Playbooks: Creating a Persona Audience

Personalized messaging drives better fundraising. With Avid, you can tailor each asset—from emails to direct mail—to a specific audience segment using persona audiences. Here’s how to create one and use it inside a play.

When you’re setting up a play and working on an asset (like an email, Facebook ad, or direct mail appeal), you can assign a specific audience to it. This ensures the messaging is relevant and impactful.

If the audience you want isn’t available in the dropdown, it means you need to create a new persona audience.

Let's see how to create one.

1. Go to Avid Pathways

Head to Avid Pathways and click the "Manage Audiences" tab. You’ll see a full list of available audiences including:

• Pre-built audience segments

• Custom segments you've created yourself

2. Create a Persona Audience

To create a new persona audience:

• Find the segment you'd like to personalize. (Or click "Add an Audience" to create a new one.)

• Click the ellipsis ( … ) under the Action column.

• Select "Create Persona Audience."

Now you’ll see a field to enter persona-specific context: key traits, motivations, and messaging guidance that reflect the audience’s unique characteristics.

Example:

Audience: Donors who started giving to a specific initiative and now support the organization more broadly.
Context: Value continued support. Respond well to impact-driven messaging and mission-wide language.

Paste your notes into the field and click Save. Avid will now remember this context whenever it generates copy for this segment.

3. Use Your Persona Audience in a Play

Head back to your Playbooks campaign. When editing an asset:

• Open Asset Information

• Choose your new persona audience from the dropdown

• Click "Generate Content"

Avid will rewrite the content—subject lines, body copy, CTAs—to align with the persona details you defined.

4. See Personalization in Action

With your persona audience selected, Avid updates all copy to match that specific segment. You’ll see:

• Subject lines adapted to audience tone

• Content rewritten for relevance and resonance

• One-to-one messaging that feels personal, not mass-produced

This approach moves you away from batch-and-blast communications and toward precision-targeted outreach that speaks directly to donor motivations.

Why Use Persona Audiences?

Persona audiences unlock personalized fundraising at scale. Instead of a one-size-fits-all message, you can:

• Tailor tone, structure, and messaging to each audience type

• Increase donor engagement and response rates

• Let AI work smarter with the context you provide