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waterfall method of gathering requirements, designing, writing code, testing and releasing looks cumbersome, slow, and outdated by comparison.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.