What is a user profile?

Understanding the characteristics and tendencies of a user base is essential for any successful business strategy. By studying data collected on the actions and behaviors of their customers, companies can better identify profitable opportunities and create more engaging experiences for those customers.

A user profile (also known as a customer profile or buyer persona) is one way to organize this data to reveal and understand patterns and trends among users.

This helps businesses to tailor content, messaging, offers, and more to specific users, as opposed to creating generalized content for their entire customer base.

How are user profiles created?

User profiles are created through a process known as segmentation. This technique divides a company’s user base into smaller groups or segments based on certain criteria, including:

  • Demographics (age, gender, location)
  • Interests (types of products purchased)
  • Behavior (time spent browsing or shopping online)
  • Lifestyle choices or purchase habits

Segmentation helps companies gain insight into who their audiences are, what those audiences need or want from the business, and ultimately how best to reach and engage those audiences.

Once a segment is created, companies can develop user profiles for each group to help uncover patterns in customer behavior that may not be obvious when studying data from the entire group.

Why are user profiles important?

User profiles are powerful tools that help marketers make smarter decisions that improve the customer experience and drive ROI. Some of the ways user profiles help marketers include:

1. Informing broader marketing strategy

User profiles provide key insights such as:

  • Which channels customers use to engage with the company’s products or services
  • What topics are of particular interest
  • How likely they are to purchase certain items
  • When they may be most likely to do so

For example, an online retailer might discover that their young adult female customers prefer SMS notifications about upcoming sales while older male customers prefer emails instead.

They can then use this information to create targeted, personalized, and meaningful engagements across multiple marketing channels.

2. Uncovering key customer motivations
User profiles also offer important clues about the motivations behind consumer decisions, which offer invaluable guidance to product teams when making design changes or developing new releases.

3. Reducing Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC)
By having a deeper understanding of who your customers are and what key motivators drive them to take action, you can create more targeted, impactful ad campaigns.

4. Improving customer experience
By understanding the key problems your customers face, you’re able to create content that directly addresses those problems, improving your overall customer experience.

Creating user profiles with Emarsys

Emarsys helps leading brands like Nike, Babbel, and adidas Runtastic to connect their sales, product, and customer data to create unified user profiles that enable real-time personalized omnichannel customer engagement..