Optimizely lets marketers create ideas and access experiment data through new Slack integration

From Optimizely: An idea collaboration screen in Slack.

Optimizely users can now share ideas and check the status of experiments through collaboration tool Slack.

The announcement this week means that those marketers who subscribe to both Slack and Optimizely won’t need to log directly into Optimizely to check ongoing web, iOS, Android and Over-the-Top TV experiments.

‘Democratize’ testing. Optimizely Director of Product Management Byron Jones said in an interview that this is his company’s first integration with an office workplace tool, as well as Slack’s first integration with a testing tool. Slack already integrates with Google Analytics, inbound marketing platform HubSpot and reporting tool Raven, among other marketing tools. The key purpose of the Optimizely link, Jones said, is to help “democratize” the ability to test different marketing and user experience alternatives by making their creation and monitoring part of an organization’s daily workflow.

Jones said users of Optimizely’s chief competitor — Adobe Target — communicate primarily through spreadsheets and email, which had been the only communication tools previously available to Optimizely users.

The Slack communication can be utilized for Optimizely’s Program Management offering, either the Business or Enterprise versions. Experiments can’t actually be set up or directly managed inside Slack.

The focus is on ideation, such as creating a new idea or modifying an existing idea for an experiment, and status updates, such as when the experiment starts or when it passes 100 visitors.

Why you should care. Optimizely is a popular tool for testing different marketing approaches, but that testing happens over time. Slack is used by many organizations as a central avenue of inter-organizational communication, so integrating the ongoing status of an experiment into a normal day’s workflow can let the entire organization watch the results.

But the real value of a marketing test is based on the quality of the idea being tested. By incorporating a common communications tool like Slack as a kind of front-end, Optimizely is now widening the discussion about alternative approaches to marketing and user experience, helping to make optimization part of an organization’s daily habits.

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.