4 Steps to Moments-Based Marketing

Key Takeaways

→ To succeed with AI, teams must rethink their goals, metrics, and workflows.

→ Outdated infrastructure and siloed data block true cross-channel execution.

→ Modular content unlocks scalable, 1:1 personalization without bottlenecks.

→ AI literacy is essential—marketers must know how to test, apply, and scale it.

→ Start small: automate one moment, measure results, and build from there.

Marketing campaigns had a good run, but their time is up.

More and more teams are shifting toward a moments-based approach—not because it sounds good, but because it works. It gives them the flexibility to respond in the moment, and the intelligence to make those moments meaningful.

During my session at Activate Summit, I shared how marketers can move beyond outdated campaign tactics and start building a strategy rooted in AI and real-time customer moments. Let’s talk about why the old playbook no longer works.

Challenge the Campaign: Where Batch-and-Blast Falls Short

The traditional campaign model was built for a different era, one where brands controlled the conversation. Today, customers drive the journey. They expect brands to respond to their signals in real time. But the rigidity of traditional campaign planning holds brands back. Static calendars, generic blasts, and disconnected touchpoints—At best, they miss the mark. At worst, they erode trust.

Here’s the difference between campaign calendars and moments-based marketing

With a moments-based strategy, brands break free from outdated cycles and connect with customers in a way that’s timely, personal, and human. Making this shift isn’t a switch you flip—it’s a process. But once you know where to focus, momentum builds fast.

1. Evolve the operating model.

Marketing teams know change is needed, but most aren’t ready. Only 27% of CMOs believe their current operating model can deliver on AI-era goals (McKinsey), and 74% of companies still aren’t seeing the scale or value they expected from AI (BCG). 

Tools will change. What matters more is unlearning the habits that no longer serve today’s marketing environment.. To unlock AI’s full potential, marketers need a new operating model built for what’s next.

• • Reframe your moments: Focus on the key interactions where brand value and ideal customer behavior is unlocked. Driving a conversion might require building a connection earlier in the journey—but have you identified the moments that actually predict future action? Understanding these high-impact signals is essential to shaping engagement that converts.

• • Rethink your KPIs. Go beyond opens and clicks to truly understand the business impact of your AI-powered marketing efforts. Track metrics that are better benchmarks of AI impact, like Automation Index (what % of your campaigns are trigger-based) and F1 Score (a measure of your models’ precision and predictive accuracy).

• • Redefine your workflows. Build processes where marketers strategize, AI assists,  and manual bottlenecks disappear.

When the operating model evolves, the marketing team grows with it, becoming more agile, more strategic, and more aligned with customer expectations.

2. Modernize the architecture.

Many organizations are still held back by outdated systems and fragmented data. While 78% of email marketers personalize content, only 31% of mobile marketers do (Statista) —revealing how channel-specific limitations undermine seamless customer experiences. These gaps often stem from siloed data and legacy infrastructure that can’t support cross-channel coordination or real-time responsiveness.

Across nearly every conversation with modern marketing teams, one priority keeps surfacing: the need to modernize foundational architecture by:

• • Defining your source of truth. Anchor your architecture with one reliable, cloud-native dataset.

• • Building an API-first foundation. Design your stack for seamless data flow, enabling effortless interoperability across tools, systems, and channels.

• • Enabling real-time decisioning. Architect for immediate responsiveness to customer signals.

Moving toward a cloud-native, API-first ecosystem is no longer optional—it’s the cornerstone of becoming truly AI-ready. 

3. Embrace intelligent design.

Personalization is only as powerful as the content behind it—and for most marketers, that’s the bottleneck. In fact, 42% of executives cite scalable content creation as the biggest barrier to personalization (Statista). Despite the promise of segmentation and AI, many brands struggle to keep up with the volume and complexity of content required to support true 1:1 engagement.

That’s where modular content design comes in. By building content as dynamic, reusable components that can be quickly assembled and adapted with AI decisioning—marketers can deliver personalized experiences in real time, without the production bottlenecks. To unlock this at scale, teams must:

• Centralize asset management. Create a structure that supports modular builds by organizing and tagging your content for streamlined gap analysis.

• Test AI-powered decisioning. Start small with genAI copy creation and experiment to gain guided insights on customer preferences.

• Support real-time adaptations. Harness modular blocks to adjust content dynamically as users interact with your brand.

The result? More relevance, more engagement, and marketing that feels natural, not forced.

4. Build a culture of AI literacy.

Finally, embrace AI — not as a gimmick but as an enabler. With 63% of marketers still spending time on manual tasks that could be automated (Funnel) and 67% citing lack of training as a key barrier, building AI literacy across teams—not just among data scientists—is essential to unlocking its full potential.

• Establish an AI council. Do you have a group of cross-functional leaders aligning on AI goals, governance, security, and investment? 

• Prioritize upskilling. Create opportunities for employees to apply and test AI in new scenarios and share best practices. Encourage pilots and phased adoption of AI tools.

• Reframe the marketer’s role. Realign your talent strategy for forward-looking skill sets. Shift focus from manual execution to strategic thinking and creative optimization.

When marketers and AI work together, brands can deliver experiences that are more human, not less. Check out the full Activate session for more on how teams can bridge the gap between the old and new way of marketing.

What’s Next: Small Steps, Big Impact

Becoming an AI-first, moments-based brand isn’t an overnight event—it’s a strategic evolution that requires rethinking how teams operate, how technology is used, and how success is measured. 

Here’s how to get started:

1. 1. Identify one moment for AI-driven workflow redesign. (e.g., restocked item)
   2. Define your KPIs and measures of success (e.g., efficiency vs effectiveness).
   3. Automate or remove manual steps (e.g., audience creation, content builds, optimization).
   4. Test and document your learnings (e.g., process gaps, missing tools & skills)

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What exactly is moments-based marketing, and how is it different from traditional campaigns?

Moments-based marketing is about responding to what your customer is doing right now—not what you planned three weeks ago. Instead of sending the same message to everyone on a set schedule, you build experiences triggered by real-time behaviors across channels.

2. How do we start shifting to a moments-based approach without overhauling everything?

Start small. Choose one meaningful moment in your customer journey—like a cart abandonment or first purchase—and rebuild that flow using real-time triggers, dynamic content, and automation. Then measure performance and expand from there.

3. We want to embrace AI in our marketing, but our systems feel outdated. What should we do first?

You don’t need to rip and replace your stack. Begin by identifying your source of truth for customer data, look for tools that offer flexible APIs, and start integrating automation where it reduces manual lift—especially around segmentation and journey orchestration.