How To Use Emotional Targeting To Drive Conversions

Nostalgia—that powerful emotional trigger that makes us yearn for the past—powered McDonald’s brilliant 2022 campaign and became a masterclass in emotional targeting.

They tapped into our childhood memories with a simple yet effective strategy: creating Adult Happy Meals. Adults were instantly transported back to a time before bills, mortgages, and taxes—the carefree days of youth.

The results? Massive.

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People who hadn’t stepped into a McDonald’s for over a decade came rushing back. They also reintroduced those beloved childhood toys. In fact, these toys were such lucrative (and rare) items that a seller on eBay listed a trio of unopened toys for $300,000.95, and another seller listed an unopened Happy Meal toy for $25,000.

McDonald’s success with the core emotion, nostalgia, didn’t stop there. In 2024, they continued to lean into this strategy. They launched Collector’s Meals and collaborated with artists like Kerwin Frost. 

Guillaume Huin, Senior Marketing Director at McDonald’s, shared on X (formerly Twitter) in August 2024: “The Collector Cups are literally flying off the shelves faster than anything we could have anticipated or have seen in the past.”

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That’s the power of emotion in marketing: meeting people where they already are emotionally, tapping into their memories, their feelings, and their desires. 

Now, you might think this level of emotional marketing is only for big brands with massive budgets. But here’s the truth: you don’t need millions to create this kind of emotional resonance. You just need to understand what your customers are feeling and where they’re coming from.

No, you probably won’t sell a few toys for $300,000 on eBay. But you can create emotional resonance that translates into actual meaningful growth and business results. The secret? Understanding the ‘why’ behind your customers’ buying decisions and connecting with their emotional drivers. 

And that ‘why’ is almost always rooted in emotion. 

When you tap into the right emotional drivers – like nostalgia in McDonald’s case – you create a powerful connection that goes beyond features and price points. 

This emotional resonance helps customers relate to your brand, see themselves in your messaging, and, ultimately, take action. 

The missing piece in every CRO program: Emotional targeting

Brands like Ford, UPS, Starbucks, and Apple understand why people really buy from them, and that’s the story they tell. For instance, Apple doesn’t sell computers. They sell feelings of innovation and creativity. The computer is just the vehicle that delivers those emotional outcomes.

However, when I ask clients or students why people buy from them, I often get long-winded responses about features, technology, and pricing—dry facts that rarely reflect the emotional reasons behind buying decisions.

This disconnect occurs because we’re surrounded by websites that focus on “SALES!” and “POWERED BY AI” and “THE ALL IN ONE PLATFORM” and “SHOP MORE, SAVE MORE!”—messages that fail to resonate with customers and often miss the mark on what they truly care about.

Consider this: If people made decisions based solely on dry facts, features, and pricing, Coca-Cola’s landing pages would look like nutrition labels.

You’ll never see that happen because Coca-Cola understands the importance of resonating with people’s emotions in its marketing.

For years, marketers have been told to focus on numbers: segment your audience by age, gender, location, browser… It’s all about the data, right? 

While data is important, what’s often overlooked is that real people with real emotions are behind those screens—people who are trying to solve very human problems.

There’s a common misconception that when someone lands on our website, they’ll make a rational, pros-and-cons decision. However, neuroscientists, psychologists, and top brands know that isn’t how we make decisions.

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Every decision we make in life is based on emotion. We’re not purely rational beings, as demonstrated by neuroscience research.

Elizabeth A. Phelps, a neuroscientist and Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University, along with her colleagues, used brain imaging techniques to investigate the neural basis of decision-making. 

They discovered that the amygdala, a key structure in emotional processing, plays a critical role in value-based decision-making.

Phelps and her team’s research shows that a part of our brain responsible for processing emotions (the amygdala) activates when we’re deciding what’s valuable to us. It’s like having a built-in emotional calculator that helps us determine what’s important when making choices.

Jeremy A. Yip, an Assistant Professor of Management at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, and Stéphane Côté, a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, conducted a study that sheds light on emotional intelligence and decision-making. 

Their research found that individuals with higher emotional intelligence made more advantageous decisions in complex emotional situations.

Both studies make it clear that emotions aren’t just peripheral—they’re central to every decision we make. Whether we’re choosing new project management software or deciding what to eat for dinner, emotions are always influencing our choices.

For businesses, this insight is critical: emotions drive decisions, and decisions drive conversions. And conversions affect your revenue. It’s all connected, and it all starts by understanding and resonating with your customers’ emotions.

Testing emotional decision-making in B2B

In case you’re still on the fence… Emotions play an essential role in B2B purchases, just as they do in B2C. A Google survey of 3,000 B2B buyers found they’re eight times more likely to buy a pricier product if they see personal value in it—value that speaks to their own goals, emotions, and sense of identity. 

This means personal factors like career advancement, recognition, or feeling competent and successful significantly influence B2B decisions.

Simon Sinek’s famous TED Talk, “Start With Why,” reinforces this point. He argues people don’t just buy what you do; they buy why you do it. 

In B2B, this translates into buyers aligning with brands whose purpose or values resonate with their own motivations and aspirations. When a brand’s “why” speaks to a buyer’s personal and professional goals, it creates a powerful emotional resonance, driving decisions beyond pure logic.

B2B or B2C, customers care about the ‘why,’ not just the ‘what.’ They want to know how your product will solve their unique problems and help them feel successful. 

So, how does this all connect to your CRO program?

Easy. Rather than wasting time testing random elements on a page or following best practices, understanding what drives your specific, ideal customers to choose products—and their emotions—helps you easily and clearly identify what’s not working on your pages (e.g., pricing, Homepage, or product pages). 

This understanding allows you to run meaningful experiments that are guided by emotion and strategy. 

Given the importance of emotions in both B2B and B2C decisions, it’s crucial to leverage this insight into your CRO strategy. 

Connect with your customers on an emotional level. Understand the ‘why’ behind their needs and reflect their desires back to them. Use an intuitive user experience and messaging that taps into the emotions they already feel. This will help you build a stronger connection and boost your conversion rates.

How to add emotion to your CRO program and increase conversions

Before we dive into the steps, it’s important to understand the foundation behind this approach: the Emotional Targeting Framework™. It’s the result of years of experimentation, extensive testing, and a thorough analysis of how emotions drive decisions.

What started as a simple idea has grown into a repeatable, proven system that’s been tested on thousands of landing pages, emails, websites, and ads. 

Unlike trendy marketing hacks, this framework focuses on what really matters: the emotional factors behind every decision.

To tap into those emotions and improve your conversion rates, follow these four steps:

1. Make it about the customer
2. Conduct customer-first CRO research
3. Conduct a strategic CRO audit
4. Optimize your pages with emotional targeting

Let’s break down each step and see how you can put emotional targeting to work for your business.

1. Make it about the customer

The heart of this framework is rooted in deeply knowing your customers—beyond behavioral data. 

You might know your customers’ age, location, and job title. That’s a start, but it’s not enough. And it’s definitely not enough to create emotionally resonant customer journeys that drive conversions.

To infuse emotion into your CRO program and increase conversions, you need to understand:

1. What pains your customers feel before finding a solution
2. What core emotions drive their decision-making process?
3. What are their biggest hesitations and concerns?
4. How do they want to feel after finding a solution?

These aren’t nice-to-haves. This emotional understanding is your key to meeting your customers where they are emotionally and setting yourself apart in a market where competitors often sound the same.

With these insights, you can transform every aspect of your marketing to ensure your customers see themselves and their emotions reflected in your content:

• Copy that resonates with your customer’s core emotional needs and desires;
• Visuals that your audience instantly relates to;
• Color schemes that evoke the intended emotional response;
• Page hierarchy that effectively guides users toward conversion.

These insights helped us increase Strata’s overall conversions by +16.3% YOY and Teamwork’s homepage conversions by 172% from their best customers. 

This customer-centric approach extends beyond your website to all content channels—from blog posts to emails, landing pages, product optimization, and social media posts.

It converts casual browsers into loyal, emotionally connected buyers, creating a powerful connection that motivates action and keeps them coming back.

2. Execute deep customer-first CRO research (beyond analytics) 

To uncover the real reasons people buy, you need to move beyond surface-level data. This involves conducting customer surveys, interviews, social listening, and emotional competitor analysis.

Let’s take interviews as an example, as they often provide invaluable insights that allow customers to see themselves in your solution.

Take Teamwork, a project management tool we’ve partnered with. Teamwork stands out in the project management space by focusing on the needs of client-facing teams.

As Teamwork and many brands know, prospects are constantly comparing solutions, which is why comparison pages are crucial for helping them emotionally connect with your brand and choose you over competitors. 

In order to create a high-converting comparison page, we had to take a different approach than the typical “here’s a shopping list of all our features in a clear table” approach. While most comparison pages simply list features, this method isn’t effective in helping prospects truly compare two products. 

Together with the Teamwork team, we focused on understanding the deeper emotional reasons customers choose Teamwork over competitors.

Here’s what we did:

1. Identified the stage of awareness
2. Conducted surveys for customers and visitors
3. Ran interviews with customers who had made the switch
4. Did social listening and review mining

The key to effective interviews lies in probing beyond initial responses. Most people stop at surface-level answers like “We needed a project management solution that could do it all” or “It had the features we needed.” 

But to uncover the emotional core of customer decision-making, you need to dig deeper.

The technique is simple. Repeatedly ask “why” until you reach the core emotional reason. This approach revealed insights like:

• “We’ve had trouble finding technology that understands the way we work.”
• “I saw people like us using it and talking about it. It gave me a higher level of confidence.”
• “Competitors are too rigid.”

These were the real emotional drivers behind why people chose Teamwork. It wasn’t about features or pricing—it was about feeling understood, confident, and flexible. (More on the exact experiment next)

These insights help us run a meaningful experiment (AB test) on their comparison page and not only increase conversions but make it increasingly drive more relevant signups. 

Let’s be clear: thorough customer research is fundamental to effective emotional targeting. Skipping this step significantly reduces your ability to understand your customers’ emotional drivers and create high-converting pages. 

By uncovering your customers’ emotional drivers, you move beyond simply pushing features or specs. Instead, you’re speaking directly to your customers’ hearts—their fears, dreams, and deepest desires.

And that’s what turns casual browsers into die-hard fans who not only buy from you but also become your most powerful marketers, eagerly sharing your product with their network.

3. Audit your customer journey for emotional resonance

Once you’ve completed your research and uncovered your customers’ emotional drivers, it’s time to closely examine the parts of the funnel that aren’t converting (though you weren’t sure why before). 

You’ll need to analyze your pages through the lens of emotional resonance and ask, “Where are we missing the mark?”

Rather than reverting to best practices and thinking about the elements of a page (e.g., Do I have one CTA? Should I remove the carousel? Can I reduce a form field?), you need to audit your pages from a strategic, emotionally driven standpoint. 

Here are some of the critical questions to guide your strategic CRO audit:

1. Is your page customer-centric, or are you primarily talking about yourself and technology?
2. Is this page clearly communicating the emotional result your solution will deliver? 
3. Are you accurately addressing your prospects’ real challenges and obstacles?
4. Is your value proposition—the emotional ‘why’—immediately clear to visitors?
5. Does your language emotionally resonate with your prospects?
6. What crucial information are you omitting that your audience needs?
7. Are you showcasing social proof that truly matters to your prospects?

This is where the real transformation begins. Your thorough research will yield valuable insights into your prospects’ and customers’ emotional drivers. Now, you’ll have a better understanding of what stories, content, and information your prospects have to see on a page in order to convert.  

Your strategic CRO audit is critical for identifying opportunities to inject emotional resonance. As you review each piece:

1. Identify where emotional drivers are missing.
2. Pinpoint areas dominated by dry facts and figures.
3. Note places to insert compelling stories or relatable scenarios.

Focus on the raw emotions, the nagging pain points, and the burning aspirations that keep your prospects up at night. These are the elements that turn browsers into buyers.

This systematic approach sets the stage for the next phase of your strategic optimization.

4. Optimize your copy and design with emotional triggers

Your copy and design are the primary ways for you to connect with your prospects on an emotional level, helping your audience see themselves reflected in the content. Let’s examine evidence-based strategies for each.

Testing emotionally compelling copy

Copy is the cornerstone of conversion. While design and wireframes matter, it’s the words that ultimately connect with the emotional needs of customers and drive action. 

To create copy that resonates with customers on a deeper level, it’s essential to move beyond features and tap into emotional outcomes.

One way to do this is by using proven copywriting formulas that add emotional depth to your messaging. These formulas help you focus on how the customer feels, how they’re perceived by others, and the emotional outcomes they’re seeking. Here are three formulas you can test that can help you craft more emotionally resonant copy:

1. Self-image formula

The self-image formula speaks to how customers will feel about themselves after using your product. 

It taps into their desire to become a better version of themselves, using phrases like “Have a,” “Become a,” or “Be a” to create an aspirational outcome.

For example, Bitly—a client of ours—goes beyond simply stating the features and what you can do with the product, “Shorten URLs, Generate QR codes, and now create landing pages.” Instead, they frame it like this:

“Build stronger digital connections.”

“Use our URL shortener, QR Codes, and landing pages to engage your audience and connect them to the right information.”

This shifts the focus from the features (URL shortener, QR codes, and landing pages) to the customer’s ideal self-image—someone who effortlessly builds stronger digital connections and engages their audience with the right information at the right time.

2. Social-image formula

The social-image formula addresses how customers want to be perceived by others. By framing your product as a way to elevate their social standing, you can create a powerful emotional connection. 

This formula often uses phrases like “The only way to” or “The only [product] that” to emphasize exclusivity and status.

For example, when we optimized ad copy for Strata Identity, we worked with their ads team to move away from more generic language like: 

“Multi-cloud identity fragmentation? Meet Strata’s Identity Orchestration.”

and instead tested:

“Downtime is inevitable. Business impact doesn’t have to be. Keep access to mission-critical apps, no matter what.”

“Stop accepting IAM risk — secure your legacy apps with Strata. Before they become a problem.”

These lines not only describe the product’s benefits but also focus on their emotional outcome and being able to reliably put their safety in Strata’s hands. 

3. Emotion-centered copy formula

The emotion-centered copy formula combines a product feature with the emotional outcome the customer desires. This approach helps transform dry, factual features into emotionally compelling reasons to buy.

For example, rather than simply stating that Teamwork has a profitability report, the team framed it like this:

“Be profitable. Always. See which projects are performing and make data-driven decisions that grow the profit margin.”

Here, the feature (profitability report) is paired with the emotional outcome (feeling confident and in control). This connection makes the copy more persuasive by focusing on what the customer truly cares about—how the product will enhance their emotional experience.

Incorporating these formulas into your copy turns plain, feature-driven text into messaging that resonates on a deeper level. 

Whether you’re writing headlines, product descriptions, or ad copy, focusing on self-image, social-image, and emotional outcomes will help you connect with customers and inspire action.

Let’s revisit our Teamwork example. Their original comparison page was minimal:

Examining the entire page showed us it was falling short of addressing the emotional concerns and desires uncovered in our interviews and surveys.

By adding emotional benefits to their features and highlighting competitive advantages, we saw a 54% increase in free trials from organic traffic.

The key was understanding what customers emotionally cared about most when comparing a product management solution and choosing one. Then, making sure the copy reflected those emotional needs.

When optimizing your copy:

• Focus on emotional outcomes, not just features;
• Use formulas like the self-image, social-image, and emotion-centered formula to craft compelling copy that speaks directly to your audience’s emotional desires;
• Test different variations to find what emotionally resonates best with your customers.

Emotionally driven copy isn’t a gimmick. It’s a reflection of how deeply you understand your customers. 

It’s about empathy, not manipulation. The better you understand their pain points, desires, and motivations, the more opportunities you’ll have to optimize your copy and make it truly resonate emotionally.

Testing emotionally resonant design

Design plays a crucial role in supporting your copy and guiding users toward conversion. While copy drives action, design creates the environment for that action to unfold. 

Working with Teamwork, redesigning their website’s navigation was a key part of improving the user experience and boosting conversions. The goal was to make users feel seen and understood while helping them easily find solutions to their problems.

The navigation on a website is often the first touchpoint for users. It’s the gateway for prospects to quickly find the information they need to solve their challenges.

Instead of relying on a common navigation strategy, Teamwork’s goal was to create an experience where visitors could instantly recognize their needs and see how they could be addressed through the content and design.

We started by asking: What are users actually looking for when they land on the site, and how can we guide them to it faster while making them feel understood?

A more conversational and user-centric navigation
Based on customer insights, Teamwork and our team identified the core areas users cared about most and reorganized the navigation to reflect those needs. 

The new structure meets users where they are, making it feel like a conversation that recognizes their unique problems and guides them toward the solution.

Now, post-testing under the Product section, the navigation is divided into two main groupings that align with user intent:

1. “Everything you need to know”
   This section addresses users who are exploring the platform and want to understand how it fits into their work. It includes:

• The A-Z product tour: A comprehensive walk-through of the platform, designed to help users visualize how Teamwork can solve their specific needs;
• The full list of integrations: A section that shows how Teamwork integrates with other tools, helping users imagine how it can seamlessly fit into their existing workflows;
• Customer stories: Real-world examples of how other client-facing teams use Teamwork, allowing visitors to see themselves in similar situations and feel reassured by the success of others.

2. “The features you need to run client work”
   This section is tailored for users managing client-facing tasks, providing them with tools and features they can relate to. It includes:

• Templates: Ready-to-use templates that allow users to start right away with workflows that align with their specific needs;
• Resource management: Tools to help users allocate and manage resources, addressing a common pain point in project management;
• Reporting: Features that give users visibility into their progress, helping them track results and feel confident in their decisions.

At the bottom of the dropdown, users can select “See all features” to explore more ways the platform can address their needs. 

The entire structure helps users relate to what’s on the page and see their own challenges reflected in the messaging and design.

Personalization and emotional consistency

Beyond simply organizing the information, we focused on personalization to create deeper emotional resonance. The navigation speaks directly to users’ specific problems, showing them that Teamwork is tailored to their unique needs.

For example, sections like “Teams That Love Us” and “What They Use Us For” highlight real-world examples of teams benefiting from Teamwork. 

These sections help potential customers see themselves in the stories of successful users, reinforcing the message that Teamwork understands their specific challenges and is designed for people just like them. 

This approach reassures visitors that the platform recognizes their needs and doesn’t overwhelm them with unnecessary options. Instead of a cluttered menu, the navigation serves as a streamlined, intuitive guide that helps users quickly find relevant, relatable solutions.

Refining visual hierarchy for emotionally resonant design

Emotionally resonant design guides users through a journey that makes them feel understood. The visual hierarchy helps users find what they need without feeling lost or overwhelmed.

Most websites inundate users by giving equal weight to everything. This leads to confusion. By highlighting key sections and calls-to-action (CTAs) that solve users’ problems, you help them see themselves in the content. Whether they’re exploring features or moving toward a decision, the design should guide them toward solutions that speak to their emotions.

Applying emotion-driven design principles

The foundation of applying emotional targeting design principles is on meeting users where they are and solving their specific problems. Here’s how you can apply these principles:

• Copy comes first, design comes after
  Always start by writing the copy that tells a compelling, emotionally resonant story. Once the message is clear, use design to enhance, support, and amplify the emotional narrative. Design should follow the story, not lead it.
  
• Use images to amplify the message
  Choose visuals that reinforce the emotion in your copy. Don’t add images for the sake of aesthetics. Teamwork’s designer selected images that would support the user’s emotional journey and match the tone of the content.
  
• Guide users to action with UX
  Yes, design is partially about looking good. But more importantly, it should lead users toward their goals. The design, like the copy, should guide users through their journey, showing them what actions to take and how to achieve their desired outcomes.
  
• Stay consistent throughout the journey
  Emotional consistency is essential. From the moment a user lands on a landing page to the point of conversion, the design should maintain a seamless emotional experience. Users should always be able to see themselves in every step of the journey and always feel like your product is addressing their specific problem. 

By focusing on emotional targeting and user-centric design, you can create a deeper connection with your users, helping them see their challenges reflected in the content and design, making them feel understood, supported, and guided toward conversion.

Your customers feel. Are you listening?

Upgrading your CRO program to make it strategic and leverage emotional targeting can seem challenging, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Focus on these key steps:

1. Conduct meaningful customer research and listen, listen, listen.
2. Audit your customer journey strategically for emotional triggers and resonance (not just technically).
3. Optimize copy with emotion.
4. Amplify your message through emotion-based design.
5. Test constantly.

Remember: Behind every screen is a real human with emotions, needs, and challenges. Your primary responsibility is to meet them where they are, solve their problems, and show them why it’s worth their time to take action. 

This kind of emotional targeting builds deeper connections that lead to long-term loyalty and sustainable growth—well beyond a single conversion.

Start by interviewing five customers this week. Dig into their emotional journeys to uncover what drives their decisions. Use these insights to craft a CRO strategy that meets customers where they are. Make sure they see themselves in your content. This will drive higher conversion rates.

Transform your marketing strategies by mastering the psychology behind consumer behavior. With CXL’s expertly crafted courses, you’ll learn how to leverage cognitive biases, emotional triggers, and decision-making frameworks to create campaigns that truly connect and convert.