Do the next thing: A CMO’s guide to Opal decisioning

Senior marketers are craving simplicity. 

The marketing discipline has never had more tools, more data, and ultimately, more pressure to prove impact. However, for many CMOs, the singular question remains: 

In a field where instinct once reigned, increasingly, the answer is decision intelligence: That is, structured AI-enabled decision making. 

Dashboards and reports have long informed marketing strategy, but decisions often remain rooted in gut feel. AI changes the game by understanding context and recommending the right next step. For some teams, the opportunity even extends to empowering AI to make those decisions autonomously.  

Optimizely’s Opal is making this real for marketers. Marketing departments often run leaner with fewer resources than other commercial teams like operations or sales. Opal is AI tooling designed specifically for marketers.  

Opal goes beyond surfacing insights.

Opal doesn’t just support decision-making. It enables next best actions - importantly - right within the tools your team already uses in a marketing context. 

From data to decision to action 

Opal operates as a native intelligence layer across the Optimizely product suite. It observes patterns, connects dots, and delivers clear and timely guidance on what to do next, from content ideation through execution and beyond. 

Opal can help by: 

1. Identifying underexplored content themes – Assessing search results and competitor content to identify new opportunities. 
2. Recommending data-backed tweaks to experiences – optimizing pages and journeys.  
3. Suggesting experiments to maximize performance – Running A/B or multivariate tests to refine content and journeys. 
   

For CMOs, this creates clarity in core areas: 

• Faster movement -  Actions can be taken quickly. Not in the next sprint or after another meeting. Opal combines the speed of instinct with the power of data. 

• Fewer blind spots- Opal uses real-time insights from your content inventory, journeys, segments, and performance data to surface the highest-impact next step. 

• Stronger outcomes - Recommendations are based on real context and historical performance, so results are measurable - even helping mitigate “black swan” events. 

Example: A lead generation page underperforms for a key segment. Opal flags the issue, suggests a variant based on historic performance, generates new content from your CMP asset library, and implements the change - ready for approval. 

Turning AI into a marketing ally 

Unlike standalone AI tools that sit outside your workflow, Opal is fully embedded within your marketing stack. It collaborates continuously, drawing on: 

• Audience segment performance 

• Content and experiment history 

• Brand and compliance rules 

• Journey analytics 

• Real-time engagement signals 

This means CMOs can trust Opal to surface opportunities that matter - freeing teams to focus on strategy and outcomes, not endless data wrangling. 

Sector lens: For highly-regulated industries such as pension providers or financial services, this embedded approach maintains governance and compliance while enabling faster, data-driven decisions. 

The ROI dashboard you actually want to read 

Opal’s next best action capability isn’t just about AI execution. It’s about measurable business value. 

At the executive level, Opal contributes to: 

• Simpler ROI narratives - “This action improved engagement by X%”.

• Performance visualisation - Clear attribution between decision, change, and result.

• Team empowerment - Reducing reliance on senior intervention for every decision.

It helps transform performance reporting from retrospective explanation to proactive insight. From “what happened?” to a forward looking “what should we do next?” 

Building trust in AI, one decision at a time 

For senior leaders, trust in AI should be built incrementally. It isn’t won through a single pilot or proof of concept. It’s earned through ongoing and reliable performance, aligned with a refinement process informed by explainable recommendations, and demonstrable uplift. 

Opal supports this by: 

• Showing its work – Explaining why it suggests a specific action. Even if you decline, you learn and refine. 

• Tying actions to outcomes – Linking recommendations to measurable business impact. 

• Keeping humans in control – AI proposes, humans review, approve, and stay accountable. 

Over time, AI becomes less of a “black box” and more of a trusted advisor.  

Do the next thing 

Most marketing teams don’t need more tooling. They need clarity on where to focus. What to do next. How to make good decisions faster. 

That’s what Opal enables - not abstract intelligence, or lakes of unintelligible data but applied decision-making. 

If your marketing operation feels like it’s doing too much with too little impact, maybe it’s time to refocus on the next thing. And then the next. And the next. 

Opal is accessible, practical and valuable. ready to help you build that momentum - one decision at a time.