Optimizely Names New Executive Team Members at Pivotal Moment in Digital Marketing

NEW YORK, February 2, 2023 – Optimizely, the leading digital experience platform (DXP) provider, today 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.   

Islam’s dedication to optimizing 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,” said Alex Atzberger, CEO of Optimizely. “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.” 

“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,” said Islam. “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.” 

De Jong previously served as Senior Vice President and General Manager for the EMEA and APAC regions and specializes 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 the SE Asia and ANZ regions. 

“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,” Atzberger said. “Sebastiaan’s deep understanding will ensure that Optimizely delivers outsized outcomes for our customers present and future.” 

“I could not be prouder or more excited to lead Optimizely’s global sales organization,” said de Jong. “I look forward to another year of delivering tremendous ROI for our customers and enabling seamless marketing collaboration at incredible scale.” 

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 has been named a Leader in the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Experience Platform for the 3rd consecutive year.* Additionally, Optimizely (Welcome) has been named a Leader in the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Content Marketing Platform for the 5th consecutive 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 organization representative of interviewed Optimizely’s DXP customers enjoyed significant tangible gains from the solution, earning 370% ROI with total benefits of more than $12.5M over 3 years. 

*Episerver (acquired Optimizely and later rebranded to Optimizely) named in the 2021 and 2020 Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms. 
**Welcome (acquired by Optimizely and later rebranded to Optimizely CMP) named in the 2021, 2020, 2019 and 2018 Magic Quadrant for Content Marketing Platforms. 

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