The Check with Joseki Tech | Recapping Optimove Connect 2025

SUMMARY

In this episode of The Check with Joseki Tech, Adam Steidley recaps his experience at the 2025 Optimove Connect Conference and introduces its central theme, positionless marketing. The episode explores how marketers can streamline campaign execution, reduce time-to-market, and embrace agility by removing organizational bottlenecks and adopting new tools. Key highlights include:

Positionless Marketing Framework: Inspired by concepts like positionless basketball, this approach empowers marketers to handle creative, targeting, scheduling, and analysis from end to end, removing dependency on siloed teams.
Optimove Product Innovations: Development of tools like send-time optimization, subject line testing, and API-based dynamic content — allowing for smarter, scalable personalization and streamlined workflows. Additional updates to data management (via FTP, Snowflake, Azure) and new features like Adakt's gamification engine enable richer content strategies beyond traditional coupons and sale alerts.
Organizational Change & Testing Culture: Emphasis on change management, the need to empower marketers, and the value of continuously testing new tools against current workflows to keep marketing fresh, fast, and customer-centered. Connections to Agile Marketing Mindset advocating for treating campaigns like MVPs—getting ideas to market quickly, learning from results, and refining based on performance rather than waiting for perfection.

INTRODUCTION

Hi, welcome to The Check with Joseki Tech. I'm Adam Steidley, and we're here to discuss the 2025 Optimove Connect Conference. We attended the event a week or two ago — it was held on March 19th and 20th in London's Shoreditch area, where Optimove has an office. It was a great event, and we wanted to share some highlights of what we learned and discussed.

We're going to cover three main areas of the conference. First is positionless marketing, their core theme this year and featured heavily in the talks. The second area we'll cover is product features from Optimove that are worth your attention. Finally, we'll walk through sessions focused on tips and techniques.

STRUCTURE OF THE SHOW

The venue was quite nice, with both a main and a minor conference hall. There were about 400 attendees — approximately 75 Optimove employees, 25 to 50 service providers (consultants or complementary product reps), and the remainder were Optimove users, primarily from the gaming sector. Since we work mostly in retail, we were a small minority —maybe five of us were non-gaming customers. That was an interesting insight into the user base.

Many attendees were local, which makes sense given the conference's London base. It was a good event overall.

POSITIONLESS MARKETING

This was the focus of Pini's keynote, where he introduced the concept of positionless marketing. The idea draws inspiration from positionless basketball or "total soccer" — like in the Ted Lasso episode that explores the Dutch model — where players fluidly switch roles. In basketball, the standout example is Nikola Jokić, the Denver Nuggets center. He doesn't just play the traditional big-man role; he also has exceptional court vision and is among the league leaders in assists. He can shoot from the outside and helps stretch the floor, which allows all players to take on more responsibilities, creating a more dynamic game.

In marketing terms, positionless marketing means removing the assembly-line structure of campaign execution. Traditionally, campaigns go from the creative team to targeting, to scheduling, to analytics, often involving additional teams for tasks like setting up coupons. These steps happen sequentially, creating bottlenecks that slow down time-to-market. Many organizations face a 2–6 week delay from idea to execution.

Optimove positions itself to eliminate these delays by putting all campaign tools in one place. The platform is designed so that a marketer can handle everything: building audiences (without needing SQL or technical skills), scheduling campaigns, analyzing performance, and even creating emails with built-in templates. With good base imagery, the marketer can build and launch a campaign end-to-end without waiting on other teams.

A great example of this in action came from the FDJ United team. Rachel and Georgi shared how they reduced their time-to-market from six weeks to just 24 hours by automating internal systems — like coupon generation and tracking — so they no longer had to wait on other departments. Georgi, the head of marketing transformation, was clearly impressive, and I made a point to speak with them afterward. What they accomplished — connecting all the dots internally — is no small feat, and it's something we've tried to help our own clients do.

Rachel emphasized how this speed boost reinvigorated their team. When marketers can act on ideas quickly, it keeps them energized and focused on creativity, not bureaucracy. In contrast, when execution is slow, many good ideas simply never make it to market. That story really drove home the power of positionless marketing.

SUPPORTING CASE STUDIES & ORGANIZATIONAL CHALLENGES

There were a couple of other talks that expanded on the concept of the positionless marketer. One that stood out was Entain's AI-Led Revolution: Embracing a Self-Optimizing CRM, presented in collaboration with CACI and Entain. Their move toward positionless marketing emphasized two key themes: first, the need to simplify processes at every step, and second, the organizational resistance that often becomes the biggest hurdle.

Another related session came from Optimove's professional services leaders, Sophie and Punal, titled CRM Team Optimization: Bridging Strategy, Structure, and Technology. This talk focused on internal change management. It echoed a challenge we've encountered in our own journey toward positionless marketing — resistance from other departments that are protective of their domain.

For example, our creative team often becomes a bottleneck — not by choice, but due to workload. Like many large organizations, we try to operate with lean teams, and the creative department handles requests from across the business. We're not always their top priority, which slows our time-to-market.

That said, the creative team plays a crucial role. They have trained copywriters and designers who can elevate our campaigns. We want their input when it leads to better results — but the tradeoff is delay. Often, executive leadership adds another layer of slowdown by insisting on final approvals for copy or imagery, even on routine emails. For major brand pushes, that's fair. But when applied to every send, it becomes counterproductive.

If organizations want to realize the promise of 24-hour campaign turnarounds, they must empower marketers to operate more independently. That means trusting them to stay within brand guidelines and deliver "good enough" creative quickly. Perfection can't be the enemy of progress.

AGILE MARKETING & MVP THINKING

Closely tied to positionless marketing is the idea of the agile marketer. It's a framework we're all familiar with from software development — especially the concept of the MVP, or minimum viable product. The principle is to launch the simplest version of something, learn from how the market reacts, and improve iteratively.

This mindset is just as applicable in marketing. We rarely know in advance which campaigns will resonate. The goal is then to bring more ideas to market faster, observe what works, and double down on the winners. That means empowering marketers to launch campaigns quickly, even if the creative isn't "perfect." As long as the content meets brand standards and gets into the field fast, that's a net gain.

Key elements of a successful campaign include:

Targeting – Are we reaching the right people at the right time?
Offer – What's the hook? Is it a sale, a coupon, or a cross-sell opportunity?
Message – Does the subject line drive opens? Does the content deliver the value?

In many cases, the offer and timing matter more than the polish of the creative. A stunning image won't compensate for a weak or irrelevant offer. So, rather than holding back until everything is refined, we should prioritize speed and iteration.

One common problem we see is that marketing teams don't take full ownership of their campaigns after launch. Positionless marketing also means being accountable for performance. That includes killing underperforming campaigns — something many teams struggle with. It's easy to fall into the trap of measuring success by the volume of campaigns launched, not by results.

However, pruning ineffective efforts and reallocating resources to high performers are critical. It keeps the overall portfolio strong and drives better outcomes.

OPTIMOVE'S PRODUCT INNOVATIONS

One of the most valuable sessions at the conference was the keynote from Shai, Optimove's SVP of Product, titled The Future of Personalization: How Agentic AI Empowers the Positionless Marketer. The title may have been a mouthful, but the content was full of actionable insights and upcoming feature previews. If you're going to watch just one session from the conference recordings, make it this one.

Here are some standout features Shai introduced:

Send-Time Optimization – This is similar to what Salesforce Marketing Cloud already offers. It allows marketers to automatically send emails when each recipient is most likely to engage. It looks like it'll be as simple as checking a box — something we definitely plan to test.
Subject Line Variation Tools – Optimove will soon support built-in testing for multiple subject lines, which is especially useful for recurring campaigns. Slight variations can greatly impact open rates, so this feature adds easy lift.
API-Based Dynamic Content – A game-changer. Optimove will now allow API calls directly within email templates, much like referencing customer attributes. For retail, this is huge. For instance, in abandoned cart campaigns, we typically pass in the product name, image, and link manually. With these API calls, we can now look up that data dynamically during send-time. This enables personalization at scale — whether it's product recs, store info, or services offered at a specific location. Previously, if we wanted to include store hours or location-specific services, we had to build static images or use dynamic mail with limited flexibility. With API lookups, we can now generate cleaner, more flexible content blocks that are still personalized.

That said, there are performance concerns with caching and scalability. Since the dynamic content will be resolved at send-time, campaigns targeting millions of recipients could strain the backend. This is something to monitor as we begin testing.

Some of these capabilities are expected to roll out in Q2 or Q3 of 2025. Others, like content creation at scale, are still in the concept phase. Shai teased a future where Optimove could generate thousands of content variations by mixing segments like player behavior and product preferences. It's early days for that functionality, but it signals a powerful direction.

SELF-SERVICE DATA TOOLS & ECOSYSTEM EXPANSIONS

Another important area discussed at the conference was Optimove's growing support for self-service data management — an especially big win for smaller teams or organizations that don't leverage Optimove's professional services on a regular basis.

They've added the ability to upload data directly into the customer record via FTP. This can be done as a one-time update or set up as a recurring job. New integrations, including Snowflake and Azure Cloud, are also being added, which will provide more flexibility for different tech stacks.

If you're managing your own data pipelines, these tools can help you take control without needing assistance from Optimove's data team. The session titled Best Practices for Managing Data with Optimove explored this in depth.

That said, there are still some quirks:

The upload tool expects files to retain the same name — which isn't ideal if you use date-stamped files (a best practice in many organizations).
A workaround is to use symlinks or logical links to point to the latest file, keeping your pipeline intact.

Despite these limitations, the interface is easy to use and stable overall. It's worth exploring if you're looking to centralize or streamline your customer data updates.

Other product innovations discussed included:

OptiPromo – A new coupon and promotion engine that allows for variable promos by customer segment. This gives you more flexibility to target specific value tiers with different offers.
Opti-X – Optimove's recommendation engine, currently more widely adopted among gaming clients. For retail users like us, it's still untested, but we're interested in A/B testing it against our existing custom-built recommendation model. If it underperforms, we're hopeful Optimove will be responsive and improve its capabilities for retail.

Finally, one of the more playful — but still strategic — additions to the product suite was Adakt, a gamification platform Optimove acquired. The founder (who repeatedly and charmingly referred to himself as "a humble Estonian") showcased games like surveys, match-three puzzles, and retro-style games like Snake. One campaign, run by an Estonian egg producer, saw customers spending 20–30 minutes engaging with Easter-themed games. It's likely these were handed to kids in the backseat, but that's still excellent brand engagement.

This opens up a lot of possibilities for content marketing. For example, a back-to-school campaign at Staples could involve fun games for kids, creating a warm brand association during the shopping process. Similarly, survey-based content like "What's the right office chair for you?" can guide customers through product selection in an engaging, interactive way. These tools help balance the overuse of "Here's what's on sale" messaging with experiences that drive value through interaction.

CLOSING THOUGHTS & ACTIONABLE STEPS

One of the biggest takeaways from the conference — especially reinforced in the product sessions — was the importance of building a culture of experimentation. As marketers, we need to make it a regular habit to try new tools, A/B test them against what we're already doing and make smart decisions about what to keep and what to drop.

Without that testing mindset, it's easy to fall back on the familiar —using the same processes, tools, and campaign formats simply because they're what we know. But real growth comes from occasionally lifting our heads, seeing what's new, and taking some measured risks to evolve our toolkit.

There were also a couple of tactical sessions worth highlighting:

Jonathan Inbar's session on OptiMail tips and tricks introduced some smart strategies, like dynamically naming image files to reduce the need for conditional logic. For example, if you have 30 image variations across categories and bonus levels, you can name files using a format like "image_category_bonuslevel.jpg" and build that name dynamically in your email. That way, you avoid bloated conditional statements.
Jonathan also discussed using custom data attributes to match call-to-action buttons with the correct URLs — essential for ensuring that landing pages align with dynamically generated content.
Dana Rausch's session focused on preparing for big marketing moments like the Super Bowl or other high-volume betting days. Her advice was highly actionable and backed by hard data —definitely worth revisiting before peak season.

There were a couple of other sessions — one on testing strategy and another on OptiWeb — that I missed due to scheduling conflicts, but I plan to revisit those once the recordings are live.

Overall, Optimove Connect 2025 was a strong event. It not only showcased the evolution of the platform but also sparked broader conversations about how we work as marketing teams — how we can move faster, work more independently, and create more meaningful experiences for our customers.

If you attended, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. And if you didn't, I hope this recap gave you a useful overview. Definitely looking forward to seeing what next year brings.