In every business I’ve ever worked on, my clients will swear up, down, and sideways that their loyal customers would NEVER switch. Ever. And inevitably, we dig into the data—and find that even the most profitable customers, those with the absolutely highest lifetime value, those who will say to anyone within shouting distance that they LOVE Brand X above all others worldwide—will inevitably use a competitor from time to time.

In every business I’ve ever worked on, my clients will swear up, down, and sideways that their loyal customers would NEVER switch. Ever. And inevitably, we dig into the data—and find that even the most profitable customers, those with the absolutely highest lifetime value, those who will say to anyone within shouting distance that they LOVE Brand X above all others worldwide—will inevitably use a competitor from time to time.

Our family would say that we are Pampers loyalists. I look for and use coupons for Pampers, but will still buy Pampers over Huggies even if I have to buy them at full retail price. I fill in 16-digit codes online to earn “Gifts to Grow” points. I am crazy committed to my baby’s bum.

But recently we miscalculated our diaper inventory and realized (Sunday night at 10:30 p.m.) that we literally had NO diapers left in the house. Emergency! I made a mad dash to Walgreens—and wouldn’t you know it they were out of size 4 Pampers but had plenty of size 4 Huggies. So I bought the Huggies—because I realized that while I strongly prefer Pampers, my commitment did not compel me to drive four blocks over to CVS to see if they had size 4 Pampers at 11:00 on a Sunday night. It’s only 30 diapers—that’s about one week of alternative diapers. So what if it’s not exactly what I wanted—it’s just a stinkin’ diaper, after all, right?

Sometimes we expect unreasonable feats of commitment from our most loyal customers. Despite tiered rewards systems, scaling offer structures, versioned psychographic newsletters, carefully executed customer experience touch-point maps—despite our very best efforts, every once in awhile even our best customers will escape our finely tuned marketing machine.

And that’s okay. In fact, it’s more than okay. Yes, Customer Insight Management technology and data access tools continue to grow in sophistication. And yes, we can control the vast majority of a customer’s experience with our brands and products. But there is often an unspoken expectation that as marketers we can OWN individuals. That somehow, we can account for their every whim, turn of events, inventory availability, interaction with a sales representative, any change in point of view—no matter how finite.

The art in CIM-Relationship Marketing is knowing how far to push, how many versions is too many, finding the tipping point behind sophisticated targeted marketing and over-reacting to the desire to market to sub-populations of sub-populations. What starts out as a smart, sophisticated plan, when taken too far into extremes, can quickly turn a profitable marketing program upside down.

We are committed to knowing exactly when and where to talk to our clients’ customers with the right message, offer, and timing—and just as importantly, when it’s okay not to.

Because I still buy Pampers—I’m just a little smarter about stocking up ahead of time.