Half of US online adults have reached 'always addressable' status: using at least three connected devices and accessing the web multiple times per day from varying locations. It’s perhaps no surprise that this customer base has grown quickly since we first introduced it in 2012, when 38% of US online adults were always addressable. And for marketers, this is seemingly good news — now you have more opportunities to meaningfully engage with these customers than ever before. So what's the bad news? These customers tend not to trust or pay attention to advertising, and worse, largely find brand messages irrelevant.

There is a silver lining, though. Forty-six percent of always addressable customers don't mind getting emails from companies they've opted in to as long as the offer is relevant, and 27 percent are willing to share information about their interests to receive more relevant advertising. This leaves marketers with a great opportunity to engage with these willing customers, just as long as you embrace customer obsession.

But first, you must accept a hard truth: Your customers are done with traditional, campaign-based marketing. More often than not, customers are interacting with a brand outside of typical campaigns, and it's marketing's job to identify the context of those interactions and build upon them to create new forms of useful, continuous engagement. At the center of this contextual marketing is utility — becoming visibly and functionally useful to your customers. You can offer this utility either organically or transformatively, depending on your level of maturity across four key elements: customer addressability, data maturity, partner compatibility, and digital commitment.

In my new research, Create Marketing Your Customers Can Use, I explain how to gauge your brand’s level of customer addressability, and I provide five primary ways to make your programs useful for your customers. I'll also be presenting this new research at Forrester's Forum for Marketing Leaders in London, May 13-14. Hope to see you there.