There is definitely nostalgia, but no love lost for the traditional big bang campaign model.
Its had its day. In fact, it’s had a number of decades. A time when production costs were primarily focused on building campaign materials in advance of the launch. Once baked, the campaign goes live and runs, and runs, with little to no intervention.
This traditional campaign model has shown its age. Big-bang launches, long lead times, high production effort, high risk, and whatever periodic dashboard reports can be assembled from whatever media data can be found.
It was how marketing operated for decades – but it’s no longer fit for the pace, complexity, and expectations of modern digital audiences.
Today, there is far more accurate data available, and rather than a periodic media consumption report, Marketers need real-time insights that can be actioned instantaneously.
What’s needed now is something different. A model where learning never stops. Where performance improves - not campaign by campaign, not week by week - but hour by hour. Where data and insights turn into action – automatically, if possible.
This is where Optimizely Opal changes the game.
Optimizely’s Opal can operate as an AI assistant, providing additional resourcing to manage and monitor your campaigns. But it isn’t just an AI assistant. It can be an orchestration layer built to help marketing teams automate elements of their operating model - one rooted in always-on experimentation.
By embedding intelligent decision-making across CMS, CMP, Experimentation, and Personalisation, Opal allows teams to:
Which results in:
This creates the conditions for a true test - learn - adapt cycle. Not quarterly. Not annually. But constantly.
Example: A team running a product landing page notices a dip in conversions for a specific subset of users. Opal flags the change, suggests layout tweaks based on past performance, generates appropriate variants for review, runs an A/B test – creating a cycle of review and action rather than a cross-team scramble or weeks of delay.
This is more than operational efficiency. It can be a mindset shift.
Opal empowers teams to move from fixed campaign calendars to dynamic, insight-led engagement. From "set it and forget it" to "test and evolve". From reactive adjustments to proactive performance culture.
That means:
Sector spotlight: In higher education, where student recruitment journeys are long and influenced by subtle cues, being able to test micro-messaging, layout hierarchy, or CTA design across touchpoints becomes a possibility and one where gains can be capitalised upon within a single enrolment round or academic year - it’s a competitive advantage.
Many marketing leaders believe in experimentation. But operationalising it successfully remains the challenge.
This challenge isn’t strategic intent - it’s execution. If optimisation lives in a single team or tool, disconnected from content production, personalisation strategies, or wider campaign planning, friction exists which can create a latency and a separation from focus.
If data is the responsibility of a specific team member or group, the danger is that it can remain siloed. Opal can help by bringing data to the fore in operational activities, creating an embedded function across key areas of the marketing workflow.
This is how you move from knowing experimentation is valuable, to making it a repeatable, habit that scales your operation.
Opal is more than tooling. It’s momentum.
It gives teams the capacity to act on insights, not just gather them. It reduces the cost of change. It can build confidence to explore. And it makes the link between content, experience, and results easier to see - and to iterate on.
We know that perfect is the enemy of job done. The best performing digital teams iterate to the perfect campaign. They optimise in motion. They start small and improve fast. They build an accelerator of performance that generates increased speed over time.
Opal makes this possible - not by replacing marketers, but by empowering them with the tools to focus on what matters most. With Opal, you can skip the manual or possibly tedious work (that means more time spent on marketing).
If you're shifting from campaigns to continuous, take a look at how Opal could enable your team.
And if you need a partner to help embed that model, align your team, and get the most from your investment - well then we’d love to talk.