When a campaign disappoints, the instinct is to rewrite it. New subject lines, a different angle, a fresh sequence. Occasionally that helps. Far more often the message was fine and it was being sent to people who were never going to care.
Targeting is harder to interrogate than copy, which is why it rarely gets interrogated.
What a target definition has to contain
Not a persona document with a stock photograph and a name like “Procurement Pete”. A short list of filters a researcher can apply without guessing:
- Sectors, named specifically rather than as “B2B services”.
- Size bands — headcount or revenue, with a floor and a ceiling. The ceiling matters: enterprises you cannot service waste as much time as businesses too small to pay.
- Geography, including anywhere you cannot deliver.
- Job titles, and separately the titles that look right but never hold the budget.
- Disqualifiers. The list of reasons to exclude an account is usually the most valuable part and the part nobody writes down.
- Triggers, where they exist — a funding round, a new hire in a relevant role, a technology they just adopted.
Where to get it
Not from a brainstorm. From your closed-won list. Take the last twenty customers worth having, and the last twenty deals that consumed effort and went nowhere, and look at what separates the groups. The answer is frequently not what the leadership team believes it is.
Why it has to be signed off
Because when results come in, the first argument is always about whether the right people were contacted. A definition agreed in advance turns that from an argument into a decision: either the targeting was wrong and we change it, or it was right and the message needs work. You cannot run that test without a baseline.
How long it takes
About a week, most of which is one honest conversation and some time in your own CRM. It is the cheapest week in the engagement and the one that determines what the other eleven are worth.