Posted June 04

Marketing doesn't have to be this messy - here's the fix

4 min read time
I am lucky to have a unique job. As President of Optimizely, I oversee marketing, product and engineering. So I am both responsible for building products as well as using those products to deliver $200M+ of pipeline to drive sales. And in doing so, I have a front row seat in one of the most transformative periods of human history.

When I talk to marketing leaders every day, one thing is clear: they're under more pressure than ever. They need to deliver growth, manage increasingly complex teams and channels, and prove ROI, all while battling fragmented systems and disconnected workflows. And many fear that marketing jobs will be replaced by AI.

And when I talk to product and engineering leaders, they're under pressure to build AI systems that are differentiated and have a genuine moat in the market. Individually, these are both challenging. Together, it's been a wild ride for the past 12 months!

That's why I'm so excited to announce the relaunch of Optimizely Opal. This isn't just another feature release; it's a game-changer for AI-powered content, campaign, and experimentation workflows, designed to unify planning, content, and collaboration across marketing teams. I'm well aware that is a new AI product launching every week. So I wanted to share what makes this different.

Your infinite workforce is here

As a CMO, imagine having an infinitely scalable workforce. Half my marketing budget is spend on people, and that is my biggest constraint. I can't just add more program dollars without burning out my team. But imagine a world where you have an infinite army of AI specialists, purpose trained on marketing, helping you complete every marketing and digital job, from ideation to creation to optimization.

Opal isn't an AI assistant or a chatbot; it's your gateway to a world where your team has 5, 50, or even 500 extra employees creating content, managing resources, running tests, and managing campaigns. They work 24/7 and have near zero marginal cost. But best of all, they free up our human marketers to work on the most creative and valuable parts of marketing. Outsourcing the mundane, rote, or previously uncharted work to AI agents. I say unchartered, because Opal agents aren't just replacing existing workflows. They can take on challenging workflows that were never attempted in the past because it was never cost effective or scalable. This opens up an infinitely larger addressable market of work.

The power of context: Why Opal is different

We've built Opal from the ground up with a deep understanding of what makes AI truly effective for marketers. Context is king for AI Agents. The more relevant context an agent has, the more differentiated and successful it will be. Context makes AI more differentiated, more interesting, more valuable and most importantly, more accurate. But context is hard for standalone AI platforms. That's where Opal has an unfair advantage.

Opal delivers on it's promise with industry-leading context in several key areas:

  • Corporate knowledge: Opal seamlessly integrates with your Optimizely ecosystem, accessing a wealth of data about your campaigns, content, experiments, and customers. This allows our agents to make informed decisions based on your specific business context.
  • User memory: Opal remembers your past interactions and learns from your preferences, delivering increasingly personalized and relevant results over time.
  • Domain expertise: Opal is specifically designed for marketing workflows, understanding the nuances of campaign planning, content creation, and experimentation.
  • Tool use: Opal knows how to leverage a variety of external systems, from keyword research, to web search to presentation creation, to get work done successfully. We have access to dozens (and soon hundreds) of tools that are purpose built for marketing.

A key phrase you'll hear within our AI engineering team is "context engineering." Given so many rich sources of context, its an engineering challenge to thoughtfully layer that context, pull just the right data, in the right sequence, and then send to the LLM. Context engineering is what we do in order to build the best possible context window. Beyond context windows, let's talk about what we're launching.

Key highlights of the relaunch

  • All-new platform interface: Explore the new Opal platform at opal.optimizely.com, featuring key modules like Instructions (for managing agents) and Chat (for a consistent user experience across all Optimizely products).
  • Pre-built tool library: Access a library of tools capable of performing complex actions, such as analyzing webpages, creating presentations, and conducting keyword research.
  • Specialized agents: Utilize curated agents with specific instructions and tools to produce outputs and take action on your behalf.
  • Agent workflows: Coordinate multiple Specialized Agents in sequence or parallel to collaborate and accomplish complex tasks.

Get started with Opal today

Beginning May 7th, Opti ID customers will have access to the new Opal platform at opal.optimizely.com. Engage with Opal via chat across all our products and explore various generative and agentic AI features within your existing Optimizely subscriptions.

We're also offering all current customers 30,000 free credits through September 30th, 2025, to experience the power of Opal firsthand.

Learn more about the power of Opal

I just hosted a live launch event to showcase Opal's practical applications, pre-built agents, and use cases. Check it out on demand here.

I believe Opal represents a fundamental shift in how marketing teams operate. By unifying people, plans, and content with the power of AI, we're empowering marketers to achieve greater visibility, faster speed to market, and better ROI. I invite you to join us on this journey as we redefine the future of marketing.

  • Last modified: 6/4/2025 10:05:38 AM