Optimizely has introduced Virtual Teammates, a new class of AI coworkers designed to handle defined marketing responsibilities, retain organizational knowledge, and complete work proactively without task-by-task prompting. The launch, announced August 31 at Opticon in New York, targets a persistent problem: marketers are spending more time managing disconnected AI tools than using them to grow their business.
In a recent Optimizely study of more than 2,000 B2B marketing leaders, 81% said they personally switch between two or more disconnected AI tools each week, with 19% using four or more. Virtual Teammates are built to function as ongoing members of the marketing team rather than another tool that needs operating.
The launch roster
At launch, Optimizely is introducing five role-specific Virtual Teammates:
- Chief of Staff: Prepares marketers for meetings, tracks follow-ups, monitors competitive intelligence, and delivers recurring briefings.
- SEO & AI Search Analyst: Monitors search and AI visibility, audits AEO performance, identifies opportunities, takes action, and reports on what was done.
- Marketing Analyst: Turns marketing data into decision-ready insights by monitoring acquisition, content performance, and conversion trends.
- Personalization Strategist: Identifies personalization opportunities, designs and builds campaigns, and monitors performance to recommend next steps.
- CRO Manager: Analyzes experiments and performance to identify areas for improvement and recommend actions.
Organizations can access these Virtual Teammates from a directory, where they can hire and customize ready-built teammates with role-based expertise. Teams can adapt each teammate's responsibilities in plain language and connect it to the systems needed to perform its work, rather than building agents and workflows from scratch.
How they operate
Each Virtual Teammate has a defined role, responsibilities, and organizational permissions. Marketers can assign work, involve them in conversations and workflows, and configure recurring responsibilities triggered by schedules or events. Over time, they retain relevant context from previous conversations, projects, and decisions so marketers do not have to continually re-explain how their organization works.
Virtual Teammates can also operate on a schedule. A Chief of Staff could deliver a weekly briefing or share background details ahead of a meeting. An SEO & AI Search Analyst could continuously monitor changes in search visibility and surface issues that warrant attention. Because the teammate retains context over time, each assignment builds on the work and decisions that came before it.
"Marketers want to grow their business, not spend time re-explaining it to multiple AI tools," said Alex Atzberger, CEO of Optimizely. "A Virtual Teammate learns how your organization works once, then keeps going. This is the most exciting innovation since the introduction of agents."
Governance and accountability
Organizations remain in control through individually scoped permissions and built-in oversight. Companies can set where human review is required, while each Virtual Teammate's activity is tied to its own identity, creating an audit trail for visibility and accountability.
"A lot of AI adoption stalls out because getting from idea to finished work is still hard. Even when the AI does its part, you don't always know who did what, or trust it enough to let it act on its own," said Kevin Li, SVP of Product at Optimizely. "That's why we built Virtual Teammates with their own identity and permissions from day one. They carry the work through to execution, and every action ties back to a clear audit trail."
Virtual Teammates extend Optimizely's Agent Platform with a role-based approach to AI collaboration, moving AI from individual prompts and isolated tasks toward persistent, proactive support across marketing workflows. For marketers evaluating how AI fits into their broader strategy, resources like AI for Marketing and the AI Learning Path for Marketing Managers offer context on how these tools are changing the job.
Why this matters for marketers
The shift here is from AI as a tool you operate to AI as a coworker you manage. If Virtual Teammates deliver on their promise, the practical impact is fewer hours spent switching between tools, re-entering context, and prompting for routine tasks. The tradeoff is governance: marketers will need to define clear permissions and oversight points so that autonomous work remains auditable and aligned with business goals.
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