Shafqat Islam, President at Optimizely, on the terrifying honesty of discovering that most marketing has no measurable impact, why an experimentation culture is the only real antidote, and what it looks like to build marketing that demonstrably moves the business.
"Most CMOs cannot honestly say what would happen to revenue if they turned off all their marketing tomorrow."
Why the most important question a CMO can ask is what happens if we stop, and why most cannot answer it
Shafqat Islam is President at Optimizely, the digital experience platform, and one of the most direct voices in B2B marketing on the gap between marketing activity and marketing impact. His thesis is provocative: most marketing organisations could stop most of what they are doing and see no measurable change in revenue, which means most marketing budgets are essentially waste.
In this conversation Islam argues that the antidote to this is not better measurement but genuine experimentation culture: building an organisation that tests hypotheses rigorously, kills what does not work without sentiment, and compounds the learning from what does. He also makes the case that Optimizely's position as both a digital experience platform and its own customer zero gives it an unusual laboratory for applying the principles it sells.
"If we stopped all our marketing, nothing would change. That statement should terrify every CMO. If you cannot confidently say it is wrong, you do not know if your marketing is working."
Islam uses this question as a diagnostic. The CMOs who can answer it confidently have built measurement and experimentation infrastructure that gives them causal evidence for what their marketing contributes. The CMOs who cannot answer it are running on assumption and correlation. His point is not that stopping marketing would always produce no change, but that most marketing organisations do not actually know.
"Experimentation is not a department. It is a philosophy. It means every assumption about what will work is treated as a hypothesis to be tested, and every test result is treated as data to be acted on, even when it contradicts what we expected."
Islam is clear that experimentation culture requires organisational discipline that is harder than it sounds. The most difficult part is not running the tests. It is killing activities that have been running for years when the test data shows they are not working. Marketing organisations develop sentimental attachments to channels, formats, and activities that have been part of their programme for a long time. Genuine experimentation culture requires the willingness to walk away from anything the data does not support.
"We are our own customer zero. We use Optimizely to optimise Optimizely's marketing and digital experience. That is not a marketing claim. It is how we actually operate, and it means our experience of using the product is direct and firsthand."
The customer zero principle at Optimizely means that the marketing team is both a user of the product and a source of product feedback. When Islam talks about experimentation culture in marketing, he is describing something his team lives rather than something he is selling. This gives him an authenticity in those conversations that is hard to replicate if the company does not genuinely use its own products.
"You have to separate the measurement of effort from the measurement of impact. Most marketing teams are rewarded for doing things. The culture change is rewarding teams for impact, which means being willing to stop doing things that are not producing it."
Islam identifies the incentive structure as the key lever. If marketing teams are evaluated on the number of campaigns they run and the content they produce, they have no incentive to stop anything. If they are evaluated on business impact, they have every incentive to stop the activities that do not contribute to it and double down on the ones that do.
"Optimisation is continuous, not a project. The best digital experiences are never finished. They are constantly being tested, refined, and improved based on actual user behaviour."
Islam connects digital experience optimisation to the broader experimentation philosophy. The website is not a finished product that gets redesigned every two years. It is a continuously running experiment where every page, every journey, every conversion point is being tested against alternatives. The companies that treat their digital experience this way compound their conversion rates over time in a way that a single redesign project cannot produce.
"Experimentation is not a department. It is a philosophy."
Host Tell us about Optimizely and your role.
Islam Optimizely is a digital experience platform. We help organisations experiment, personalise, and optimise their digital experiences. I am President. But the most important thing I can tell you about our company is that we are our own customer zero. We use our own product on our own marketing and digital properties.
Host What is the most important question you think CMOs should be asking?
Islam If we stopped all our marketing, nothing would change. That statement should terrify every CMO. If you cannot confidently say it is wrong, you do not know if your marketing is working. Most CMOs cannot honestly say what would happen to revenue if they turned off all their marketing tomorrow.
Host What is the antidote?
Islam Genuine experimentation culture. Experimentation is not a department. It is a philosophy. Every assumption about what will work is treated as a hypothesis to be tested. Every test result is acted on, even when it contradicts what we expected. The hardest part is killing activities that have been running for years when the data shows they are not working.
Host How do you build a team that is willing to kill what does not work?
Islam You have to separate the measurement of effort from the measurement of impact. Most marketing teams are rewarded for doing things. The culture change is rewarding teams for impact, which means being willing to stop doing things that are not producing it. That requires an incentive structure change as much as a mindset change.
Host What does good digital experience optimisation look like?
Islam Optimisation is continuous, not a project. The best digital experiences are never finished. They are constantly being tested, refined, and improved based on actual user behaviour. The companies that treat their digital experience this way compound their conversion rates over time in a way that a single redesign project cannot produce.
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