Optimizely, the digital experience platform (DXP) provider, announced it has named digital marketing veterans Shafqat Islam and Sebastiaan de Jong as Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Sales Officer, respectively. As established members of the Optimizely community, Islam and de Jong will play central roles as the company continues to reinvent how marketing and marketers work, from web experimentation to orchestrating the entire content lifecycle.
What do the appointees bring to Optimizely?
Shafqat Islam
Islam’s dedication to optimising the marketing experience dates back to his time as co-founder and CEO of Welcome (formerly known as NewsCred), the global leader in Enterprise Content Marketing from 2007 to 2021. Welcome created and led the content marketing platform (CMP) category (now known as the Optimizely Content Marketing Platform). He joined the Optimizely team as General Manager when Optimizely acquired Welcome in 2021.
“Digital marketers’ jobs have never been more complex and customer expectations have never been higher, more nuanced, or more rapidly evolving. Shafqat brings the unique perspective needed to help Optimizely and its customers thrive in any environment. He understands the technical needs of marketers, what it means to experiment, and what frictionless content management looks like,” said Alex Atzberger, CEO of Optimizely.
“I’ve built products for marketers my whole life, and have always believed that marketers deserve their own operating system – a united space to come together to collaborate and work on campaigns, content and experiments. Optimizely allows me to further that mission while leading an incredible marketing team. I look forward to continuing to connect the world’s most influential brands with the tools they need to compete,” Islam commented.
Sebastiaan de Jong
De Jong previously served as Senior Vice President and General Manager for the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and APAC regions and specialises in scaling, growth strategy, and experimentation. He joined Optimizely in 2018 to grow the EMEA region. After Optimizely was acquired by Episerver in 2020, de Jong built a strong team and drove consistent growth, going on to take on the expanded responsibility of SE Asia and ANZ.
“The broader marketing ecosystem is at a pivotal juncture, but Optimizely is in a unique spot to reinvent how marketing, product and engineering should work together to create great digital experiences. Sebastiaan’s deep understanding will ensure that Optimizely delivers outsized outcomes for our customers present and future,” Atzberger further commented.
“I could not be prouder or more excited to lead Optimizely’s global sales organisation. I look forward to another year of delivering tremendous return on investment for our customers and enabling seamless marketing collaboration at incredible scale,” Sebastiaan de Jong said.
What is the market reach of Optimizely?
Optimizely empowers over 10,000 businesses across the globe to deliver exceptional customer experiences with data-backed confidence and unparalleled collaboration. The company’s global presence has grown to include nearly 1,500 employees across 21 offices.
The web experimentation category creator is a seven-time leader in analyst reports and has facilitated 1.8 million experiments for its worldwide customers. In 2022 Optimizely saw further success, highlighted by seamless performance during “Black Friday Week,” in which customers experienced 0 minutes of downtime while serving 44.8M unique visitors.
Optimizely was named a Leader in the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Experience Platform for the 3rd straight year. Optimizely (Welcome) was named a Leader in the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Content Marketing Platform for the 5th straight year.
A November 2022 commissioned Forrester Consulting study conducted on behalf of Optimizely, The Total Economic Impact™ Of Optimizely Digital Experience Platform, found that a composite firm representative of interviewed Optimizely’s DXP clients enjoyed big gains from the solution, earning 370% ROI with total benefits of over $12.5m over 3 years.
