you find the right words.

2. Improve lead generation assets

To bring more qualified leads to the table and boost conversion rates, you need to refine your list-building assets. Improving your signup forms, landing pages, and lead magnets is key, from design to content.

While most businesses set up popup forms on their website, tweaking the messaging of different highly visited pages to suit the intent of the visitor can work miracles. Back to our eco-tech scenario.

You’ve created two webpages for different services to target both ICPs. Why not tailor each popup based on the type of customer you’re targeting? For instance, invite visitors interested in lower-cost products to sign up for a free trial, while offering those looking at higher-priced items a 15-minute demo with a sales representative. The more targeted and relevant the copy, the better it will influence their purchasing decisions.

The same rules apply for landing pages and lead magnets. Place them at spots inside your website your ICP is more likely to visit, including why they should share their contact information with you. Make sure that the form is easy to fill in to make those quality leads convert fast.

Can you tell who Zoom is targeting through this lead magnet? Instead of creating “one-page-fits-all”, define your target market and write copy that will make them feel that you address them directly, hinting at pain points and solutions.

3. Use segmentation strategies

Email marketing software tools let users split their audiences into different groups based on various criteria–in our case startups and corporations dedicated to sustainability. For example, you can specify the ICP each email address belongs to and where they stand throughout the customer journey using custom fields or tags.

You can organize your contact lists based on demographics or engagement level, too. When you narrow down to the segments you want to target each time, design an email that will appeal to them and adjust your copywriting based on the goal of your campaign.

Let’s imagine that you run a flash sale to incentivize ideal customers closer to the consideration stage to purchase. Targeting your customer base with a flat incentive is not always a smart choice revenue-wise. Instead, send more attractive incentives to ICP segments with high revenue potential to shorten the decision-making and buying process.

Finally, you can create a list of most valuable customers and send them exclusive access to your gated content to educate them further.

4. Use clever personalization techniques

Personalization is a powerful tool in email marketing, allowing you to create tailored experiences that resonate with your Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs). For example, through dynamic content you can send different product recommendations to different startups and corporations based on browsing history or earlier interactions with your brand.

You can also set up automated email series based on certain behavioral triggers. For instance, if someone downloads an ebook that was created for eco-friendly enterprises, nurture them with a drip campaign series with relevant content, including a follow-up with an invite for a demo. If they don’t interact with those emails for a while, send them a final re-engagement email before removing them from your lists.

Most email automation software like Moosend help business set up these emails simply inside a dedicated builder following the if/then logic. Plus, you can find some premade workflow options to save time.

Try Moosend

How to Tailor Popular Email Campaign Types to ICPs

Let’s see how to adjust popular email types in SaaS and B2B marketing for different ICPs to power up your marketing efforts:

1. Welcome series

Creating a targeted welcome email series for different ICPs can enhance engagement and set the tone for a successful relationship. Introduce your value proposition and the benefits subscribers will reap if they join you. Stick with the pain points and specific needs of your ICPs to grab their attention.

In the next few days, you can follow up with product recommendations that suit their profiles or case studies from firms in their industry.

Check out this amazing example by WeWork. They included four different options to cater to unique needs and convert ICPs faster:

Subject line: Find space for your working style

2. Nurturing campaigns

Businesses can send different types of educational and promotional emails through emails to nurture ideal customers. Share valuable content to prove that you’re a thought leader and top choice in your niche to boost conversion rates.

For example, you can share a market research report or a case study you’ve recently conducted with one of your top customers that is similar to the ICP you’re targeting.

Here’s a relevant campaign by Appvia:

Subject line: Just Released: Top Cloud Engineering Stats for 2024

Plus, the more you learn about your ideal customers’ preferences by monitoring the performance of these campaigns, the better you can target them down the line. Track engagement metrics such as open and click-through rates to refine your next campaigns.

3. Re-engagement campaigns

Putting a quality lead in your marketing funnel is great, but what happens if they stop interacting with your emails? Before disappointment hits you, create an automated re-engagement email series to grab their attention.

You can start with an educational resource for this ICP and then send them a discount that may lead them to the sales process. If they don’t interact with any of those emails, consider removing them from your list. In case this sounds like a lost opportunity, ask them for their consent to keep reaching out and redirect them to the preference center.

Have a look at this re-engagement email by Busuu to get inspired:

Subject line: Hit reboot on your learning with 50% off 🤖

4. Exclusive offers

Finally, make your ICPs feel special by sending them exclusive content. Share limited time offers or coupons, including wording such as “exclusive” or “only for you” to impact their decision-making.

Another great idea would be sharing premium resources with them, such as ebooks or whitepapers to win their trust. Moreover, hold a webinar with a topic that would fascinate your ICP and invite them for free.

Here’s an example by Zoom providing early access to the Black Friday sale:

Subject line: Psst — You’re invited to shop our Black Sale early

Treat ICPs Like Lighthouses

In the vast ocean of potential customers, your Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) should be treated like lighthouses, guiding your marketing efforts with clarity. They show the path to successful customer engagement and business growth.

So, craft amazing email content for your ICPs with the methods above and watch them gradually convert into loyal customers.