It’s difficult to find a development team that hasn’t embraced the agile method—an iterative approach to software design focused on smaller projects, shorter cycle times and lots of testing and learning. The fundamental assumption of the agile method is that project requirements change on a daily basis so being nimble matters. The old waterfall method of gathering requirements, designing, writing code, testing and releasing looks cumbersome, slow, and outdated by comparison. Not to mention more expensive and less effective.

Yet time and again, when technology-driven companies go to market, they often fail to translate their highly effective agile mindset to their marketing practice. Oddly enough, when it comes to marketing, they tend to over-think. As if they have one chance and one chance only to get it right. Their marketing practice becomes slow and cumbersome, more expensive than they’d like, and the results disappoint.

The practice of marketing optimization is founded upon a number of disciplines - some old, some new, and some emerging. Like marketing optimization, many of its foundation disciplines are sciences that have historically been developed to reduce risk while maximizing the chances for success.

Whether 'success' is winning at cards, winning a war or maximizing conversion in a PPC campaign, 'optimization' put simply is the practice of finding optimal methods for driving objectives. Probability theory, management science, statistics, economic theory, experimental design and technology all converge in marketing optimization to provide marketers with the tools and processes for finding optimal methods for executing the marketing function such that risk is reduced and the chances of success are maximized.

Back when Zuckerberg was a but a tween and Twitter was yet a twinkle in anyone’s eye, the customer of a multivariate testing SaaS vendor ran an interesting promotional test: 20% off any purchase against buy one refrigerator and get another free. To everyone’s surprise, refrigerators flew out the door. Turns out, the Joneses found out about the deal and told the Smiths who came in on it with them. Each family went home with a half price fridge.

What a testament to the power of testing, we all said. Who knew you could move such a large item with such a promotion? What we all thought we learned was that you never know what you don’t know. And you’ll never know unless you test.

The NYT makes data-driven marketing look like the hottest new trend. The article title, Put Ad on Web. Count Clicks. Revise. puts to mind one of the first pieces of marketing copy I worked on for an optimization SaaS provider several years ago: Test. Adapt. Repeat. or somesuch was our pithy copy describing what we helped marketers to do.

Love the piece’s Wall Street meets Madison Avenue description of the future of data-driven marketing. Perhaps we geeks who get giddy over data will soon have our time in the limelight!

While the Industrial Revolution ushered in the era of the celebration of product, the Digital Revolution now celebrates the consumer.

Because today's consumers initiate and control the conversation, the sooner marketers shift from a product to a customer experience focus, the sooner they will reap the benefits of adapting properly to the changing marketplace.

More than ever, today's marketers are increasingly interested in building optimal customer experiences that drive long-term profitable relationships than they are in driving revenue from widget sales. As they should be. In the age of the empowered consumer, marketing optimization is quickly becoming a function of managing the customer experience.

Shifting from product to customer experience marketing indeed seems a daunting task for enterprises with multiple lines of business operating across multiple channels. Exactly how is it done? Where do we begin?