So how many persona sets do you need anyway?

In our last blog in this series, we tackled a common question: When should I update my personas? The answer, in short: almost never. Personas are a foundation—not a real-time dashboard—and you don’t pour new concrete every week.

But if that post answered the when, this one’s about the what. As in: How many persona sets do I actually need?

But it’s 2025 and we’re all very busy, so here’s the TLDR: You almost certainly only want ONE persona set.

But for those of us who want a deeper dive, read on. 👇

What is a persona set?

A persona set is a small group of customer personas—each one representing a distinct cluster of your real customers. These personas are archetypes based on shared traits and behaviors, built from the people who have actually converted. They're the foundation for structured personalization across your brand.

So let’s clarify terms:

• A Persona is a single, representative profile within a set. Think "Urban Millennial Max" or "Suburban Saver Susan."
• A Persona set is the full group of those profiles—usually 3 to 7 personas total—that collectively describe your customer base.

Personas aren't based on assumptions or hypotheticals. And they’re definitely not built around leads or website visitors. The reason is that personas need to be grounded in actual converted customers, you know the ones who said yes, not the ones who ghosted you. These people have the traits you want to seek out in new leads who you also want to convert.

The purpose of a persona set is to give your brand a coherent, actionable structure for engaging your audience. You use them to vary messaging, align creative, and personalize campaigns across the funnel.

How do we build them?

At Faraday, we build persona sets using enriched data and k-means clustering. We start with your customer file—ideally recent customers—and enhance it with third-party traits from the Faraday Identity Graph, which includes demographic signals (like age, household size, income range), geographic markers, lifestyle and behavior data, and more. This rich, consented data allows our AI to surface patterns that wouldn’t be obvious from first-party data alone.

After we enrich your data, we use a method called k-means clustering, which automatically groups all customers into 3–7 distinct clusters. That range is deliberate: too few, and you lose nuance; too many, and the personas stop being practical—after all, personas power personalization and you don’t really want to customize 37 emails each time you make a send! Remember, our AI is always powerful but is only value-driving when tied to a concrete business function.

The result: a persona set that reflects your business as it is today—and that you can use to personalize everything from top-of-funnel ads to post-purchase journeys.

So how many persona sets do I need?

In a nutshell, one is enough (we promise).

Here’s the temptation (and we’ve heard it many times): you start to see interesting subgroups, and you think, “Should I just make a whole new persona set for my high-value customers? Or for leads? Or for gift buyers?”

But this is important: resist the urge. One persona set, built on your customer base (ideally recent customers), can answer all of those questions if you use it well. And what’s more, every additional persona set you create adds complexity—fragmented messaging, duplicated creative, messy reporting—with very little return.

Think about it practically. Let’s say you’re using personas to personalize emails. If you have 35 personas, you need 35 distinct emails each time you make a send, tailored to each persona. The same would be true for a direct mail campaign, or any other use case built on personas.

And if you really want to dig into those subgroups, that is still a great option with one persona set, you just use secondary analysis instead of additional personas.

Use secondary analysis for deeper insights

Let’s say you’re curious about your high-LTV buyers. Or people who tend to buy during promotions. Or those who give gifts.

The instinct might be to build a new persona set just for those customers—but that’s the wrong move.

Instead, use secondary analysis on the persona set you already have. This means identifying which of your existing personas are most likely to exhibit those behaviors. Does persona B have more high-value buyers? Does persona D respond more often to promotions?

This lets you tailor messaging, promotions, or next-best-action logic within your current framework—without rebuilding the architecture from scratch.

You’re analyzing, not segmenting. That distinction matters. If your persona set is the architectural structure, secondary analysis is like putting sensors in each room to see who uses what, when, and why. It adds intelligence without requiring you to redraw the floorplan.

That’s why secondary analysis is the right tool for exploring behavior. It lets you get more specific without fragmenting your strategy.

So would I ever use a second persona set?

We get this question a lot—and it’s not a bad one. In theory, there are situations where a second persona set could make sense. But in practice, they’re vanishingly rare.

Let’s say your business has two truly distinct models—like Netflix in the DVD-by-mail era vs. its streaming service. Maybe the customer base for each product barely overlaps. In a case like that, sure, there’s a logic to considering separate persona sets.

But even then, we don’t recommend starting there. First, build a single persona set from your full customer base and run secondary analysis. You may find that your personas naturally reflect the split without needing to manufacture two totally separate structures.

The risk of jumping too soon into multiple sets is high: fragmented messaging, duplicate effort, and confusing strategy. You’ve gone from one coherent framework to parallel tracks that require twice the upkeep—and often deliver half the clarity.

As Andy put it in a recent meeting:

“If you really, really, really, really think you need more than one… you still don’t.”

How to use personas

Once you have a persona set built from your customers, the value comes from how you apply it.

You don’t just file it away as “interesting.” You use it as a structure to guide how you engage people across the entire funnel.

Start with leads

Even though your personas were built on customer data, you can (and should) apply them to leads and prospects. Every lead can be mapped to the closest-matching persona based on their traits.

That lets you do smart things early—like showing persona-aligned Facebook ads, driving people to persona-specific landing pages, or customizing messaging tone based on emotional drivers.

As Andy says:

“You want continuity between how you handle leads and how you handle customers. That means the architecture has to start early.”

Personalize campaigns

This is personalization 101. Instead of blasting one-size-fits-all emails or ads, you vary your content based on what you know about each persona. Not to the point of infinite complexity—but enough to make the message feel more relevant, more human.

And you don’t need 37 personas to get there. Three to seven is plenty.

Operationalize and scale

Personas are a strategic lens. They help you organize your audience, inform creative, and structure internal decision-making. In a large org, you could even assign brand managers to own each persona—getting deep into what makes that group tick.

Just don’t mistake them for a silver bullet. You’re not using personas to predict exact behaviors (like who’ll buy Product X on Thursday). For that, you’d use specific outcomes or predictive models. But for building audience structure and making smarter content decisions, personas are the starting point.

Conclusion

If you take nothing else from this, remember this: your persona set is not a one-off project. It’s the structural framework—the architectural blueprint—that supports your entire customer engagement strategy.

When you get it right, everything else becomes easier. Ads align. Messaging resonates. Creative connects. And the decisions you make, from acquisition to retention, rest on a solid foundation.

Don’t overcomplicate it. Build once. Use often. And always start with the people who said yes.