The 3 Levers of High-Performance Marketing—And How to Use Them

Marketing wins aren’t accidents. They come from deliberate choices: who to reach, what to deliver, and when to engage.

The brands that consistently outperform don’t rely on luck. They pull leverage data to understand with who, what, and when of marketing with focus, creating efficiency, relevance, and measurable growth. At Verisk Marketing Solutions, we see these levers in action every day across industries, from insurance to consumer finance to higher education. When marketers treat them as operating principles, not afterthoughts, results change fast.

1. WHO: Identity Resolution and Enrichment Powers Growth

The challenge: Data-driven marketing is often plagued by waste. The ANA reported in 2023 that $15 billion is wasted annually on ads that miss the mark because of identity gaps. When the same consumer appears in multiple disconnected records, you lose budget, clarity, and credibility in your outreach.

The solution: Marketers are fixing this with identity resolution and enrichment. That means connecting and correcting what you already know: verifying contact details, filling in missing identifiers, and linking fractional records into a complete profile. When you add context like lifestyle, financial, or behavioral attributes, you move from raw, static records to living consumer profiles.

With this foundation, campaigns stop running on guesswork. Segmentation sharpens, personalization and relevance becomes possible, and who to prioritize becomes clear. Instead of treating every contact the same, marketers can spot the customers who want engagement, the lapsed customers worth winning back, and the prospects most ready to act.

Identity is no longer a back-office chore. It’s the lever that unlocks everything else: personalization, channel optimization, even the ability to recognize in-market signals when they appear. Get the “who” right, and every other decision gets stronger.

2. WHAT: Intelligence Transforms Relevance

The challenge: Marketers know their audiences matter, but too often campaigns miss because they don’t personalize enough. McKinsey’s 2023 Next in Personalization study found that companies strong in personalization generate 40 percent more revenue than their peers. Deloitte’s 2024 CMO Survey reported that 64 percent of high-growth companies credit sharper targeting and messaging as growth drivers.

The solution: Intelligence. Enriching first- or third-party data with lifestyle, behavioral, and financial insights allows marketers to anticipate needs and craft offers that resonate. This isn’t about demographics like age or ZIP code. It’s about understanding motivations, interests, and journeys.

As Lissa Cupp explained on The Marketing Rapport podcast, personalization isn’t inserting a first name in an email. It’s empathy and curiosity—listening for unspoken needs and tailoring outreach to match. Her advice: move past demographics and focus on the human drivers of decisions. That’s how you reduce frustration, build loyalty, and grow revenue.

When “what” reflects real consumer context, response rates climb, and brand equity deepens. Relevance is required.

3. WHEN: Timing Turns Intent Into Action

The challenge: Even the right message fails if it arrives at the wrong time. Consumers move in and out of the market constantly, and intent windows often last only days. Adobe’s Digital Trends 2023 study found that brands optimizing for timing and context see 1.5x higher engagement.

The solution: Timing strategies built on real in-market signals and propensity modeling. Instead of guessing, marketers can monitor when consumers begin shopping journeys across categories like mortgages, auto loans, or insurance. One mortgage lender used this approach and saw significantly more loans closed by engaging only when borrowers were actively searching.

Examples: presenting an auto quote the moment someone compares rates, reintroducing a policy during renewal season, or reactivating a lapsed customer when they return to the market. Timing isn’t about sending more messages. It’s about striking when the window is open.

The Compounding Effect

The real power comes when all three levers move together. Who ensures you reach the right consumer. What ensures your message resonates. When ensures it lands at the perfect moment. Miss one and results stall. Align all three and performance accelerates.

At Verisk Marketing Solutions, we help brands operationalize these levers. By embedding persistent identity, richer consumer intelligence, and real-time intent signals into campaigns, we make them actionable at scale. The result: a marketing engine that proves its value, even in the most competitive markets.

Ready to Pull the Right Levers?

The question isn’t whether you have data, it’s whether you’re using it to effectively change your business outcomes. Understanding the who, what, and when unlocks high impact marketing performance.