"We have a direct line of communication with our customers. Why not use it effectively instead of spamming them?" — Carolina McClanahan

Your marketing team sends 40,000 emails. Two hundred people buy something. Everyone calls it a win.

Carolina McClanahan has spent her career asking the question that most marketing leaders skip: who is this person, where are they right now, and what are they actually going to do when this message hits their phone? Not the demographic profile. The human context. The waiting room. The school pickup line. The moment between two other things when your email either earns a second or gets deleted without being opened.

She immigrated to the United States as an adult, navigating a new language and culture in an industry built entirely on communication — and that forced outsider lens turned into ...