Interview: Amperity CMO Megan McDonagh Shares Her Career Journey In Tech

In celebration of top women in technology as part of International Women’s Day, Women Love Tech speaks with Megan McDonagh, CMO at Amperity.

Megan is a seasoned marketing executive with over two decades of experience leading marketing teams in the high tech space. Most recently, Megan was the CMO at RealWear, a global market-leading industrial wearable startup. Before this, she spent 20+ years at Intel where she held leadership roles across various marketing functions.

What brought you to this specific career path?

What brought me to Amperity was its mission: To help every brand turn complex customer data into business success. Coming from a company who did not have good data or sophisticated tools to help measure marketing impact, I related to the company purpose and problem that Amperity helps brands solve every day. I also saw an opportunity to use both my 20+ years of marketing experience at a large tech company as well as a CMO at another startup to help Amperity continue to grow brand and pipeline impact.

Mentorship and guidance is so important when fostering female leadership in technology. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are?

While at Intel, I had the privilege of working for Julie Coppernoll, the Corporate Vice President of Marketing Strategy. Prior to this role, she was the chief of staff for CEO and Chairman, Andy Grove. Julie took me under her wing and coached me on how to navigate a highly matrixed and competitive culture. She also shared valuable insights she gained from working under Grove, one of the greatest leaders in Silicon Valley.

Julie helped me develop critical skills to manage stakeholders and influence others by understanding their motivations and incentives. Lastly, she taught me the significance of personal brand and the impact it has on perception. She instilled in me to be mindful of how I present myself and to always strive to show up in the right way.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

Amperity helps large B2C brands build a unified, first-party customer data foundation, which helps unlock business value and improve customer brand experiences. This is incredibly rewarding for the team to watch brands transform their messy data into improved ROI. 

People often associate Amperity and what we do with marketing activation, but our solutions are more diverse than that. For example, Brooks Running uses its unified customer profiles to power the entire customer journey from pre-purchase to post-purchase customer care. They were able to see and use these insights to provide a consistent and cohesive experience for the customer, from online purchases to its brick-and-mortar locations to customer service experience.

This not only benefits customers, but it also helps Brooks’ employees do their jobs better. Take for example, the customer service reps who deal with frustrated users every day. By making customer data accessible through Zendesk, customer support can access information about the customer’s recent purchases, purchase location and a potential reason for returning, turning what is usually a frustrating customer experience into a great one. Having a unified view of the customer is a win-win for everyone.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

We are working on developing a better understanding of our customer’s journey when they are purchasing a customer data platform. This includes  exploring the pain points customers are experiencing and identifying how Amperity can help solve these challenges.

To do this, we need to understand the inner workings of each of our customer segments and personas, including understanding their marketing tech stack and how it could look like with Amperity. By distilling this information, we can create a personalized marketing campaign that makes the consumer feel seen and understood, leading to increased brand loyalty, customer retention and a meaningful impact on the bottom line.

Can you please tell us your top five most successful marketing strategies? What kind of results did you see? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Successfully implementing marketing strategies is both an art and a science, mostly because you’ll have to tailor each marketing method to your business and marketing needs. I have consistently found that the following strategies are a great jumping off point for your marketing plan.

1. Define who your target audience is and understand what makes them tick

Identifying your target audience allows your business to focus marketing efforts and dollars on the groups that are most likely to buy from you. That way, you can generate business leads in an efficient, affordable manner.

• Understand the customer journey and what the primary touchpoints are

Mapping the customer journey ensures that you can interact with your customer at every stage. This process also helps you gain insights into common customer pain points and enables you to deliver more optimized and personalized customer experiences.

• Personalization demonstrates you understand your customers and their pain points 

As consumers’ expectations continue to increase, marketers must rise to meet those demands without sacrificing trust with their audiences. Proving to your customers that you ‘hear and see’ them with effective personalization will drive long-term customer lifetime value and brand loyalty.

• Maximize your owned properties (SEO, website and social media)

Your owned properties are vital to every brand’s success because it gives you the opportunity to take control of your own message, establish a distinct voice in the market and create the narratives and/or thought-leadership you want to be attached to. If it is done well, the quality of the content can generate earned media opportunities as well.

• Analyze and optimize your marketing programs

Analyzing and optimizing your marketing programs is crucial to get the biggest bang for your buck. In addition, it will help you analyze and adjust various elements of your marketing mix to ensure you’re targeting the right people, with the right message, at the right time in the right place. This not only helps you save time and money, but it also helps deliver better customer experiences.

The most successful marketing strategies will vary depending on your business and product.The biggest success will be found if your team can stay agile and be willing to test various programs to find what works best and evolve as needed.

In celebration of International Women’s Day, if you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

I want to inspire the next generation of marketers by providing them with a foundation to kickstart their marketing careers, similar to how STEM education has supported countless young adults to acquire a strong understanding of science, tech, electronics and math.

By creating and defining a program where experienced marketing professionals can pay it forward to mentor and guide young marketers, we can equip them with the skills and knowledge they need to excel in their careers and drive their companies to success.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

You can find Megan McDonagh on Linkedin or visit amperity.com.

About Amperity

Amperity is the leading customer data platform (CDP) provider that helps companies use data to improve marketing performance, build long-term customer loyalty and drive growth. Amperity’s flagship enterprise CDP is used by many of the world’s best-loved brands, such as Alaska Airlines, Endeavour Drinks, Kendra Scott, Lucky Brand, Planet Fitness, Seattle Sounders FC, Under Armour and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. For more information, please visit amperity.com or follow @Amperity.