In this week’s episode, host Tom Butta sits down with Cindy Davis, an independent Board Member at Airship, to discuss how there is still time to prepare for the future of marketing channels if you start today. Otherwise, your brand might wake up in five years without any real way to engage your customers.

Formerly an EVP at Walmart, Disney, L Brands and Chief Brand Officer at Bed Bath & Beyond, Cindy is she’s an experienced executive with a demonstrated history of driving results across the retail, hospitality and entertainment industries by building strong brands and customer relationships. 

Tom asks why Cindy decided to join the Airship Board of Directors in September of 2022, and what advice she has for other women out there looking to serve on a board themselves one day. Additionally, you’ll hear key data regarding mobile retention numbers (hint: the average might be lower than you expect), what opportunities we now have post-2020, and Cindy’s thoughts on who internally should really be responsible for the mobile app. 

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Guest Bio

Cindy Davis became an independent Board Member at Airship in 2022. Formerly an EVP at Walmart, Disney, L Brands and Chief Brand Officer at Bed Bath & Beyond, she’s an experienced executive with a demonstrated history of driving results across the retail, hospitality and entertainment industries by building strong brands and customer relationships. 

Cindy has general management expertise with P&L responsibility, and is highly skilled in business strategy, brand management, eCommerce, digital marketing, customer engagement and more. She’s an influential leader, creative thinker, and developer of high-performing teams. 

Cindy received her Masters in International Business Management from Thunderbird School of Global Management and a Bachelor of Business Administration and Accounting from William & Mary.

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Guest Quote

"I do believe that one of the things we've all got to work hard on is being able to measure and demonstrate the incremental value that comes from having an engaged customer within the app. Honestly, from a analytics perspective, when you think abouth ow much work we do on ROAS for every single channel in the marketing equation. But really being able to demonstrate the short term and the long term value of a customer that's really engaged in the app, I think is something we've still gotta work on.” – Cindy Davis

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Time Stamps 

*(01:23) Cindy's Background

*(03:28) Why Cindy joined Airship as a Board Member

*(05:42) The challenges brands face in going mobile

*(08:57) A world without developers

*(11:28) Shopping in a world after 2020

*(14:45) Who should own the app from a brand perspective?

*(18:18) What does the latest mobile retention data show?

*(19:07) What Cindy would have done differently

*(21:54) Advice from Cindy

*(27:34) Advice for women who want to serve on boards

*(29:27) Rapid Fire Questions

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Links

• Connect with Cindy Davis on LinkedIn
• Connect with Tom Butta on LinkedIn
• Check out the Airship Website

On today’s episode of Masters of MAX, it’s time to shake things up a bit and look at the world of mobile from a different angle. We’ve heard from marketing leaders as they share the brand power apps bring to the table, but we want to dig deeper into the app design itself. 

Joining to help us uncover more of the behind the scenes is Hao Xie, Senior App Designer at Booking.com, one of the world's largest travel marketplaces, mediating between hotels, guesthouses, vacation rentals, and their guests. Hao has been with Booking.com for over a year, being brought on to build the native app experience for the Attraction offering.

Hear as Hao and Tom discuss how crucial accessibility is to the mobile experience as it opens the door to millions of users who otherwise would be shut out. An often overlooked aspect of the design process, accessibility impacts everyone, not just those of differing abilities. Hao provides real world examples of inclusive features the team at Booking.com employs to create a more holistic experience. 

Additionally, Hao shares a few stories from his time at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. He describes how he and his team were able to get  live customer feedback immediately after piloting new features. How? Because they left their desks and asked passengers for their opinions as they waited to board their flights. 

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Guest Bio

Hao Xie is an app design enthusiast with experience in diverse industries including agency, global brands, and tech. He has led transformative design projects for Air France's and KLM's apps, improved the core funnel of the Adidas consumer app with measurable results, and is now creating the foundation of a native app experience for attractions at Booking.com from scratch. 

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Guest Quote

"Accessibility matters in so many, many ways. Especially at Booking.com, our brand mission is to make it easier for everyone to experience the world. And there's a word in this sentence, which is everyone. And by everyone, it should literally mean everyone." – Hao Xie

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Time Stamps 

*(01:08) Hao’s Background

*(03:03) How to merge two apps together seamlessly

*(08:15) Testing prototypes in real time with real people

*(11:07) Going from physical to digital experiences

*(13:08) Creating a native app 

*(16:21) The importance of experimentation

*(17:11) Accessibility at Booking.com

*(19:51) How to focus deeply on your consumers' experience

*(23:14) Rapid Fire Questions

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Links

• Connect with Hao Xie on LinkedIn
• Connect with Tom Butta on LinkedIn
• Check out the Airship Website
• Experience the world with Booking.com

Today, Tom is joined by Lisa Joy Rosner, an award winning, patented CMO with over two decades of experience launching and/or turning around enterprise software companies. Lisa brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the show, having managed teams of 500+ and budgets of $300M with revenues of $46B. 

In her conversation with Tom, Lisa shares how she views the mobile app as a key tool in the future as brands aim to strengthen their customer loyalty, engagement, and relationships. Whether it be through adding new features such as AR/VR, implementing AI to better predict exactly when a customer will need a daily product restocked, or asking personalization questions after trust has been established.

Additionally, Lisa and Tom discuss what exactly brands should focus on as the market continues to face uncertain times ahead. When the first instinct is typically to buckle down and operate as lean as possible, what’s often overlooked is what will then happen once the storm is over and you need to restart your engines. 

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Guest Bio

Lisa Joy Rosner is a metrics-driven leader with over 20 years of executive experience marketing big data and analytics solutions for public and start-up companies in Mar-Tech, Auto-Tech, IoT, Security, Big Data Analytics, and e-commerce.  

Most recently the SVP Brand and Digital at Oracle, her teams included customer, sports, and industry marketing, as well as brand experience design, the website, keynotes, the sales portal, and global advertising.

Previously, Lisa Joy served as CMO at Otonomo, launching an exciting new category in Autotech, and before that, led a major brand transformation at Neustar. Additionally, she was the CMO at NetBase (sold to Quid), MyBuys (sold to Magnetic), and BroadVision Inc.  An avid yogi and swimmer, Lisa Joy is an advisor to CrowdSmart and Quantifind and the mother of four energetic teenagers.

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Guest Quote

"We as brands, we're forming relationships with our consumers. Consumers are always willing to trade personalization for value, personalization for an experience, and so it goes back to that respect and trust." – Lisa Joy Rosner

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Time Stamps 

*(01:10) Lisa’s Background

*(04:11) How the brand-consumer relationship has transformed via the mobile app

*(08:17) Apps in everyday life

*(12:26) The ways brands are experimenting with VR and AR

*(14:32) Will consumers continue to give brands their data? 

*(19:53) Adding in-car features to your app

*(24:16) How should brands operate during uncertain times?

*(28:24) Rapid Fire Questions

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Links

• Connect with Lisa Joy Rosner on LinkedIn
• Connect with Tom Butta on LinkedIn
• Check out the Airship Website

On this week’s episode, you’ll hear how Fetch makes savings fun as Tom Butta speaks with their CMO, Birk Cooper. In case you haven’t heard of Fetch, it’s America's No. 1 rewards app and leading consumer-engagement platform with about 18M active users per day. How do that many people have fun while collecting rewards? Simple. They scan all the receipts they have from their daily purchases. 

In their conversation, Birk stresses the importance of fun to the Fetch experience, and goes into detail about how they continually retool their app and offerings to align with this philosophy. Having been with Fetch since 2014, Birk also shares his thoughts around why they made the decision to split product away from marketing, what lessons they all learned from it, and how it’s made a lasting impression on the business.

Be sure to keep an ear out for the unbelievable retention Birk and the Fetch team see within the first few months and how they achieve it. Later on, Tom also explores the B2B side of the business and why brands come to Fetch to help manage their rewards programs. 

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Guest Bio

Birk Cooper has been with Fetch for nearly nine years now, starting out as Head of Marketing and working his way to Chief Marketing Officer. Prior to joining the team, Birk was an Account Executive & Supervisor with McCann World Group, where he oversaw General Mills. 

After graduating from the University of Minnesota - Carlson School of Management with his MBA, he met with the founder of Fetch, Wes Schroll, and took the jump. Of all of the current employees at Fetch, Birk is #3. 

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Guest Quote

"People buy across so many categories, and that's why we spend so much time and energy and resources on things like fun, right? So that we have people coming back not just monthly, but daily, so that these brands can win." – Birk Cooper

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Time Stamps 

*(02:28) Birk's Background

*(05:35) Make Your Brand Fun

*(08:20) Fetch's Outstanding Retention

*(10:52) You Built Fun, How Do You Scale It? 

*(14:26) Why Split Product from Marketing?

*(19:32) How Fetch Interacts with Customers

*(20:33) Engagement as a Service

*(23:02) Building a B2B Marketplace

*(24:50) Rapid Fire Questions

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Links

• Connect with Birk Cooper on LinkedIn
• Connect with Tom Butta on LinkedIn
• Check out the Airship Website
• Start Saving with Fetch

On this episode of Masters of MAX, join Tom Butta as he sits down with Jessy Trengove, Head of Insights for Vampr. Better known as the “LinkedIn for musicians,” Vampr is an fully mobile app focused on enabling both professional and amateur song makers to connect, collaborate, and create together. Since its inception back in 2015, the app has brokered over 7M connections worldwide, earning a spot on Fast Company’s list of Most Prestigious Companies in 2022. 

Having joined Vampr back in 2020, Jessy was originally brought on to focus primarily on data analysis and marketing automations and has since grown to a more product-led role. In her conversation with Tom, Jessy outlines key strategies Vampr utilizes in engaging with customers, what new initiatives are on the horizon as they continue to build, and what makes their subscription model set up for success. 

Stick around to find out what mobile trends Jessy finds the most compelling and what app she absolutely couldn’t live without. 

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Guest Bio

Jessy is an Australian who calls Spain her second home after living there for over 5 years. She got started in music tech from the tender age of 5, printing out pages of song lyrics from the internet and collating them into folders to distribute to her friends at school.

As Head of Insights with Vampr, Jessy’s mission is to ensure that their feedback loop is working correctly as they’re constantly learning with every change they make in the app. This involves deciding how to measure the performance of new features and analysis work to extract valuable insights that they can feed into new ideas to keep improving the app. 

One of Jessy’s first roles was Customer Experience / Operations at Spotahome, an online home rental platform. From there she worked her way up to become Head of Account Management Customer Success Management, where she built the department from zero and scaled the team to 12 Key Account Managers and Customer Success Managers across 5 different markets. Jessy went on to become the Growth & Product Manager of drehub, one of Spotahome’s new products. 

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Guest Quote

“Everyone's trying to get to that holy grail of recurring revenue, but it's not easy. You really have to commit to delivering value on an ongoing basis, and that sounds obvious, but I think some people probably shoehorn a subscription model in sometimes where it doesn't naturally fit. If your product doesn't lend itself to that model, then you should rethink it.” - Jessy Trengove

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Time Stamps 

*(01:15) Jessy's Background

*(02:28) What is Vampr?

*(08:04) Engaging Users

*(11:58) Expanding Services

*(15:06) Leveraging Modern Communication

*(17:34) How to Build a Great Subscription

*(23:09) Rapid Fire Questions

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Links

• Connect with Jessy Trengove on LinkedIn
• Connect with Tom Butta on LinkedIn
• Check out the Airship Website
• Learn more about Vampr

On today’s episode, host Tom Butta is joined by two amazing guests from Southwest Airlines, Jonathan Clarkson, VP & Head of Marketing, and Megan Self, Senior Manager of Digital Experience. Needing no introduction, Southwest has consistently stood out from other airlines, and now aims to continue their deep focus on customer experience as they retool their mobile app for the future. 

Jonathan has been with Southwest for more than fifteen years, with prior experience at Pepsico, Pizza Hut, and Dr Pepper/Seven Up. Megan joined more recently back in 2019, but brings a wealth of experience to the team. In the conversation, you’ll hear how they view the Southwest mobile app as the way-finder to their customers’ flight paths, navigating them through each step of the process and providing them key, up to date details along the way. 

Additionally, listen for some of the ways Jonathan gauges customer engagement through each step of the process. With a lot of drive focused on the initial app download, there are other key milestones he outlines that you can’t leave behind when building everlasting brand loyalty. 

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Jonathan’s Bio

Jonathan joined Southwest in 2007 to help start the first Customer Insights Team in Marketing. He then moved his talents to the Loyalty Team to help launch the All-New Rapid Rewards program, and later took on additional responsibility for ancillary and boarding products. 

Now, as VP Marketing with a focus on Southwest Airlines’ Loyalty, Partnerships and Products, Jonathan and his Teams are responsible for all ancillary and loyalty revenue initiatives at Southwest. These include general management of the Rapid Rewards program; the Chase Visa co-brand credit card portfolio and other partnerships; fare and day-of-travel products including Early Bird and Upgraded Boarding; ancillary revenue products including Hotels, Vacations, and Ground Transportation; and Customer Insights & Analytics. Prior to joining Southwest, Jonathan held marketing roles at Pepsico, Pizza Hut, and Dr Pepper/Seven Up.

Megan’s Bio

Megan is a proven leader with over 22 years of experience building brands and driving results across multiple industries. Prior to joining the team at Southwest Airlines, Megan was responsible for leading key agency accounts at the Richard Group as Principal, Vice President. The Richards Group, located in Dallas, Texas, is the largest independent branding agency in the U.S. Quadratic is a wholly-owned subsidiary focusing on direct response, CRM, digital analytics, data intelligence, and advanced analytics.

At Southwest, Megan is the Senior Manager of Digital Experience, where she is focused on using data to build the brand while driving results. Just some of the skills she brings to the table include business development, team leadership, marketing strategy, branding, traditional advertising (television, radio, print, and out-of-home), direct response advertising and marketing (direct mail, email, and mobile) digital, social media, customer relationship management (CRM), loyalty marketing, product marketing, media planning, media buying, test plan development (A/B and experimental design), data analytics, data visualization, web design, site analytics, site testing and personalization, and user experience.

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Guest Quotes

“It goes back to a customer-centric focus in recognizing that everything starts with the customer, and that we need to appeal to the customer's needs first and foremost, because that's what generates brand loyalty.” - Jonathan Clarkson

“Once you're checking in for your flight through completing your flight and getting to your destination, the app is what's in your hand facilitating that journey. It's truly the wayfinder in the person's hand to get them where they need to go as quickly as possible, and to make that as frictionless as possible is the goal.” - Megan Self

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Time Stamps 

*(01:30) Background

*(03:30) How data has changed things 

*(05:36) The Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Program 

*(08:07) Leveraging data to offer relevant promotions

*(13:58) First time app-users, first time flyers

*(17:56) Why you should merge your digital and customer experience teams

*(19:56) Rapid Fire Questions

*(22:26) New live activities 

*(24:56) Best advice given and received

*(28:47) Wrap-up

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Links

• Connect with Jonathan Clarkson on LinkedIn
• Connect with Megan Self on LinkedIn
• Connect with Tom Butta on LinkedIn
• Check out the Airship Website
• Book your next flight with Southwest

Welcome to the first episode of Masters of MAX, where you’ll hear from Hasan Luongo, VP of Global Marketing at Chipper Cash. Chipper Cash is a financial technology company serving more than five million customers across the African continent. Their app-only experience enables customers in five African countries, the U.S. and the U.K. to pay bills, make cross-border money transfers, and purchase cryptocurrencies.

Hasan is an entrepreneur 1st and foremost, then a Growth and Product leader, and last but never least, a User. And in his conversation with Tom Butta, you’ll hear how much weight he places on the user experience, and why Chipper has always been mobile only to support that notion. 

Trust is everything when it comes to the finance space. And without conventional banking locations that customers are used to, it’s a tougher hurdle to climb over. Listen to find out how Hasan relies on transparency and marketing to support Chipper’s efforts in earning their users’ trust.

PS, don’t listen to this episode until after you’ve had your morning coffee, as we cover some of Hasan’s favorite blends and regions on the show as well. 

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Guest Bio

Hasan is an entrepreneur, marketing, and product leader with extensive experience building and scaling high-growth technology companies, marketing, and growth teams. 

He's a data-informed creative thinker. Hasan cut his teeth in digital marketing as co-founder/CEO of HoodiePeople, an e-commerce retail startup way back in 2006 

Currently, Hasan leads Growth & Marketing as VP Global Marketing at Chipper Cash, a pan-African Fintech. Hasan joined Chipper at the pre-seed stage and the company is now at Series C, and valued at $1.25b, with more than 5 million users globally today. 

Just prior to Chipper, Hasan lead Growth Marketing at Voicea, a B2B SaaS startup that was acquired by Cisco in 2018. Over the last 15 years, he's relentlessly focused on building high growth technology companies including Homejoy, YourMechanic, Fairy, Honey, and TuneUpMedia. These organizations have collectively raised over $800m, launched in 1000's of markets across the US, Africa, and EU, with multiple major exits. 

Beyond work, Hasan loves coffee, admittedly more than working. If you’re interested in finding what he’s got brewing today, head over to his personal coffee blog here. 

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Guest Quote

“Trust starts with reliability, right? And when things go wrong, you need to be transparent and get out in front of that as soon as possible. And things do break. That is the nature of the beast.” - Hasan Luongo

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Time Stamps 

*(2:20) A bit about Hasan

*(4:53) Digging into Chipper Cash 

*(6:56) A mobile-first product

*(9:15) Enabling fast movement 

*(10:52) Building customer trust in finance

*(14:05) Retaining users and customers

*(18:10) Life after the download

*(23:15) What’s next for Chipper

*(26:12) Hasan’s advice for other leaders

*(27:39) Rapid fire questions

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Links

• Connect with Hasan Luongo on LinkedIn
• Connect with Tom Butta on LinkedIn
• Check out the Airship Website
• Learn more about Chipper Cash

One-third of our waking hours are spent on mobile devices … most of it on apps.  

But a great app experience doesn’t just happen, it’s engineered to keep customers coming back.

On this podcast, you’ll hear leading brands and experts share strategies, advice, and lessons learned on the twisty path to app mastery.

If you want to deliver extraordinary value where your best customers choose to engage, this is the podcast for you. 

Ignite your own MAX journey. Join us for Masters of MAX: The Mobile App Experience podcast. Powered by the team at Airship.