MarTech Interview with Angie Mistretta, CMO at AppDynamics

Journey into Tech

Hi Angie, tell us about your role and journey into Technology. What inspired you to take up the role at AppDynamics?

I started in Tech Marketing early in my career. Moving from Telecom to Video conferencing and then Cisco (via the Tandberg acquisition). The move to AppDynamics was a great next step. I wanted to work in a high growth business inside of Cisco with leading software technology and amazing people.

What are the most unique challenges you face in your industry and at workplace? How do you tackle these?

The biggest challenge and opportunity we have is dealing with the pace of technology innovation and helping our customers adapt to the latest trends in order to deliver better experiences to their customers.

We work actively to identify the latest trends, build solutions internally and/or partner with companies that can help round out our technology ecosystem and help our customers solve their unique challenges.

You have been part of many tech companies. What did you learn from these roles and how do you apply experiences in your current role?

Yes, I’ve been in Tech Marketing for most of my career and my biggest takeaway is about being able to adapt to change. This change can be driven by competitive or market pressure, consumer behavior, internal dynamics and so much more.

The leaders I have appreciated working for the most are ones that are able to quickly adapt, map out the next steps for success and keep moving/leading the team forward to drive growth. I try to apply all of these learnings to my current role.

How much have CMO’s role evolved in the modern Digital Era? What is the Future of a tech CMO?

The modern digital era is driving an evolution for all functions, not just Marketing. It requires the entire business to be much closer to the customer and to have a deeper understanding of their unique needs and business challenges.

For Marketing, this means more personalization and custom journeys, engaging and targeted content, continued investment in all of the new digital and social channels, a heavier investment in MarTech and analytics and probably the most important – people.

People who can dive deep on analytics, gain user and buying behavior insights and work back with the rest of the Marketing team to implement more effective growth strategies.

Tell us how you work with technology. What Marketing, Sales and Messaging tools do you use for your business?

We use a variety of tools and are constantly evaluating new technology areas to potentially add to our MarTech stack. Salesforce is our central CRM system and our inside Sales team uses Outreach, a Sales Engagement platform, to manage and follow up on all inbound leads.

We use Marketo for our Marketing Automation, Demandbase and Leadspace for Data Enrichment and ABM LeanData and Geopointe for lead to account matching/attribution, stensul is our new Email generation platform and Drift for Conversational Marketing on our website.

When you look back into the past, which Marketing Technology platforms and tools do you really miss having, or working with?

In the past two years, we have spent a lot of effort to make sure we have the right MarTech stack in place. We have gotten rid of several components we no longer need and kept the ones that have been performing well for our organization.

So we don’t miss having any tools but are constantly evaluating new technologies that will help us perform more efficiently.

Customer Success and Experiences

Tell us something that fascinates you the most about creating opportunities for AppDynamics’ customers. Which industries and titles subscribe to your APM solutions?

Our job is to help our customers reach their business goals regardless of industry. Whether that is providing an international airline increased visibility into their IT systems, or helping a global retailer solve business challenges.

One of my favorite things about our customer base at AppDynamics is that no two use cases are the same. It gives us the opportunity to think creatively and proactively about the problems we are trying to solve.

Insights and Predictions

What are your predictions for your industry and technology markets for 2020-2024?

Purchasing and interactive decisions made on mobile apps and online will be largely determined by the quality of the digital experience in 2020 and beyond.

As consumers begin to rely on digital services more and more, they will increasingly demand impeccable connectivity and hyper-personalized experiences, all the while expecting zero system errors to hinder their interactions. And if companies cannot support these demands, they risk being left behind.

What startups in the technology industry are you watching keenly right now?

Any company that can offer high quality, consistent digital experiences, and simultaneously provides a compelling and personalized physical interaction is worth watching.

Warby Parker is a prime example of this for me – they prioritized investing Marketing resources into both the physical and digital experiences, allowing them to further innovate with their product while elevating the brand among consumers.

Tag the one person (or more) in the industry whose answers to these questions you would love to read.

1. 1. Dan Rogers – ServiceNow
   2. Carolyn Feinstein – Dropbox
   3. Sara Varni – Twilio

Thank you, Angie! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.

The MTS Martech Interview Series is a fun Q&A style chat which we really enjoy doing with martech leaders. With inspiration from Lifehacker’s How I work interviews, the MarTech Series Interviews follows a two part format On Marketing Technology, and This Is How I Work. The format was chosen because when we decided to start an interview series with the biggest and brightest minds in martech – we wanted to get insight into two areas one – their ideas on marketing tech and two – insights into the philosophy and methods that make these leaders tick.