How to Use Personality Types to Boost Customer Engagement
Getting people to take action has always been more art than science. Let’s say you are trying to motivate someone to stick with a debt repayment plan, engage in regular pro-wellness activities or just trying to get sports fans to buy a ticket. How you phrase this request is critical. Within marketing parlance, we refer to this as a ‘call to action’, the crux of marketing messaging. Crafting this is the hallmark of marketing gurus and agencies who have narrowed in over the years on a one-size-fits-all tactic because targeting the individual is too challenging.
Digital marketing does enable you to employ A/B marketing message testing to see which message gets the best response, but this still gives you one message for your entire list. The good news is that, with advances in machine-learning, it is now possible to introduce some personality science to the approach of messaging and develop a dozen different messages to ensure you are optimizing the messaging for the most people possible. In short, if you want someone to do something, you have to speak their language.
One Size Does Not Fit All
Messages will resonate with people if the language you use is reflective of their personality. There is a range of personality types without any one or two predominant ones. At psyML, we use HEXACO, the gold standard for personality understanding.The model includes the following six main dimensions that make up the acronym: Honesty/Humility, Emotionality, eXtraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness.
Academic psychologists favor HEXACO (which is an evolution of the OCEAN or “Big Five” model) over DISC and MBTI because it has a history of significant research that attests to its validity; the number of citations in research journals for HEXACO far exceeds others. For a more in-depth discussion of this, please have a look at my colleague’s article.
HEXACO is a semantic-based personality model which allows us to use the specific language that is known to resonate with people of each personality type. We have leveraged that information to develop appeals that are consistent with who they are as individuals.
In one of the largest studies we have conducted, with over 8,000 participants, we saw a reasonably even distribution across the 12 major personality types reflected by the high or low end of each HEXACO dimension:
How To Assess Personality
The type of language that will appeal to these various personality types can be differentiated to optimize follow through and engagement. At psyML, we have a quick survey that can assess your basic personality in about 30 seconds. Try it out here
This provides a basic level of insight but e also have more robust tools, such as 24-item, 60-item or 100-item questionnaires that offer a deeper level of understanding at the sub-dimensional level. We also have the ability to gauge personality implicitly, using only 250 words of text, which can come from scraped emails, text messages or a Twitter handle. With this insight, you can tailor your messaging to increase the chance of reaching prospects based on who they truly are.
Sample Personality Types and How To Appeal To Them
Example of Varying Messaging to Appeal to Different Personality Types
Would you like to explore optimizing your messaging to use the language that will truly resonate with your prospects?
Contact us to explore starting a program with your organization: https://psyml.co/get-started/
