Relevance has an expiration date

A well-crafted marketing message can still miss the mark, even when it reaches the right audience.

We spend a lot of time refining creative, personalizing messages, segmenting audiences, and testing CTAs. But what happens when a message ignores a conversation the customer already had with our brand?

After more than 25 years in brand strategy, storytelling, and growth, I’ve learned that relevance means understanding what customers have already experienced and what they need next.

We organize marketing around campaigns, channels, and funnels. Customers experience every interaction as part of one relationship with our brand.

Why personalization loses relevance over time

Real-time personalization means delivering the right message at the right moment based on what a customer needs now. What was relevant a month ago may no longer matter today.

Someone downloads a guide, visits a product page, or attends an event, and we use that behavior to decide what they should receive next. That makes sense at the time. But an automated sequence can respond to that action long after the customer has moved on, treating the old signal as if nothing has changed.

The person researching last month might be comparing vendors today. Someone who looked ready to buy yesterday might have shifted priorities entirely. The message can still be relevant in theory while being completely wrong for the moment. Customers notice.

Research involving 3,300 consumers found that 81% ignore marketing messages that aren’t relevant to them, while 1 in 4 say a generic message makes them less likely to purchase. The same research found that 71% want brands to learn from their behavior over time.

Customers aren’t simply asking brands to remember what they did. They expect us to learn when their needs change.

Real-time personalization means recognizing whether a message still makes sense, beyond inserting the right name, title, or product.

I’d add one word to the question marketers already ask: “Is this relevant now?”

The next campaign touchpoint isn’t always the right one

Optimizing the customer journey means helping people make their next decision, rather than simply pushing them to the next step in a campaign.

Customers often need more education. They need proof. Maybe an objection needs to be addressed. Maybe another stakeholder needs to enter the conversation.

Sometimes, there’s nothing useful to add yet.

That can be uncomfortable for marketers because a pause doesn’t look productive on a campaign calendar. But if the customer doesn’t need anything from us at that moment, sending more can create friction instead of progress.

Adobe research found that only 15% of organizations met customer expectations for experiences that surprise and delight, while 75% of practitioners said real-time personalization remained a major challenge.

That suggests we need a better understanding of where the customer is, what they need next, and whether another interaction will help them move forward.

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How AI can help reconnect customer conversations

I’ve always believed that good storytelling starts with listening. Customer engagement should work the same way.

In a real conversation, you remember what somebody tells you, respond to what they said, and adjust when the conversation changes direction. Yet many customer journeys still behave like disconnected automated reactions.

The customer downloads something, so one workflow begins. They speak to sales, but marketing continues the sequence. Service learns something important, but the campaign never knows.

This is where AI presents an opportunity. The obvious use case is production: another email, another variation, another personalized message. The bigger opportunity is recognition.

Can AI recognize changing customer behavior, surface context from previous conversations, or identify conflicting signals? Can it flag when an automated journey no longer makes sense and help someone respond while the moment still matters?

AI shouldn’t just help brands communicate more. It should help us understand when communication will add value. Technology can surface the signal. People still have to understand the relationship, the context, and what the customer might need next.

Connected experiences should reduce customer effort

Customers shouldn’t have to start over every time they interact with your brand. When interactions lack continuity, customers end up doing the work: repeating information, ignoring messages that no longer apply, and trying to connect experiences that should already be connected.

Each interaction should make the next one easier. Beyond measuring how well a touchpoint performs, we should consider whether it reduces customer effort.