Why personalization is dead and anticipation is the next era of marketing

Personalization is still reactive, and that is why it stopped working. In this episode of Content Amplified, Katie Carroll, VP of Product Strategy at Businessolver, makes the case for moving past variable tags and behavioral triggers into anticipation: helping people before they know what to ask. Katie walks through findings from Businessolver's eighth annual Benefits Insights Report, including the counterintuitive idea that "quiet" (no clicks, no engagement, no support tickets) might be the real success metric, and how an in-house AI hit 91% instant resolution by reading the path a user is already on. She uses concrete examples (an HSA nudge after a pediatrician visit, an auto-enrollment in a prescription management program, a Social Determinants of Health lookup that connects a parent to childcare) to show what anticipation looks like in practice. She also explains why AI SDRs flopped, why marketers have to lean hard into data analytics in 2026, and why the easiest brand to interact with is the one that wins. If you want a practical starting point for building anticipation into your marketing, this one is for you.

About Katie

Katie Carroll is the VP of Product Strategy at Businessolver, a benefits administration tech company that powers the platform employees use to enroll in their benefits. She has spent her whole career in tech, starting on the consumer side at companies like eBay before moving into B2B, which gives her a rare cross-pollinated view of how people actually want to interact with software. Katie sees the healthcare and benefits space as a personal mission, drawing on the universal frustration most Americans have with the system to push her team toward more anticipatory, helpful user experiences.

Show Notes

- Connect with Katie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie--carroll/
- Businessolver Benefits Insights Report: https://businessolver.com/benefits-insights/