59 A/B testing influencers you need to follow in 2023
The practice of experimentation continues to develop, change, and evolve.
Since we last published our “A/B testing influencers you need to follow article” a year ago, we have seen some major developments.
We’ve emerged from a life of remote work into economic uncertainty.
Google shoved GA4 on all teams and, in January, announced it would sunset Google Optimize after many companies had made their 2023 tool plans. (Maxymiser up next!)
Meanwhile, the world has gone gaga for the latest AI tools while others grapple with increasingly complex data and privacy regulations.
Product-led growth remains popular, with more and more teams embracing PLG and feature experimentation. This prompted us to add an entire category to recognize the size and speed of this space.
All-team experimentation, where marketing and product teams collaborate or work in a common growth team, is gaining recognition.
Finally, we're witnessing the productization of some experimentation tasks and processes through new tools and automation.
All this change can feel overwhelming and tricky to keep up-to-date with. To make your life easier, follow the thought leaders who share their insights about these trends on LinkedIn.
By following the people who live and breathe these topics, you can curate a personal newsfeed and always be in the know.
We’ve reviewed over 400 influencers to create an ultimate list of people to follow on LinkedIn in 2023.
To give you a taste of each influencer's content, we’ve included a ‘Noteworthy Content’ section featuring their best articles, interviews, podcast appearances, and conference presentations.
Every individual on the list is added to Kameleoon’s Expert Directory.
How we built the 2023 list of A/B Testing Influencers
We gathered suggestions from various sources to create an initial long list of over 400 people in experimentation, product, UX, and data and reviewed everyone during June 2023.
To make our list objective, we gave each person a score based on the following;
- How regularly did they post original content on LinkedIn about their area of expertise?
- Are they speaking at events dedicated to their area of expertise in 2023?
- Have they written or contributed to original research or reports since 2020?
- How many followers do they have on LinkedIn?
- Are they based in an English-speaking country or predominantly contribute content to their audience in English?
Finally, we made it a continued priority to include new and underrepresented voices. This year diverse voices make up 64% of our list versus 41% in 2022 and 18% in 2021.
Using these criteria helped us gauge the “followability” of individuals and categorize them into one of five categories;
- Top Conversion Rate Optimization Influencers
- Top Data & Analytics Influencers
- Top Feature Experimentation & Product Influencers
- Top UX & User Behavior Influencers
- Rising stars
Where there were multiple people with the same score, we chose who to include based on the originality of their content and the regularity of posting on LinkedIn, also keeping a close look at the comments they leave on other posts.
Some people who are great industry influencers, who are well-known and share great content, might not appear on the list. If they haven’t shared original content or participated in public conversations recently, they might not have made this year’s list.
Also, dozens of world-class experimenters choose not to maintain a regular LinkedIn presence. That doesn't make them unworthy of following. Inclusion or exclusion from this list is not a judgment about skill or experience. It’s a list designed to highlight who you should follow to stay on top of trends and best practices in experimentation.
All influencers are listed in no particular order in the category that best fits their work. It is not a ranking. Look through the list and give people a follow on LinkedIn to stay up-to-date with the latest trends in the industry. We guarantee you’ll learn something new. We always do.
Top Conversion Rate Optimization Influencers
1. Kelly Anne Wortham
Test & Learn Community founder
Kelly has worked in experimentation and analytics for the last 20 years. She’s led teams at Search Discovery, EY, Dell, Humana, and Circuit City, covering all aspects of research and experimentation, from paid media and email to social media and online personalization. Today, she runs the free Test & Learn Community (TLC), which she founded over ten years ago as a place for practitioners to teach, learn, and chat. Kelly will soon be launching her own company focusing on UX research and experimentation training, so stay tuned.
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy content: 70 TLC video recordings with amazing speakers and topics.
Follow Kelly:
LinkedIn
Twitter
YouTube
2. JONNY LONGDEN
Sharer of unexpected experiments
Over his 21-year career, Jonny has worked with Visa, Nike, O2, Principal Hotels, and Nokia and built one of the UK’s largest in-house conversion optimization teams at Sky. Today Jonny heads up the Digital Experience team at Journey Further. This dad of two still finds time for his interest in German philosophy as well as writing his popular fortnightly newsletter, Test Everything!
No. of years on list: 3
Noteworthy content: Six tips for getting senior buy-in for CRO
3. David Mannheim
The person in personalization
David was the founder of one of the UK’s largest independent conversion optimization consultancies, User Conversion, until he exited in 2021. Since then, he’s penned 80,000 words for his new book, The Person in Personalisation. It should be published any day now, so sign up for his newsletter to be the first to hear. And if you ever tire of discussing experimentation or personalization, David is more than happy to discuss, at length, his other true love, (read obsession) Disney World.
No. of years on list: 3
Noteworthy content: Who does personalization really well?
Follow David:
LinkedIn
4. Daphne Tideman
Growth advisor to eco-friendly D2C startups
Daphne spent five years at RockBoost, a leading growth hacking agency, and co-authored 'Growing Happy Clients,' described as a "must-read for consultants in the digital space." Following this, Daphne became the Head of Growth at Heights, a brain care startup. She scaled it from £28K to £343K MMR in just 18 months. Now Daphne works primarily with eco-friendly and wellness D2C startups to develop their growth teams.
No. of years on list: 2
Noteworthy content: Nail Your Growth Levers to Unlock ICE Scoring’s Full Potential
Follow Daphne:
LinkedIn
Growth Waves Newsletter
5. Jon MacDonald
The 6'7" CRO Olympian
Jon started out as a developer, originally learning to code on Commodore 64/128 while sick at home in 5th grade. But he later switched tracks to CRO, and for the past 14 years, has run The Good, an ecommerce CRO advisory. The Good is a certified B Corp and one of Oregon's top 20 fastest-growing private companies. Jon says he’s on a mission to remove all the bad online experiences until only the good remains. He’s also the author of Opting In To Optimization.
No. of years on list: 2
Noteworthy content: Usability Audits 101: Why and How They’re Crucial for Ecommerce
6. Ben Labay
The Framework Creator
Ben is the Managing Director of the experimentation agency, Speero, as well as an artist and conservation scientist. He loves creating frameworks that help others run their own testing program. With the help of his team, they have created over 30 framework blueprints covering everything from how to structure your CRO team to the best format for hypotheses, all of which are free.
No. of years on list: 3
Noteworthy content: Experimentation Program Benchmark Report 2023
7. Lucia van den Brink
A black belt in scaling experimentation programs
Lucia is this year's winner of the Experimentation Culture Award for creating the Women In Experimentation list (alongside Daphne Tideman.) During the day, Lucia runs her own experimentation consultancy and is a fractional consultant at Speero. She’s big on high-traffic testing programs and has run 700+ experiments on over 20M users.
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy content: How to change visitor's habits by running server-side tests
Follow Lucia:
LinkedIn
8. Talia Wolf
The Emotional Targeting Framework inventor
Talia founded the CRO agency Getuplift over ten years ago, offering a mix of done-for-you CRO services and training. She focuses on consumer psychology, emotional targeting, and behavioral data to understand why people buy products. As such, she created the Emotional Targeting Framework to help brands leverage the power of emotions to increase conversions.
No. of years on list: 3
Noteworthy content: The Complete Guide For Using Emotional Marketing To Increase Conversion Rates
Follow Talia:
LinkedIn
YouTube
Twitter
9. Shiva Manjunath
Hot takes about testing to learn, not testing to win
Shiva has worked in experimentation for over ten years, including program management roles for companies like Motive, Gartner, Norwegian Cruise Line, and Solo Brands. He shares a lot of his knowledge online and makes (what some might call boring) topics more engaging with memes, hot takes, and unfiltered honesty. He recently started a podcast called From A to B, alongside co-host Tracy Laranjo where they record their no-bullsh*t conversations about the things that keep experimenters up at night.
No. of years on list: 3
Noteworthy content: What do I need to consider when switching A/B testing tools?
Follow Shiva:
LinkedIn
10. Marianne Stjernvall
The Queen of CRO
Having spent over ten years in CRO, growth, and personalization roles, Marianne has now turned her hand to consulting. Under her brand, ”Queen of CRO,” she works as a Digital Director for Tele2, helps organizations like Funnel.io with CRO efforts, and advises the AI startup Bubbi.ai. For Marianne, it's important to share and give back to the community, so she’s a regular event speaker and, together with Carl Muszynski, created a Nordic CRO community on Slack.
No. of years on list: 3
Noteworthy content: The BOT Model - For companies wanting to accelerate their CRO efforts
Follow Marianne:
LinkedIn
11. Deborah O'Malley
GuessTheTest
Deborah unknowingly ran her first optimization study at the tender age of 8 when she cut out different shapes and colors of construction paper for her grade school science experiment, posted them on a board, and asked people which version they saw first. She went on to build GuessTheTest (gamified A/B case studies) and is the CEO of Convert Experts. Deborah has amassed over 17k followers on LinkedIn thanks to her no-holds-barred thoughts on the industry. Deborah received her Master of Science, where she specialized in eye tracking, and is a lecturer on product analytics at Queen's University.
No. of years on list: 2
Noteworthy content: How to avoid common data accuracy pitfalls in A/B testing
Follow Deborah:
LinkedIn
12. Manuel Da Costa
Documenting experimentation ops
Manuel founded Effective Experiments—a platform built to manage, collaborate, and analyze experiments using customized workflow and documentation features. More than just a SAAS tool, the platform is based on Manuel’s Experimentation Ops™ Framework, which uses behavioral psychology and organizational dynamics to build cohesive and centralized experimentation programs. Manuel has run some great conferences over the years, including LeanConf and Conversion World, the latter now taking the form of an online community.
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy content: Experimentation Documentation Maturity Assessment
Follow Manuel:
LinkedIn
13. Ton Wesseling
Legend of experimentation
Ton has worked in the industry for over 20 years and founded the CRO agency Online Dialogue. He’s done much to build the CRO community over the years, including running The Conference (formerly known as Conversion Hotel) and the Experimentation Culture Awards. He recently (and deservedly) received the Legend of Experimentation Award at Experimentation Elite and is a frequent keynote speaker at international conferences. Ton also maintains a list of CRO-related conferences at Conversion.Events.
No. of years on list: 3
Noteworthy content: When experimentation is slowing your growth and True Discovery Rate explained
14. André Morys
An OG Optimizer
André founded the experimentation agency KonversionsKRAFT in 1996 and created one of the first German usability labs in 1999. Today KonversionsKRAFT is a leading business optimization consultancy in the D-A-CH region. André is one of the founding members of Go Group Digital, an intentional network of CRO agencies. He and his team are also behind one of Europe's largest conferences—Growth Marketing Summit. Alongside this, he’s a university lecturer, developer of the "7 Layers of Conversion" framework. Barack Obama follows him on Twitter.
No. of years on list: 3
Noteworthy content: Why you need to focus on the customer to deliver success in optimization
15. Brian Massey
The Conversion Scientist
Brian can be spotted wearing his white lab coat while speaking at conferences around the world. He founded Conversion Sciences in the early days of CRO (2007), focusing on a rigorous approach to behavioral science and experimentation. He’s the author of Your Customer Creation Equation: Unexpected Website Formulas of The Conversion Scientist.
No. of years on list: 3
Noteworthy content: 48 episodes of Brians's podcast, Intended Consequences
Top Data & Analytics Influencers
16. Juliana Jackson
Deviating from the standard
Juliana has been in digital marketing for 13 years and has an infectious passion for analytics, technical marketing, and experimentation. She is the senior data & optimization strategist at Media.Monks and an ambassador for Women Techmakers. You can listen to Juliana on her Standard Deviation Podcast (all about careers in analytics) or catch her at most analytics events around Europe, either speaking or hanging out.
No. of years on list: 2
Noteworthy content: The Technical Marketing Guide and How to audit a GA4 – gtag.js implementation (step by step)
Follow Juliana
LinkedIn
YouTube
17. Ya Xu
The network data scientist
Ya is the VP of Engineering and Head of Data and AI at LinkedIn, leading a 300+ team of data scientists distributed worldwide. She holds a Ph.D. in statistics from Stanford University and is the co-author of several research papers and patents, including Network A/B Testing: From Sampling to Estimation and A/B Testing Challenges in Large-Scale Social Networks. She also co-authored the popular book Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments, written alongside Diane Tang and Ronny Kohavi.
No. of years on list: 3
Noteworthy content: The first chapter of Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments
Follow Ya:
LinkedIn
18. Bhavik Patel
Talks about CRAP
No, you didn’t misread Bhav’s headline. CRAP Talks (Conversion Rate, Analytics, and Product) is the name of his 3000+ strong meetup and community. He’s an experienced product analytics and experimentation lead and recently launched his own product measurement consultancy called CAUSL (clearly, his superpower is naming things.)
Claim to fame? Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) liked two of his tweets. We’re unsure which ones.
No. of years on list: 2
Noteworthy content: Using The Fermi Problem Approach in Estimating New Product Impact
Follow Bhavik:
LinkedIn
Twitter
Substack
19. Chad Sanderson
Scouting for quality data
After working in several AI, data, and experimentation product roles at Microsoft, SEPHORA, Subway, and Convoy, Chad is now a scout for Sequoia, looking for the next big data infrastructure and machine learning products. Chad runs the Slack community Data Quality Camp where he and others share practitioner-led advice on data quality at scale.
No. of years on list: 3
Noteworthy content: The Existential Threat of Data Quality
20. Tim Wilson
Co-Host of Analytics Power Hour
Tim is a digital marketing and analytics professional and, most recently, the Senior Director of Analytics at Search Discovery. His passion for data visualization and storytelling began over two decades ago. Since then, he’s co-founded Web Analytics Wednesdays in Columbus and Dartistics—a free resource for digital analysts to learn R. He’s also the co-host of the Analytics Power Hour podcast.
No. of years on list: 2
Noteworthy content: Data Visualization, Neuroscience, and Why It Matters to the Analyst
Follow Tim:
LinkedIn
Github
Twitter
21. Dana DiTomaso
Explaining analytics through polite Canadian wit
Dana typed her first line of code in 1982. Now she’s a technology columnist and president of Kick Point, a digital agency that helps companies take or keep their marketing in-house. She talks about using data to gather insights, not just getting data for data’s sake. And also runs courses on LinkedIn Learning, teaches at the University of Alberta, and offers digital analytics courses, which come personally recommended by Rand Fishkin.
No. of years on list: 2
Noteworthy content: How to Audit Your Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Account [Free Looker Studio Dashboard]
22. Ronny Kohavi
Most trusted fellow in experimentation
Ronny has quite the CV—he was previously a Technical fellow and CVP, Analysis & Experimentation at Microsoft, a VP and Technical Fellow at Airbnb, and the Director of Data Mining and Personalization at Amazon. Ronny earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University and co-authored many seminal papers on A/B testing, which have been cited over 55k times. He co-authored the book Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments: A Practical Guide to A/B Testing and, somehow, finds the time to teach a cohort-based interactive class on Accelerating Innovation with A/B Testing.
No. of years on list: 3
Noteworthy Content: A/B Testing Statistics Concepts Experimenters must know with Ronny Kohavi
23. Lukas Vermeer
The statistics storyteller
Lukas is the Director of Experimentation at Vista but is often asked to share insights from the eight years he spent leading A/B testing at Booking.com. During this time, he grew the team from four to thirty people and became the first Director of Experimentation in the company. Lukas also advocates for the accessibility of experimentation, helping people from any background (product owners, designers, developers, writers) make the right decisions. Lukas is a prolific writer and speaker on data science and experimentation.
No. of years on list: 3
Noteworthy Content: Interaction Effects in Online Experimentation
24. Siobhan Solberg
#privacyisnotfuckingwithyourgrowth
Siobhan works at the intersection of privacy, data, and marketing and is the founder of the agency Raze—specializing in measuring and optimizing marketing data. She talks about how companies can use data in the age of privacy. Besides being a classically trained musician, Siobhan has many other strings to her bow (sorry)—such as hosting the popular Marketing Unf*cked podcast.
No. of years on list: 2
Noteworthy Content: A/B Testing and Privacy
Follow Siobhan:
LinkedIn
Twitter
25. Krista Seiden
The Google Analytics Advocate
Krista has worked across analytics, growth, and product management roles at Google, Quantcast, and Adobe. While at Google, she spent two years working on Google Analytics 4—redesigned GA from the ground up by creating a new data schema and user interface. She also made many of the Google Analytics Academy courses, which have reached over 1M students. For the past four years, she’s focused on running her own analytics consulting business, KS Digital.
No. of years on list: 3
Noteworthy Content: GA4 Adds New Conversion Counting Method
Follow Krista:
LinkedIn
Twitter
26. Georgi Georgiev
Calculating the power of statistical tools
Georgi uses over a decade of experience with A/B testing, experimental design, and statistical methodology to build Analytics-Toolkit.com and write "Statistical Methods in Online A/B Testing." He also started the OneSided Project, a non-profit that educates statisticians and research practitioners on one-sided statistical tests. He’s developed a huge repository of calculator tools which you can find at GIGAcalculator.com. Between these projects, Georgi consults with clients on statistical and experimental methodology.
No. of years on list: 3
Noteworthy Content: A meta-analysis of 1,001 A/B tests
Follow Georgi:
LinkedIn
Top Product & Feature Experimentation Influencers
27. Rommil Santiago
Creating a diverse nation of experimentation folk
Rommil shares two decades of experience building experimentation programs from the ground up in his book Sprinting to Show Value: How to Survive Launching an Experimentation Program. He is the Director of Growth Products at Loblaw Digital and an active founder of one of the most popular industry communities — Experiment Nation. He’s an amazing champion for promoting new and diverse voices in the industry through the Experiment Nation conference, website, salary report, certification, videos, and podcast—which is one of the top 10% most followed podcasts on Spotify.
No. of years on list: 3
Noteworthy Content: Test before you build anything or you'll waste time course-correcting
28. Teresa Torres
The product discovery author
Teresa has taught over 12,000 product people discovery skills through the Product Talk Academy and is the author of Continuous Discovery Habits. She helps teams make better decisions about what to build by leveraging fast-feedback loops and strong discovery habits around continuous interviewing and assumption testing.
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy Content: Product Discovery Basics: Everything You Need to Know
Follow Teressa:
LinkedIn
Twitter
Substack
29. Elena Verna
The PLG Avenger
Elena describes herself as a one-person Avengers team, doing everything from interim exec positions, advising, investing, course creation, poetry, and being a mom. She’s worked with Miro, SurveyMonkey, MongoDB, and HP. Now she’s sharing her experience as a Program Creator and Partner at Reforge, teaching others about experimentation, monetization, growth leadership, and PLG.
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy Content: Conversion Rate Decline Diagnostic template
Follow Elena:
LinkedIn
Twitter
Substack
30. Leah Tharin
Spilling the tea on PLG
Leah is Head of Product/Growth at Jua.ai and an advisor helping B2B SaaS businesses bring growth, product, marketing, and sales in line with one another. She shares tons of actionable PLG content, has had over 50k readers on her product-led growth guide, and runs the popular podcast PRODUCTEA.
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy Content: Leah's Product-led Growth Guide 3.0 (officially included in an MBA Curriculum in the US) and Leah’s curated list of Knowledge on Notion
Follow Teressa:
LinkedIn
Substack
31. Siddharth Arora
Not just another product manager
Siddharth studied to become a computer engineer but moved into an analyst role for American Express. From there, he moved into product roles for Zomato and RateGain. Today Siddharth is Group Product Manager - Experimentation and Analytics at Yelp. He shares content aimed at early-stage PMs looking to get hired and develop their career in the field.
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy Content: 3 Step Process For Product Prioritization
Follow Siddharth:
LinkedIn
Twitter
32. Wes Bush
Helping product-led companies beat sales-led companies
Wes Bush is an entrepreneur, author, and product-led growth coach. Over 500,000 people have read his book and listened to his podcast. His vision is for every company to have a free product experience that enables them to serve before they sell. Wes also created the ProductLed Method™️ as a way of working out which components of your business are holding back growth and which need to be prioritized.
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy Content: Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself
33. Aakash Gupta
The Product Growth Guy
Aakash is VP of Product at Apollo and, before that, Google, Epic Games, and Affirm. He’s ranked the #1 product voice on LinkedIn and writes one of the largest newsletters on product growth, with over 61,000 subscribers.
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy Content: When to A/B Test
Follow Aakash:
LinkedIn
Twitter
Substack
34. Ben Williams
PLGeek
Ben has spent 20+ years building and scaling cross-functional product and growth teams and now advises founders of B2B startups to implement PLG across acquisition, retention, and monetization. Previously he headed up product and growth orgs at Snyk, CloudBees, and IBM. He shares a ton of great content in his newsletter with templates and in-depth explanations.
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy Content: Experiment Plan Template and Weekly Impact & Learnings Review Template
Follow Ben:
LinkedIn
Twitter
Substack
35. John Cutler
The beautiful mess of cross-functional product development
John loves to wrangle complex problems and answer the why with qual/quant data. He’s the Senior Director, Product Enablement at Toast, and previous to that, he worked with Amplitude, Zendesk, and Pendo.io. John has over 70k followers on LinkedIn and over 100k on Twitter due to his prolific and valuable posts about product development. Fun Fact: John developed a bartending simulation game called Last Call in the late 1990s, in which Tina Fey played Nurse Rhonda (under a pseudonym).
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy Content: How to think about Bets, Success Metrics, and Roadmapping
Follow John:
LinkedIn
Twitter
Substack
36. Andrea Saez
Calling time on Product Market-Fit
Andrea has a background in product management and product marketing, focusing particularly on the user experience. Her experience was gained at Cloudsmith, Airfous, and Trint. She's a top 100 PMM influencer and co-author of "Product Market Fit is Dead!" which explains why new products fail and offers an alternative model.
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy Content: Product Development Fallacies: How to Avoid the Feature Fallacy Trap
Follow Andrea:
LinkedIn
Twitter
Substack
37. James McCormick
Riding the digital intelligence wave
James has recently established himself as an independent growth advisor drawing on his experience as the Vice President of Product Marketing and Strategy at Contentsquare. He also calls on his research about digital intelligence and marketing analytics from over nine years as a Principal Analyst for Forrester. James regularly speaks about customer experience and analytics, the role of AI in the field, and the value of data in decision-making.
No. of years on list: 3
Noteworthy Content: How product and marketing teams collaborate on experimentation to drive growth
Follow James:
LinkedIn
38. Kyle Poyar
Pricing and PLG
Kyle is the Operating Partner at OpenView, an expansion stage VC where he helps their portfolio companies become market leaders. Previous to this, Kyle was a Director at Simon-Kucher & Partners, a leading consulting firm specializing in monetization. He writes the popular newsletter ‘Growth Unhinged,” where he closely examines the playbooks behind the fastest-growing startups and does deep dives into product-led growth (PLG), pricing, and go-to-market strategy.
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy Content: 2022 Product Benchmarks
Follow Kyle:
LinkedIn
Twitter
Substack
Top UX & User Behavior Influencers
39. Katelyn Bourgoin
The Customer Whisperer
Katelyn understands buyer psychology and uses that to discover the hidden reasons why customers buy. She’s the founder and CEO of Customer Camp, a training and research firm instructing product teams on performing better tests. She’s amassed a huge online following and hosts her podcast, The Customer Show, where she talks to global experts about buyer psychology and conversion copywriting.
No. of years on list: 2
Noteworthy Content: Buyer's Psychology talk at Growth Summit
Follow Katelyn:
LinkedIn
Twitter
Newsletter
40. Joanna Wiebe
The original conversion copywriter
Joanna is the creator of Copyhackers and, for 15 years, has worked with the likes of BT, Canva, and Intuit, optimizing their copy. She’s created a huge amount of copywriting resources and training courses over the years and is now turning her attention to how you can use AI in the field. Joanna recently published ”The Classics” a three-part series of books offering bite-sized guides on writing amazing web copy without becoming a copywriter.
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy Content: How to Write Copy That Sells Like a Mofo
41. Rishi Rawat
The Shopify product page guy
Rishi recently told the world he was in an exclusive relationship with product pages. He shares endless examples that help illustrate his product page optimization lessons and uses his expertise to help his clients at Frictionless Commerce. Rishi's big idea is ignoring 80% of site visitors to double down on those who show interest but aren’t yet buying. He’s the co-host of Understand How Shoppers Think alongside Lorenzo Carreri, where the pair analyzes successful DTC brands' websites.
No. of years on list: 2
Noteworthy Content: Focus on Converting Healthy Skeptics
42. Erin Weigel
Designing to make things better, not just different
Over a nine-year stint, Erin ran more than 1,400 experiments at Booking.com as Principal Designer. She’s now a Senior Product Design Manager at Deliveroo, experimenting at scale through Design Systems. While Erin specializes in data-informed design and experimentation, her focus has shifted somewhat to encompass design systems, operations, and product accessibility. She’s currently writing a book called “Design for Impact: Conversion Design Theory, Tips, and Tools to Grow Your Business", which is due to be published in 2024.
No. of years on list: 2
Noteworthy Content: Hypothesis template
43. Val Geisler
Passionate about email copy and strategy
Val has been called an email geek, a copywriter, a marketer, and a real game changer. She’s the Director of Retention & Lifecycle Marketing at ByHeart and helps businesses improve their customer messaging in emails (specifically onboarding and customer retention efforts). Outside of work, Val is getting into improv and owns a “smelly dog” called Boon (her words, not ours.)
No. of years on list: 2
Noteworthy Content: Email Teardowns
44. Nir Eyal
Hooked
Nir is best known as a Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author for his book "Hooked" and the accompanying Hook model. Nir is the go-to guy for science-backed strategies and designing healthy customer habits. He has taught at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and his writing often appears in the Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, TechCrunch, and Psychology Today. Nir also puts his money where his mouth is and invests in habit-forming technologies like Eventbrite and Product Hunt.
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy Content: The Hooked Model: How to Manufacture Desire in 4 Steps
Follow Nir:
LinkedIn
Twitter
Newsletter
45. Alex Birkett
Jack of growth
It was hard to place Alex in a specific category because his career has straddled several disciplines. Alex cut his teeth as a Growth Marketing Manager at CXL and later Hubspot, where he invented the "Surround Sound Marketing Strategy" that Semrush would later build a tool based on. Then he ran the experimentation team at Workato, where he built the testing program from zero to 20+ tests per quarter and revamped their digital analytics infrastructure. Today Alex is the co-founder of Omniscient Digital, a content marketing agency. He’s got a bit of everything.
No. of years on list: 3
Noteworthy Content: How can I optimize old website content?
46. Jakub Linowski
Conversion-focused UI designer
Jakub Linowski is the Chief Editor of GoodUI, where he has published hundreds of winning and losing A/B tests in search of UI patterns with the highest degrees of replication. He is also the founder and lead designer at Linowski Interaction Design, a consulting firm specializing in designing online experiments.
No. of years on list: 2
Noteworthy Content: GoodUI - Product Page Layouts v1.0
47. Eden Bidani
1-min conversion copywriting tips
After seven years of freelancing as a conversion copywriter, Eden recently launched her conversion messaging agency, CAPE.Agency. You’ll often catch her sharing her 1-min conversion copywriting tips on LinkedIn or talking about messaging and conversion copywriting on stages worldwide.
No. of years on list: 2
Noteworthy Content: How to Use Copy to Improve CLTV
Follow Eden:
LinkedIn
48. Els Aerts
User research promoter
Els has been the co-founder of AGConsult for over twenty years and has seen the disciplines of CRO, design, usability, and user experience change over that time. As such, she is often found on stage sharing her latest thoughts on these topics. Els is a big qualitative user research advocate and has moderated over 3,500 user tests for companies such as AtlasCopco, Orange, Daikin, and Bridgestone.
No. of years on list: 3
Noteworthy Content: The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly of User Research
49. Peep Laja
Test your messaging
Peep is the founder of CXL, where marketers can learn best practices from the most successful practitioners in the space. He is also the founder of Wynter, a B2B message testing platform, and Speero—the CRO agency. He hosts the annual CXL Live conference in Texas and regularly interviews B2B SaaS entrepreneurs on his podcast How to Win.
No. of years on list: 3
Noteworthy Content: Do you even resonate? Real message testing on B2B websites
Rising Stars
Some people featured in this section are new to the industry, while others have been around for some time but are only just starting to share their knowledge online. Don’t let the size of their audience deter you—these rising stars share valuable content, contribute to the community, and are well worth a follow.
50. Eman Ismail
The Beyoncé of email copywriting
Eman talks about email conversion strategy and copy, and her work has received feedback like “Dope-ass job on your email! Love it!” from industry heavy-weights like Joanna Wiebe (see above). While Eman grew up wanting to be Beyonce 2.0 (and did sing for ex-England captain Rio Ferdinand), she decided to dedicate herself to running her email copywriting business instead. Her podcast “Mistakes That Made Me” recently made the list of Shopify’s 20 Best Business Podcasts for Entrepreneurs.
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy Content: Spotify Email Teardown: The Good, The Bad & The MOPs (Video)
51. Tracy Laranjo
Experimentation from A to B
Tracy is a fractional CRO Strategist, Researcher, and Analyst. Previously she worked as the Head of Research at CRO agency SplitBase and has eight years of full-stack digital marketing experience at high-growth DTC brands like Inkbox. She credits her influencer status to Rommil Santiago for giving her a platform as host of the Experiment Nation Podcast. And she put that experience to good use by launching a new podcast with Shiva Manjunath called From A to B, where they “amplify dope takes from cool, underrated people.”
No. of years on list: 2
Noteworthy Content: Get a great CRO job and get PAID
Follow Tracy:
LinkedIn
52. ELLIE HUGHES
The Experimentation Explorer
Ellie is no newcomer to the industry, with over eleven years of experience in the experimentation industry working for the likes of Photobox, Gousto, Rightmove and Productboard. Recently, she’s been spending more time sharing her knowledge online, and it’s getting her noticed. In 2022, Ellie won Agency Experimenter of the Year and the Financial Services Campaign of the Year at the Experimentation Elite awards. She’s also hit the speaking circuit post-pandemic to talk about the fallacies of A/B testing and how to accelerate experimentation-driven product development. Before starting in the industry, Ellie led an archaeological dig in Egypt for The British Museum, Indiana Jones style.
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy Content: Customer Obsessed & Intelligence Driven and Product Management Fallacies of AB Testing
53. John Ostrowski
Growing products with positive experiments
John’s career could be straight out of a Hollywood film, from working in South Brazil as a mechanical engineer to traveling to the US and getting hooked on the American dream. John was granted seed funding from the innovation lab at his university to start Qualitativa, helping big retailers optimize campaigns using basket analysis. After hobnobbing with the right people in Hungary and realizing the value of combining marketing and applied statistics, he went all in on his product experimentation career. He joined a growth agency in Poland, and as they say, the rest is history. Today, John is the Director of Product & Experimentation at Wise Publishing and shares much of his learnings through his newsletter.
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy Content: Knowledge Base of testing resources
Follow John:
LinkedIn
54. Simon Girardin
Writer of daily CRO thought
Simon works at ConversionAdvocates as a CRO Manager. He’s been in the industry for six years and, in the past year, launched 13 ROI-positive CRO programs. He is known for talking about the importance of the testing process and for his relentless pursuit of customer insights, whether from customer and market research or experiments. He’s a big sharer, too, publishing content on LinkedIn every weekday at 9 am EST.
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy Content: Four roadblocks to overcome when learning from past tests.
Follow Simon:
LinkedIn
55. Haley Carpenter
Chirpy CRO Strategy
Haley has worked at Speero, Optimizely, and Hanapin Marketing, where she managed experimentation programs and strategies for clients such as FedEx, Miro, Vitamix, Procore, and RS Components. Now she’s started a consultancy called Chirpy CRO, where she wants all businesses to win strategically, not by luck.
No. of years on list: 2
Noteworthy Content: Turn Qualitative Data Into Quantitative Data & Use the Insights in Experiment Ideation
Follow Haley:
LinkedIn
56. Sagrika Agrawal
Checklist CRO
Sagrika is a Conversion Rate Optimisation Analyst who has worked at Cashfree Payments and Basal Analytics before deciding to go it alone as a freelancer. She’s completed the CXL Mini degree in CRO and courses in applied neuromarketing. Sagrika shares her learnings through checklists and CRO tips.
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy Content: Implementing persuasive techniques such as context, dependency, and memory to help skyrocket website conversions
Follow Sagrika:
LinkedIn
57. Léa Samrani
App product growth
Léa has over a decade of experience in product management and growth strategy. She’s worked on top-grossing apps, such as Uptime, Bumble, and Badoo, and headed up the product and design team at CharityJob and CharityConnect. She recently hosted a panel at the first App Growth Summit and is an active guest lecturer at Product School.
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy Content: How to build a successful user-first app strategy
Follow Léa:
LinkedIn
58. Rosie Hoggmascall
From freemium to premium
Rosie is a growth lead with experience across product-led growth, UX design, end-to-end funnel conversion, monetization, and multi-channel marketing. Today she’s a Fractional Head of Growth across various B2C apps (Femtech, health, fitness, habit-formation). She's also a volunteer for the UK chapter of WOMEN IN TECH and recently gave a talk on monetizing subscriptions at the App Promotion Summit.
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy Content: 7 examples of product-led growth in mobile apps
59. Andra Baragan
Ecommerce Conversion Optimization
Andra has over nine years of experience in CRO and was a recent Experiment Nation conference judge and speaker at CommerceCon 2023. She founded Ontrack Digital in 2016; a CRO agency focused exclusively on ecommerce and DTC brands.
No. of years on list: 1
Noteworthy Content: The simple guide to doing an ecommerce CRO audit
Follow Andra:
LinkedIn
2023 Compared to 2022
Each year, our list of influencers changes based on the following:
- The criteria we use to demonstrate “followability;” see the intro above.
- The level of followability of new voices.
As such, there are undoubtedly influential thought leaders who we featured in 2022 who didn’t make this year’s list. They remain featured in Kameleoon’s A/B Testing Expert Directory. If you haven’t already, explore these profiles that also form the bedrock of the experimentation space.
- Eytan Bakshy
- Casandra Campbell
- Ekta Chopra
- John Ekman
- Aleksander Fabijan
- Sina Fak
- Guido X Jansen
- Colin Mcfarland
- Bithika Mehra
- Shanelle Mullin
- Alan Page
- Stephen Pavlovich
- Ayat Shukairy
- Bart Schutz
- Stefan Thomke
- Luis Trindade
- Brendan Witcher
- Ben Bloom
- Somit Gupta
- Elise Maile
- Marion Ranvier
- Michael Schrage
- Jennifer Polk
- Moe Kiss
- Michele Kiss
- Tammy Duggan-Herd
- Craig Sullivan
- Ruben de Boer
You can see the previous year's lists below;
Presenting the Experimentation Thought Leadership Awards by Kameleoon
Every year we come out with this list of influencers. But this year, we’re taking it one step further. We’re proud to present The Experimentation Thought Leadership Awards by Kameleoon.
The Experimentation Thought Leadership Awards celebrates the most influential and helpful voices in experimentation, product, and digital optimization.
The call for nominations for this year’s awards is now open! Every expert on this list is automatically in the running for the awards in their respective categories. If you or someone you know deserves to be recognized, please nominate them here.
Nominations close on August 28th, and the winners will be announced at a virtual award show on October 5th. Stay up to date on event information by subscribing to our newsletter here.
It might be that you didn’t score as highly as other people on our list (see criteria below), or we weren’t aware of you. If you’d like to make sure you’re considered for the 2024 list, please get in touch. You can nominate anyone for an award.
https://pages.kameleoon.com/experimentation-thought-leadership-nominations
To inspire our readers on who to follow in the industry and support influencers who are creating and sharing great content.
To make our list objective, we gave each person a score based on the following;
- How regularly did they post original content on LinkedIn about their area of expertise?
- Are they speaking at events dedicated to their area of expertise in 2023?
- Have they written or contributed to original research or reports since 2020?
- How many followers do they have on LinkedIn?
- Are they based in an English-speaking country or predominantly contribute content to their audience in English?
Finally, we made it a continued priority to include new and underrepresented voices.
Using these criteria helped us gauge the “followability” of individuals and categorize them into one of five categories;
- Top Conversion Rate Optimization Influencers
- Top Data & Analytics Influencers
- Top Feature Experimentation & Product Influencers
- Top UX & User Behavior Influencers
- Rising stars
Where there were multiple people with the same score, we chose who to include based on the originality of their content and the regularity of posting on LinkedIn, also keeping a close look at the comments they leave on other posts.
We use "followability" to mean that an individual is frequently sharing great content online, making them worth following.
Someone who doesn’t yet have a large online following but has begun to regularly share great content online.
