Next week I'll be in San Francisco at our annual Optimization Summit! It's going to be a remarkable event with a packed agenda! Several of my clients will be attending here is a snap-shot of the agenda:

Session Descriptions
Keynote Presentation — Making Optimization Part of Your DNA
(Anne Holland, President – MarketingSherpa)

Successful marketers understand that testing and optimization is a journey and not a destination. One of the key factors in driving this journey is the ability for a company to become testing-centric — always in a mode of looking for better ways to reach their customers and achieving continuous improvement. This presentation will discuss how a marketing organization can work with all of the other stakeholders in their company — IT, product management, sales, and executives — to understand the powerful return on investment from current optimization techniques and bring these practices to the forefront of the organization.
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Optimization Success Story
(Abby Stephenson, Manager of Usability – Delta Air Lines)

Delta Air Lines is one of the largest airlines in the world with flights to 458 destinations in 99 countries. Millions of customers each day rely on Delta.com to research flights, purchase tickets, and manage itineraries. Delta has been a pioneer in its industry in its use of multivariable testing and optimization to improve the online customer experience, increase revenue, and decrease support costs. Abby Stephenson, Manager of Usability for Delta, will discuss her company's approach, techniques, and successes they have achieved with website optimization.
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Where Multivariable Optimization Matters — Applying It to Varied Initiatives Across Your Company
(Andrew Eisner, Vice President of Client Services – Optimost)

It is probably obvious to most marketers that optimization can substantially increase your conversion rates online, such as increased revenue, leads generated, and registrations. Additionally, there are a number of less obvious applications to improve site design, inform marketing strategy, monetize real estate on your site, and improve other areas of marketing communication. This session will review the applications of the Optimost Platform and best practices to achieve results beyond the optimal landing page.
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Strategies for Content Targeting and Building Personas
(Samer Shwayhat, Senior Client Relationship Manager – Optimost)

Even more powerful than optimizing your web presence for all of your visitors is the ability to target messages, content, and overall presentations to different slices of your audience. Audience “personas” can be defined by a number of characteristics — source of traffic, new vs. repeat visitors, demographics, time/day, or even behavioral characteristics — and then pages can be optimized against each of these personas. This presentation will review various approaches to building personas of your audience and implementing content targeting and optimization solutions for each of those audience groups to maximize your overall conversion increase.
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Panel: Using Learnings from Web Analytics to Drive Testing and Optimization
(Moderator: Josh Manion, Chief Executive Officer – Stratigent)

Web analytics and website optimization work hand in hand — web analytics data helps you determine areas to focus your optimization efforts on for the most potential return on investment. Moderated by analytics industry expert Josh Manion, this panel will discuss real-life approaches to leveraging existing analytics data to maximize the effectiveness of your optimization programs.
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Applying Multivariable Optimization Techniques to Optimize Your Email Campaigns
(Scott Simonelli, Vice President of Marketing Solutions – Optimost)

Email marketing and web marketing share a number of characteristics, but also demonstrate many differences in both their purpose and process. Multivariable optimization techniques applied and adapted to email marketing produce similarly powerful improvements in response. This presentation will demonstrate how to get started with simple email tests that require little resources, as well as more comprehensive multivariable optimization programs to accelerate your email campaign results. Best practices from real-life case studies will be shared.
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Survival of the Fittest — Experimental Design and Why It Matters
(Sunil Gupta, Principal – Thinktodo & Michael Montero, Director of Analytics – Optimost)

Key to any optimization program is methodology — how you approach an experiment is as important as the subjects of the experiment themselves. Your goal is to be able to simulate the broadest number of variations in the shortest period of time, and this requires experimental design. Terms like Taguchi, Fractional Factorial, and Orthogonality are often very confusing. Sunil Gupta, Principal of Thinktodo, and Michael Montero, Director of Analytics of Optimost, will sort out all of these terms and review what is experimental design, why it’s crucial, and compare the benefits and considerations of choosing different design approaches.
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New Optimost Features and Reporting
(Lance Lovette, Chief Technical Officer – Optimost)

Optimost has always offered the most powerful reporting tools in the business and is constantly innovating to improve visibility into experimental data and learnings. There are dozens of new features in the Optimost Campaign Management Console (CMC) that will allow you even greater visibility and flexibility. Lance Lovette, Chief Technical Officer at Optimost, will review all of these additions and discuss how to best leverage the reporting to maximize your program success.
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Panel: Building Bridges: Strategies for Overcoming the Marketing/IT Chasm
(Moderator: June Dershewitz, Vice President of Analytics – Semphonic)

Success in online marketing requires cooperation between marketing and IT departments. Both departments bring tremendous value to the process, and ultimately share the same goal. However, in many organizations, a tension exists between marketing and IT that creates obstacles in achieving the shared goal of a better performing website. Moderated by June Dershewitz, Vice President of Analytics at Semphonic, this panel will discuss experiences in building a bridge between the marketing and IT teams and developing processes that allow for maximum efficiency in internal operations to implement large-scale optimization projects. It will also provide insight from the IT person’s perspective on mistakes marketers make in dealing with IT departments, and how to best work with and motivate IT professionals.
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Closing — The Big Picture
(Mark Wachen, Chief Executive Officer – Optimost)

Every month in Optimost’s newsletter, Optimal InSites, Optimost CEO and Founder Mark Wachen brings his unique style of storytelling to demonstrate principles that he has learned through his many years of experience as a direct marketer. In this closing session, Mark will help clear the fog around online marketing by sharing more of the “Big Picture” and explaining how everything we know about marketing can actually be found all around us.
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Partner Pavilion
The Partner Pavilion features the many ways that Optimost partners can help you maximize your ROI. You’ll have an opportunity to interact with Optimost key partners and see what their solutions and our joint offerings can do for you. The Pavilion is open throughout the day, so make sure you stop by to view the latest demonstrations and technology they have to offer. Please click here for more information on the Partner Pavilion.

“Best of Class” Awards Ceremony
Join us in honoring Optimost clients who have “wowed” us with their creativity and collaboration, and recognized the importance of including multivariable optimization as part of their marketing strategy. We will be announcing the winners during the Summit day.

If you haven't registered and would like to attend be sure to visit www.OptimizationSummit.com.