When we moved house a year ago, we had the bathroom floor tiles professionally cleaned. Exactly one year on I got a message from the company about a special offer. At first glance, I thought this was a helpful reminder and smart marketing on the part of the cleaning company who had anticipated my needs. But my opinion changed when I realised the special offer was for carpet cleaning. We don’t have any carpets in our home.

Back in 2008, Seth Godin defined permission marketing as, “the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them”. And we’ve been blurring the lines of this definition to suit ourselves ever since.

The cleaning company has a level of permission, and the timing of their message is helpful, what’s missing is enough information about the customer to make the message relevant.

It would have been the easiest thing in the world for a company that’s in the maintenance business to plan ahead and think about how they could serve me (and every other customer) the next time, and the time after that. They have more permission and access to information about their customers than most business owners could dream of.

Running your marketing strategy through a relevance filter is the key to doing that. It means you have to consider your customer’s context just as much if not more than you obsess over your monthly sales targets.

In a world of ad blockers and fleeting attention, relevance is still the new remarkable. What do you need to do today to create the opportunity to serve your customers the next time?

Image by Francis Mariani.