After working in email marketing through the Orr Fellowship for over a year and living in the Indianapolis area, I’ve come to hear about ExactTarget quite a bit. The company that was sold for $2.5 billion to Salesforce.com last year is arguably the most well known email service provider in the world.

ExactTarget has continued on its mission to provide a premier digital marketing experience for its clients by deploying some additional products this year.

Recently I was fortunate enough to attend the first day of its Connections, a conference ExactTarget puts on every year to showcase where the company is going, some of its most successful partners, and plenty of specialized vendors that are compatible with the ET platform. There I met plenty of people excited about the newly refined Journey Builder and the autonomy it provides marketers on the web, email, social, and through custom apps.

To put everything in perspective Salesforce.com’s very own Marc Benioff laid out his vision for the future. Mr. Benioff has a charisma about him that is tough not to notice. Obviously excited about the direction that ExactTarget is moving in, Marc highlighted several clients that were not only using Journey builder but using it on a whole new level.

My favorite mentioned was the fitness tracking company Fitbit. Tracking steps, calories burned, and sleep wellness, the company has found many opportunities for meaningful interactions with the consumer.

But what is the most effective way to communicate with them, and when does it make sense to do so? With applications for mobile push notifications, triggered email messages, and even alerts on the product itself, Fitbit has leveraged their data in conjunction with ExactTarget to answer those questions.

Optimization is an ongoing process of thinking what the customer wants or needs, testing a hypothesis, looking at the data, and implementing the optimal solution.

Does it make sense to send users a push notification or an email when their battery is close to dead? Fitbit can test that. When congratulating someone on a seven-day fitness record, what kind of message should be sent? Fitbit can test that, too.

With the right marketing team, a sound plan for experiments, and a constant focus on the customer, marketers now have the opportunity to shift from the “one size fits all” approach to a more 1:1 relationship.

Overall, I was impressed with the limitless possibilities that Journey Builder offers to digital marketers and will be interested to see where it goes from here.