From attention to intention: Why listening is the real superpower this holiday season

If I had to name one superpower that’s defined my 25+ years in marketing, it’s listening.

Listening to clients when they tell you what they think they need—and what they don’t say out loud. Listening to teams as they navigate competing priorities or mentees when they tell you how they see their career shaping up. Listening to consumers, not just through obvious reaction, but through the subtle signals that show up in data, engagement, and sentiment.

Listening has always been the secret ingredient in marketing that works. Because real listening isn’t just hearing words, it’s interpreting intent. It’s understanding the why behind the click, the purchase, or the unsubscribe.

That’s become harder than ever in a world where volume is way up. More channels. More messages. More automation. Everyone’s talking, but few are truly listening.

This holiday season will magnify that difference. While most brands will chase attention with MORE urgency and MORE sends, the ones that win will be the ones that slow down enough to hear. They’ll learn what their customers are telling them: through behavior, tone, timing, and emotion. They’ll be prepared and able to act on it in real time.

Because attention is fleeting. But when you listen deeply enough to understand intent, that’s when connection – and conversion – happens.

And if there’s one thing I love as much as a marketer who hears their customer, it’s irony. The irony here is, marketing has never been louder, or less heard.

Every channel is turned up to max volume: more sends, more urgency, more automation. The average retail consumer receives hundreds of brand messages a week, and yet only a fraction of them feel relevant.

The irony of modern marketing: Louder, yet less heard

Cordial’s Battle for Attention research put real numbers behind what every marketer already feels: only 38% of consumers say the majority of messages they receive feel personalized, and marketers admit that just 22% of their sends are truly relevant.

Cordial’s new Intent Divide research digs deeper into why this gap exists. The research reveals that while 100% of marketers rely on behavioral signals like clicks and opens, only 53% use predictive or AI-driven signals, and just 20% incorporate contextual cues. Most telling: only 13% track emotional signals like sentiment or tone.

That disconnect isn’t because teams aren’t working hard – I see marketing and tech teams working harder than ever. It’s because we’ve been taught to chase attention instead of understanding intention.

Attention metrics (opens, clicks, impressions) tell us what happened. Intent tells us why. And in an era where AI is collapsing the funnel, where discovery, research, and purchase often happen inside a single interaction, understanding that “why” is becoming a new competitive advantage.

Winning brands – many of whom work with Cordial to power their marketing automation – are already shifting their energy from grabbing eyes to reading signals. They’re interpreting behavior through context, memory, and emotion. They’re learning that listening at scale doesn’t mean sending more. It means understanding better.

The holidays are a master class in human intent.

Every action, every open, every pause, every purchase, carries meaning. But to learn from it, you have to know what you’re looking for.

At Cordial, we define intent as the composite signal of why someone acts, not just what they do. It’s what happens when context, emotion, and memory intersect. And during the holidays when emotions run high, timing tightens, and decision-making accelerates, those signals are amplified.

Intent isn’t one-dimensional. It’s expressed across five dimensions that reveal the why behind the what:

For all the talk about “personalization,” most brands are still stuck on surface-level listening.
They’re watching what consumers do, but not hearing what those actions mean.

Cordial’s Battle for Attention research uncovered the gap in stark numbers:

• Only 38% of consumers say most messages they receive feel personalized
• Marketers surveyed admit that just 22% of their sends are truly relevant – and I would wager this number is even lower for those valuable high-visibility transactional sends
• And only 3% of brands can predict customer needs using data and intent signals in real time

That’s not for lack of effort. It’s a systems problem. The Intent Divide report found that 67% of marketers use their insights only for campaign planning, not in real time. The average brand juggles more than five different marketing tools, each holding a fragment of the customer story. When data lives in silos, intent gets lost in translation. What could be a nuanced signal (timing, tone, shifting priorities) gets reduced to a click or the lack of a purchase.

The listening gap: When data drowns out understanding

The result is a trust gap that mirrors the data gap. According to the Intent Divide research, 43% of consumers lose confidence in a brand when their intent is misread, while 36% unsubscribe entirely. Yet most are willing to forgive when they feel understood the next time around.

For example, if I get an email from Giant Home Store about a new front door, decide to buy that door, and the next day receive another message promoting – yes – the same door, I immediately know the brand isn’t paying attention. My purchase isn’t reflected. My intent wasn’t heard. That’s when I, the consumer, start to disengage, maybe even unsubscribe, especially from SMS. After all, if I’m done with home projects for the season, I’ll “put away” that relationship until I need it again.

But imagine the opposite. Giant Home Store recognizes my purchase and notes that, while shopping, I added a holiday wreath to my cart and then removed it. If, a few days later, I get an email letting me know that the wreath is now on sale, that feels thoughtful. It tells me they saw me, they understood what mattered, and they respected my wallet. In that moment, trust is restored, and so is my willingness to engage.

Listening in modern marketing isn’t about having more data, it’s about making sense of it.
The brands closing the gap are the ones unifying context across channels, interpreting emotional and behavioral signals, and turning that understanding into meaningful action.

Because when every message feels like a transaction, consumers tune out. But when it feels like recognition, they lean in.

From data collection to intelligent action

That Giant Home Store example is simple, but it represents the heart of modern marketing: the ability to listen, interpret, and act – intelligently and respectfully.

Too often, retail brands stop at “data collection.” They have the information but not the integration. They can see what happened, but not what it means. To move from attention to intention, brands need systems that can make sense of signals in real time and carry that understanding across every channel.

At Cordial, we think of this as the difference between tracking and interpreting. Tracking tells you a door was purchased. Interpreting tells you a project is complete—and that the next best message isn’t another offer, it’s a relevant complement or a change in communication cadence in one or more channels.

Here’s how the most advanced marketers are putting that into practice:

• Predict, don’t just react. Use AI to recognize milestones, moods, and micro-moments before the next send goes out
• Personalize in the moment. Connect your data and decisioning so every message reflects what’s actually happening right now, not what happened last week
• Carry context across channels. When a shopper’s activity shifts from email to web to app, the brand’s understanding should follow instantly and securely
• Balance empathy with automation. Smarter orchestration doesn’t mean more sends; it means using intent data to know when not to send

That’s what we mean by intelligent action: real-time, cross-channel responsiveness that keeps pace with people, not campaigns. Because when you understand the intent behind the behavior, every message feels less like marketing and more like a conversation.

Listening forward: What this season teaches us about 2026

If there’s one thing my career has taught me, it’s that listening always pays off — even when it’s quiet. Especially when it’s quiet. The best marketing doesn’t start with ideas; it starts with observation. Whether it’s a client describing a challenge, a teammate sharing a hunch, or a consumer’s behavior shifting ever so slightly — every meaningful action begins with someone feeling heard.

The Intent Divide research makes clear that this isn’t just philosophy—it’s profit. 40% of marketers say misreading intent leads directly to revenue loss, making it the top consequence ahead of trust erosion or unsubscribes.

The same holds true for the brands that will win in 2026. They’ll be the ones who practice listening as a discipline, not a data point. They’ll read what’s between the metrics: the timing, the tone, the emotion. They’ll notice when a customer stops engaging, and ask why before sending something new.

The holiday season is the most concentrated window we get each year to practice that kind of listening. It’s a crash course in empathy, intent, and restraint. Every open and every ignore is an invitation to learn: not just how to sell better, but how to understand better.

So as the noise ramps up and inboxes overflow, remember:

Listening is still your strongest signal.

Attention wins the moment.
Intent builds the relationship.
And listening — real, active, human listening — is what connects the two.

Ready to close the Intent Divide? Download our full report to discover how understanding intent transforms attention into trust—and why the brands that listen best win the battle for attention.