August 26, 2025 • 45 mins
I am always looking for ways to improve. Send me a text and let me know your thoughts! - Kevin
Ever wondered how challenger tech brands compete (or co-exist) with industry giants like Adobe and Salesforce? In this enlightening conversation, Aditya Venpati, VP of Marketing at MoEngage, shares the trust, creativity, and distribution strategies that help an AI-first customer engagement platform stand out in crowded B2B tech markets.
Aditya’s journey from engineer to marketer gives him a practical lens on SaaS marketing and go-to-market decisions. He asks a simple question of every tactic, does it actually work for the end user? That mindset powers a human-centric strategy focused on building trust, solving real customer problems, and creating content people want to share.
What truly differentiates MoEngage is creative content with built-in distribution. Their “Adapt or Die” coffee table book features 13 contributors across nine companies, many not customers, which adds credibility and automatic reach. At events, they trade generic swag for custom-engraved Stanleys and “hydration kits” that spark genuine conversations. These experiential touches create positive emotion and brand recall long before a product demo.
Instead of pitching a rip-and-replace, MoEngage positions as a complementary layer to existing platforms. This B2B2C reality acknowledges long vendor relationships and focuses on specific use cases where MoEngage adds incremental value, opening doors in accounts that might otherwise be hard to penetrate.
Behind the scenes, Aditya has built a marketing culture around four non-negotiables, customer problems first, growth mindset, ask forgiveness not permission, and trust. That environment fuels bold experiments that often outperform traditional tactics, especially as AI changes how buyers research and decide.
As channels shift fast, Aditya’s advice for tech CMOs is simple, keep a constant pulse on how your audience consumes information. Regular customer conversations reveal changing patterns across LinkedIn, search, and AI-assisted research, and can be the difference between relevance and obsolescence.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kevin Kerner (00:00):
Hey there, I'm Kevin Kerner, the host of Tech
Marketing Rewired, and today'sepisode is with Aditya Venpati,
vp of Marketing at MoEngage.
I'm really excited to talk toAditya because I've followed his
content on LinkedIn for a while.
It's sharp, practical and thekind of marketing advice you can
really use I know I have.
What makes this conversationespecially interesting is the
(00:20):
complexity of the market thathe's in.
Moengage sells to marketers,sells in to B2B2C companies and
positions itself as an AI-firstplatform, all while competing
with giants like Adobe,salesforce and HubSpot.
Aditya shares how his teamnavigates those challenges,
where they're finding successand how he's balancing bold new
plays with timeless marketingfundamentals.
(00:42):
But before we dive in, a quicknote at Mighty True, we help
tech brands navigate thecomplexities of selling
technical products to theircustomers, and right now we're
offering a one-time AI searchanalysis.
It's a way to see how findableyour brand is in both
traditional search and AI search.
You know, with all the changeshappening in AI, it's a powerful
snapshot of where you standtoday.
(01:03):
So if you'd like one, send mean email at AISearch at
MightyEntrycom and I'll get youset up with next steps.
Let's get into it.
This is Tech Marketing Rewired.
All right, everyone, welcome toTech Marketing Rewired.
Today's guest is Aditya Vempati.
(01:24):
Aditya is an engineer by trade,turned marketer, investor,
mentor and now VP marketing atMoEngage, which is a really cool
AI-first customer engagementplatform, and I've been
following Aditya's content for awhile on LinkedIn.
It's just really good advicefor both strategic and
in-the-trenches marketing stuffthat I, frankly, I've used much
(01:46):
of it in my own work, so I hadto reach out to him.
I reached out to him kind ofcold, aditya, to get you on the
show, and I really am superhappy to have you here.
So, aditya, welcome to the showand how you doing.
Aditya Vempaty (01:58):
Good Thanks for having me, kevin.
I'm really grateful for theopportunity to speak.
You know, share our knowledge.
I can share and pay it forwardwhere I can.
You know these moments are,regardless of how frequent or
infrequent they are.
It's always nice to chatmarketing and share the
knowledge where I can with folkslike yourself and be given a
platform to do it.
Kevin Kerner (02:16):
So thank you Love it, love it, love it.
So I know you've had a reallyinteresting path into B2B and
you know you're doing a bunch ofstuff at MoEngage that I've
been keeping up with.
But I'm excited to dig into allthat.
But before we get into thedetails, for folks who may not
know you, your full background,can you walk us through your
career journey and just realquickly and then give us a quick
overview of MoEngage, just forcontext?
Aditya Vempaty (02:38):
Yeah, so I mean career journey.
As you said, I was an engineerby trade and I like to say
marketing stole my heart.
And, as you said, I was anengineer by trade and I like to
say marketing stole my heart.
And one of the things thatreally became apparent was, you
know, I was good at engineeringbut I was never going to be a
top 1% engineer and what Irealized is I could be a top 1%
marketer.
That's not to like knockmarketers, it's just I think my
brain was wired where I neededthe human interaction and I
(03:00):
thrived on the creativity andalso using the data where
possible.
And I, you know, growing up,firmly felt like hey, to be
successful you got to be likethe top of your craft, you have
to be top 1%.
And what does that take andwhat does that look like?
And marketing to me called meand stole my heart and been
fortunate to be a runningmarketing at a few organizations
like Amplitude, unit 21,synthego, and been at early
(03:23):
stage companies that have beensuccessful like Nutanix, and
really seen how things are done,been able to run with things
and help them scale and grow andalong the way, really realized
you know it comes down to yourcustomers and their problems
above all, and no matter whatkind of marketing, what industry
you're in I've been inindustries like fraud and
(03:43):
compliance, all the way throughanalytics to genome engineering,
and ultimately it comes down toyour prospects and their
problems and your productsreally don't matter.
What they're trying to solve iswhat really matters and how they
try to do it and how it impactstheir day-to-day and their job.
And if you can help them dothat, then you start building
trust.
And if you can educate them onhow that that looks like to
solve their problems, that alsohelps build trust.
(04:05):
That allows you to haveconversations with them to
potentially buy your productsand your solutions.
But that's been like theoverarching theme of my career.
Kevin Kerner (04:12):
That keeps coming back over and over, regardless
of the ai shift, regardless ofnew channels I wonder if your
engineering background,especially since you're in tech,
you've always been kind of likemore in the tech side of things
.
I wonder if the engineeringbackground gives you that like
it's got to work for the user,it's got to work for the
engineer, the actual end user,you think that's the case?
Aditya Vempaty (04:31):
I think it is heavily actually now that you
think about it like, becauseyou're always working backwards
like did this solution work?
Did it pass the qa test?
Did it actually, like when Iput it into code, into
production, do what it'ssupposed to do, or even testing
to do what it do is supposed todo?
And it's almost like you'realways answering to a larger
master or a larger like entitythat like judges you, and that
(04:53):
judgment is usually did it dowhat it was supposed to do more
than like and solve the problemmore than like.
Oh, it's cool, it's a greatfeature.
So that's a that.
So that's a good observationand I think I do lean towards
that.
And I'm always thinking like,hey, if I was an end user, would
I buy this, would I use thisproduct?
And like is this how I wouldtalk to somebody?
Is this colloquial in the senselike if I'm having a
(05:15):
conversation?
Are these the things I wouldsay where I'm just writing this,
to write it, to sound smart andlike?
Those are often things that, asan engineer, I started thinking
of and you're definitely right,and I think that progressed.
And one other tidbit that reallylike set me on this path more
than anything else Fun fact,most people don't know this is
when I shifted from engineeringto marketing.
(05:36):
I actually was a SDR and ademand gen person for the first
like eight months of my careerand I was dialing 80 to 100
people a day, selling theminfrastructure, and I got to
learn so much and how littlelike one with the coding side
and two with just doing thisdialing and getting people's
attention, what would get themto continue to talk with me?
(05:57):
And that's where it was verymuch about them and their
problems and nothing about whatI had to say yeah, yeah, that's
like the killer combination.
Kevin Kerner (06:04):
Actually, engineer , sdr marketer, you've had to
actually use the product.
You had to actually sell it topeople on the phone, which I did
.
I started my career at AdvancedMicro Devices as an SDR way
back in the day.
Man, nothing teaches you likethe product and the customer,
like getting on the phone anddialing or getting hung up and
then doing it over and overagain until you're like wait,
(06:27):
someone actually talked to me.
Aditya Vempaty (06:28):
Wait, they gave me three seconds, they gave me a
minute.
What am I doing here?
Kevin Kerner (06:30):
that I didn't do before.
Tenacity, total tenacity that'ssuper cool.
What really stands out to meabout MoEngage and one of the
conversations I wanted to getstarted with you is that you're
selling to marketers who are areal skeptical bunch and you're
selling in the MoEngage platforma very AI first product.
I've talked to a lot of peoplethat have had AI in the product
(06:53):
which you guys.
You're also a database ledproduct, but there's a strong AI
positioning to it Seems likethat's a whole added layer of
complexity to have both sellingto marketers but also kind of ai
first in your messaging.
I have those dimensionsinformed how you build your, how
you've been building yourgo-to-market at all yeah, so
(07:16):
it's.
Aditya Vempaty (07:16):
We thought a lot about this and and the thinking
wasn't so much like, hey, slapa label of AI on it and ship it
out the door right.
Million gauges existed beforethe AI.
I would say like upturn hashappened and everyone's focused
on it, and we're more like howdo we like our CEO does a great
job of this?
And we also like getting a linearound like how can whatever we
(07:37):
do help marketers be more humanand be more creative?
We should not be obscuring themfrom that.
We should enable them to dothat.
And what is the AI?
Products that we can introduceinto our platform that feel
native and isn't like anafterthought of bolting on, but
something that feels like it'spart of the flow and it makes
(07:59):
sense to have AI here versus nothave AI here, and where I can
step in immediately and help youaccelerate, versus where it's
like, huh, this doesn't makesense.
And so a lot of that thoughtwent into making it human
centric marketing and like usagebased versus you can do AI
everywhere and anywhere, andwe've seen cases like that, and
so that's how it's allowed us tomarket in a very different way,
(08:21):
in being like how do we bringthe humans first.
How do we make our prospectsand audiences heroes?
And that's why it's trickleddown across the board and that's
how we're trying to punch aboveour weight.
It's like how do we always becreative, have a human element
to it, where it's not just likehuman, like hey, put a picture
of a person and call it humanright.
No, how do we tell the storiesof as you said, they're
(09:03):
skeptical, especially marketersis trust, and how do you build
that trust when they have aplethora of choices to select
from?
And the thinking was how do weconstantly talk about their
problems, and talk about theirproblems across different
mediums, but also do it wherethey do research and learn from?
That could be channels orthought leaders or other brands
that we can partner with as well, and that's how we've tried to
(09:26):
punch above our weight, asyou've said, and the way we've
been able to do that is workingwith partners, working with
practitioners who may use othercompetitors to be very honest,
but telling their stories sothat other practitioners
associate us with solvingproblems, even if they may not
use our product, and to buildthe brand and the trust out.
Kevin Kerner (09:49):
Yeah, super interesting.
And then the the fact that theproduct also takes into account
the human nature of trying tohumanize using the AI inside the
product.
It's kind of a cool tie thatyou actually focus on the human
aspect of marketing, sort oftrust-based stuff.
How has that played out for you, because I've heard a lot of
(10:11):
people talk about focusing onthe customer and making sure
that the customer voice is ineverything.
How has that actually playedout in some of the strategies
for you?
Aditya Vempaty (10:21):
Yeah, so oftentimes I joined MoEngage
about like two, two and a halfyears ago and oftentimes when
you come in and you're marketingto marketers, I think,
marketing to marketers, there'sa fine line between being really
cheesy and over the top to gettheir attention versus like
being too serious, and it's noteasy to cross that line, versus
(10:44):
like being too serious and it'snot easy to cross that line.
The reason I bring that up iswe actually try to focus on
being funny and human and usingnostalgia as a way to reach
these marketers, because a lotof the marketers that are now in
VP roles, c-level roles, arepeople that were kids in the 80s
(11:04):
and the 90s, and what I foundis nostalgia really triggers a
sense of positive emotion andthat is where a lot of our
marketing comes from.
Like how do we drive positiveemotion?
Like when you associate withmonogamy, if you don't buy, even
if you don't think it's theright fit, how do we make you
feel a positive emotion?
And everything we do in ourmarketing is focused on that.
(11:24):
Like you mentioned the customerengagement book.
Yes, it's called Adapt or Die,but if you look at the entire
thing, it doesn't look like die,it looks like adapt and
everything around.
It is like a positive messageof how you should go and adapt.
But the die is there to be.
Like, hey, you need to thinkabout it, because if you don't
adapt, this is the consequence.
But we want you to adapt andeverything is about adapting.
And so all our marketing is verylike not like rah, rah positive
(11:46):
, but like, hey, there's a go,be do the thing that makes you
feel happy and excited.
How can we help you do that?
And that's how we believe youcan build trust and that's how
we believe we should be a mediaoutlet or a news source for you
to learn from.
Like, hey, there's somethingnew about MCPs.
Let's go talk to someone who'sa practitioner who doesn't even
use our product, may even useour competitor's product, but
can we get them to give us aquote and tell us how they're
(12:07):
thinking about it and can we putthat onto our site?
And or, literally again,customer engagement book.
We have 13 authors from ninedifferent companies, like
Grammarly, hulu, wealthsimple,equinox, and a lot of them
aren't using, but we want tostill tell their stories through
the book and we want to stilllet that resonate.
So it's like, oh wow, theseguys are actually solving the
problem of customer engagementand telling and using examples
(12:29):
that drive the industry forward.
Hey, maybe this is an entity Ican trust.
Kevin Kerner (12:34):
Yeah, I think that the book is a really great
example of that.
I guess customer led marketing,or maybe thought leadership led
marketing, is really a uniqueasset because it's both in a
bunch of different ways.
I mean, you're getting otherpeople's opinions on how they
actually do, sort of in thetrenches stuff.
It's a well-designed piece.
(12:54):
Like from a creativeperspective, it's something
that's like a coffee table book.
Aditya Vempaty (12:58):
You took the words out of my mouth.
Yeah, yeah, we wanted to be acoffee table book.
Kevin Kerner (13:02):
Yeah, you kind of want to read it.
How did you pull that off,cause it seems like quite a big
effort to get that done.
Aditya Vempaty (13:09):
Yeah, it's a big undertaking, it doesn't.
I would be remissed if I didn'tsay I had the pleasure of
having an awesome design teamand an awesome content team and
without those equations we wouldnot get that book.
Uh, the book, to give youcontext, took about eight well,
seven months to do to coordinatethose 13 authors.
And the real key behind thatwas we wanted to put an asset
(13:32):
out there that was for theindustry and that was done by
practitioners in the industryand not led by a vendor.
Yes, we led it, but we havevery, I would say, few
vendor-led comments throughoutthe book.
We have more practitioner-ledcomments through these big
brands that others can learn asan example from.
And it was really about how doyou make you learn, how do we
(13:52):
make you feel like your job isdifficult but there are ways to
solve it, and how do we make youfeel that you can consume this
asset in a novel nostalgic way.
Hence the physical book.
There's a PDF of it, but wefelt like, as you said, having
that book on your coffee table,the way we designed it, like it
(14:12):
was meant completely to drive asense of nostalgia, because it's
in the physical format, butalso the design and creatives to
feel like, hey, this is amarketer who's marketing to me,
but speaking my language ofmarketing, which is like the
design and the aesthetics andthe layout, and obviously the
content has to back that right.
If you think about it this way,the content is the fuel to the
engine that is the creativityand the assets that are
(14:35):
representing.
Kevin Kerner (14:36):
Yeah, you know, the other thing about that book
too is and I've seen it onLinkedIn a bunch is that because
you got all these other brandsand marketers actually talk
about you know, whatever theywere talking about, they
actually promote it too.
So there's quite a bit of it'slike.
It's like you built an asset,you had other people involved in
that asset, but then thoseother people are promoting it
(14:56):
and there's a lot of people inthe book.
So it's this amplificationeffect across all these other
people that had to drive a lotof trust in your brand because
you're the, you know, the guysputting it together.
It was really smart yeah, thankyou.
Aditya Vempaty (15:11):
I mean again, it's a team effort, but we
really want to make anything.
We do want to make suredistribution is baked in to any
asset, produce and people assumedistribution is an email list,
posting on linkedin social media, putting ads behind it.
Me and the team think about itdifferently and I push the team
to think about it differentlyalso, because distribution
actually should be innatelybuilt in to the asset, meaning
(15:33):
it should have a partner, itshould have a practitioner, it
should have a customer, someonethat also is tied to the outcome
, with you, like they win, youwin, you win, they win.
So there are shared interestsand this is why the book did so
well is because there are 13different authors, as you said,
that were amplifying this andsharing it, because they
themselves are so excited thatthey're a part of a book, a
written asset that isn't just onthe web that someone can
(15:56):
download, but they themselvescan send it and give to their
colleagues, et cetera, and soforth.
Kevin Kerner (16:00):
Yeah, there's a certain amount of like built-in
virality to it, like when youthink and I DG, I hadn't thought
about distribution being thatyou invite additional people to
actually be part of the contentand that's almost guaranteed
distribution.
So it's super smart in thatregard.
Can you share any success fromthat early on?
I mean, it's only been a couplemonths, but is it working?
Aditya Vempaty (16:22):
Yeah, it's been about two months since it
launched and we have over about2,200 downloads, yeah, and about
600 physical copies and we'vepenetrated into, I would say,
like getting awareness and outof our you know top 400 accounts
, we've gotten awareness becauseof the book into 25% of them.
(16:43):
That's amazing Copy.
It's been delivered to themphysically.
They know who we are.
Now we're seeing them engagewith our brand in.
Kevin Kerner (16:55):
Yeah, it's very interesting, especially given
that you're tying it to kind ofa nostalgic piece of the buyer
persona, the fact that peoplemight want a book and it's even
looks even it's designed alittle nostalgic looking.
So it's really interesting.
I wonder if the other thingthat I've noticed you guys do
quite a bit of and you postquite a bit on this is events,
and I've seen a lot of othercustomers sort of lean into
(17:16):
events because it is verypersonal.
How have events become part ofyour, this trust-based
go-to-market strategy?
Aditya Vempaty (17:26):
yeah, so one of the things right if you zoom
back, like any industrywhichever I've had the privilege
to work in like I always thinkabout how can you make things
personal and experiential.
And because the entire goalagain is to make someone feel
something, if they don't feelsomething when they interact
with your brand or come to yourevent or any asset, you have you
kind of lost them right.
(17:47):
And if they just eye roll,checkbox, move on, you've lost
the narrative, you've lost theirattention, you've lost, you
know, the potential to get themto engage with you again.
And so with events, we alwaysthink is, whatever events we do,
can they walk away feeling likethey had a great experience?
And it doesn't matter if it's atrade show, doesn't matter if
it's a lunch and learn, itdoesn't matter if it's a dinner.
Like, how can you make sure theexperience feels personal and
(18:10):
they walk away being like, damn,that's pretty awesome.
I'm going to think of them whenI have something else coming up
.
And the way we use it is we havea plethora of things, but we
are a customer engagementplatform, so how do we engage
you?
And we talk aboutpersonalization at scale and
cross-channel marketing, so howdo all our events support that
level of engagement At Shopify.
This year we were at Shopify,we were at MAU, we had Stanleys
(18:36):
that were custom engraved withyour name.
That's the engagement aspect ofit.
But the other aspect thatactually worked even better than
the Stanleys was we hadhangover kits at ShopTalk and
it's a three-day event and thehangover kit or sorry, we called
them hydration kits we had eyemasks, advil liquid IV for
anyone to come up and take.
We had a bunch of them at thebooth and we actually saw people
.
Kevin Kerner (18:56):
I bet you got rid of all of them.
I bet everything sold out.
Aditya Vempaty (18:59):
Oh man, it was for free right.
And people just walked up andsaid these are so great, these
are so great.
I need this.
And we would see people comingdoing that and start having
conversations with us.
And then they're like, oh,you're giving me a Stanley.
What is that?
Like, what do I need to do toget that?
I'm like, well, are you an ICP?
Like, yes, you're a great.
Like why don't we chat?
Let's set up a meeting andwe'll give you a custom engraved
Stanley, like on my wife or theloved one.
(19:30):
And so, like that's how theentire customer engagement,
we're engaging you, we're makingit personal for you and you're
getting something of value fromus out of the gate, before we
even ask anything of valueexchange back from you.
And that's how we thought aboutevents.
And then we do events, usuallylike dinners we try to keep a
little smaller, but do them inlike nice, intimate restaurants,
Even 10 people, even if itcosts, like you know, five to
(19:53):
$7,000, like it's a restaurant.
You're like I want, beenwanting to go to that, but damn,
they have a restaurant there.
Oh, the guest list looks good.
I'm going to get some value outof this.
And that's how we try to curateeverything.
It's not easy, Don't get mewrong, and we don't try to do a
bunch of them.
Kevin Kerner (20:11):
But whichever ones we do, we try a tech marketing
rewired event about a month agoand it was great and it was.
You're right, it's about 5,000bucks.
We've got about 20 people there, but it was really great
conversation.
I'm sure people took away alittle bit about our brand and
the podcast and stuff that we'redoing.
That's really good.
I think I see more of those inthe future for either.
(20:31):
The other thing I was thinkingis breakfast, like doing some
sort of a meetup.
Breakfast is a great thing.
Have you tried any of that typeof?
No, we haven't done thebreakfast.
Aditya Vempaty (20:40):
I was actually going to ask you like what you
know, to a conversation here.
It's like where have you guysseen work?
Have you done it before?
What's the value there?
Kevin Kerner (21:01):
I've been to a kind of stimulating conversation
.
I think that's good forbreakfast and we had topics and
then we discussed the topics.
It was great.
It was really good.
That was more networking, Iguess.
Yeah, like you know, more of alike coffee talk sort of thing,
so it was really cool yeah, thebreakfast thing we had.
Aditya Vempaty (21:23):
We did brunch sponsorship at bigger
conferences and, like mau, itworked in a sense.
We got leads, but we realizedthere was nothing personal about
it.
Like that, 300 people therethat came for brunch and you
scan a badge, they scan yourbadge and like, okay, this, like
it's not personal, it's notgoing to leave to like you
feeling any better of likegetting breakfast and knowing
who we are, and so that's where,if we're doing breakfast, we're
(21:46):
definitely now like, hey, let'sdo it smaller, let's do it more
intimate, yeah, and let's likepick up a spot where people know
this is a brunch spot.
They're like I've been wantingto go to that spot.
Okay, I'll come by and I'll,I'll try it out.
And that's how, again goingback to like the experiential
that drives the engagement andthe emotion, trying to tie that
back constantly to build trust.
Kevin Kerner (22:05):
It's really smart With all these tactics and tools
and channels.
I mean you're leading amarketing effort at a really
fast growing company.
How do you decide where tofocus, like what's the process
of your system you put in placeto say this is where we're
focusing for the quarter?
Aditya Vempaty (22:21):
Yeah, we think about it actually we do yearly
planning but the bigger part iswe think about it in like two
quarter sprints and we look athey, what are the bets that
we're going to take for thisquarter and what are the long
term bets we're going to takefor the next two quarters?
And then the thinking becomesokay, what are these short-term
bets going to yield?
And the short-term bets usuallylike the dinners, like the blog
(22:42):
post, content from, like otherpractitioners that we can get in
, things that we know will boostthe brand visibility
immediately are like the currentquarter ones.
And the reason like you hear mesay brand and not like pipeline
, is because our industry, inthe space we're in, is very
brownfield.
It's not a new category.
There's like big playersalready that have had accounts
(23:04):
come in and that they're in andwe're not doing full rip and
replace, because that's not whatwe want to position ourselves.
We want to say we coexist withthe big players, but we still
need them to think about us inthe sense that we are like an
addition to what you have,because rip and replace takes
way longer and so, as a resultof being that space, we need to
constantly get our brandappearing in front of them over
(23:26):
a timeframe, constantly, andthat's when they start.
When they have the need,they'll come in and look at us.
And because we're in agreenfield space sorry,
brownfield space, not agreenfield space so that's why
you'll see us talk aboutpractitioners more using their
brands, as I said earlier, andlike how do we get blog posts
from practitioners who are noteven our customers?
Those are like the short termbets that we're thinking of.
How do we do webinars with them?
(23:46):
How do we, you know, get themto share LinkedIn wins, as
whatever they have and campaignsthey're doing?
And those are like the shortterm.
The longer term bets are likethings like the book what are
things that have a built invirality, that takes longer to
execute but has that like designbar and that has that brand
(24:07):
halo cachet that now you'll beknown for for like the next 12
to six to 12 months, and that'show we think about our planning.
And obviously this all relatesback to pipeline and relates
back to generating pipeline andsupporting the organization.
All of this doesn't happen ifthat doesn't happen, right.
And so in anything I'm doing,we always talk about one, as I
mentioned, distribution, andthen two how does this make
(24:29):
someone get into our database?
How does this?
How can we target this to thetarget accounts we want to break
into, to stand out from thenoise, right?
And so a lot of the quarter toquarter stuff is always focused
on breaking into target accountsand then the longer, bigger
halo stuff is again ties back tobreaking into larger accounts
that are brownfield.
But now we have a bigger piece,like the book.
(24:50):
It's gotten us into targetaccounts that otherwise wouldn't
care about us because this isso different, so unique and had
so many other authors baked intoit.
And that's how we think aboutit from the long-term breaking
accounts to the short-termbreaking into accounts Is that?
Kevin Kerner (25:01):
is that influenced how you structure your budgets
Like do you have an experimentsort of experimental budget or a
big anchor content budget andongoing budget?
Aditya Vempaty (25:10):
Yeah, so ongoing budget, usually like, you have
your ad spends, right, and youhave the content investments on
a monthly basis to rank for youknow the GOs and the AIOs and
whatever acronym is for AI withsearch.
Now, right, we have thosebudgets, we have to make those
investments.
But the experimental budgets,yes, they're there.
The book was an experimentalbudget, right, and we're going
to do something else.
That's another experimentalbudget, and what's interesting
(25:34):
is it's the experimental budgetstake more time and creativity
than money.
The money aspect actually isn'tthe big part of the
experimental budget.
I often find like the bookactually didn't cost that much,
like if you look at the grandscheme of things, but the time
it took and the creativity tookwas way more.
And so I find like when youbudget for experiments, you
(25:56):
actually have to budget timemore than you do money, because
it involves more manual labor,because it's something people
haven't done or they haven'toperationalized or it's not as
smooth.
So that's what I found Like.
Kevin Kerner (26:07):
When I do that the experiments definitely it's in
a different realm of measurementthan the normal ones Super
interesting, and you couldprobably make the case that the
experiments, if they pay out, ifthey're different, they may
even pay off bigger.
So you might it sounds like inthis case you might've spent
less for the actual production,more in terms of like brain
power and time, because it tooka long time to do, but it seems
(26:28):
like it's paying off bigger toobecause you took a bigger bet
exactly and in like planning andstuff, what I found is the
bigger, bolder bets have workedout way more often than, funny
enough, the ones you expect towork.
Aditya Vempaty (26:43):
Yeah, like I've actually found, going back to
what you're saying, like thechannels I thought would work
are not working anymore andthese bigger bets are the ones
that are really moving theneedle more and more now than
the channels.
I thought that would work andthat's where you're like
everything is flipped all of asudden and it is happening
because of AI and because of theentire way people are searching
has shifted, I'm sure with you,with me, like the fact that we
(27:06):
just go to chat GPT and look upsomething like is this a source
actually right?
Let me dig deeper and theentire workflow of how you
consume and learn for purchasingsomething or a problem you have
as, as changed, and I knoweveryone's talked about it, but
the downstream effects are howyou buy, even for b2b's, has
changed, right, and we sell theb2b's, we sell the b2c's and
(27:27):
thus, like the channels I thinkshould work aren't working and
we have to rethink thosechannels.
And that that's where my budgetgoes to and that's's actually
become more of the experimentthan the big bets, where the big
bets seem like big bets andbold, but in fact they're more,
I would say, dependable thanthis right now.
Kevin Kerner (27:45):
Yeah, isn't that wild?
And I don't.
It's a really good advicebecause I don't think people not
all of the marketers that Iknow budget for experiment.
Not all of the marketers that Iknow budget for experiment.
They don't have an experimentbudget.
It's just kind of all in andyou might think of an experiment
every once in a while and kindof have to sell the ELT for some
(28:06):
budget there.
But the really smart marketersthat I know are actually like
planning in percentage 15% orwhatever for experiments and
they're paying off.
I don't know if you've read UdiLedergore's Courageous
Marketing, but it's really goodin that regard.
It talks about punching aboveyour weight and experiment
budget but Gong.
Aditya Vempaty (28:27):
I think, does a good job of that.
I saw that book everywhere too,and I was like I need to.
Kevin Kerner (28:31):
I didn't get a chance to read it.
Aditya Vempaty (28:33):
But I haven't read it yet.
Kevin Kerner (28:35):
Yeah, plug for the plug for that book.
Um, you mentioned the, the big,the, the big giants in the
category.
So you're not, you're competingagainst some small little
players called like Adobe andSalesforce and you know
ginormous companies and youmentioned before like the
platform play, versus being adirect category competitor.
How do you approach competingin that kind of environment
(28:56):
without you know, waking one ofthem up that you're, you know, a
major competitor and goingafter you Like what's the
strategy?
Aditya Vempaty (29:03):
Yeah, I mean, the big thing is we are just
coexisting with you.
We're not trying to rip andreplace right.
There's years of relationship,data, trust that they have built
with the brands who use them,but often as new methodology not
new methodologies, but newconsumer behavior patterns have
emerged for these B2C brands andhow their audiences consume and
(29:25):
engage.
The folks who are running thesesystems are looking to engage
people on these platforms, likean Instagram, like a WhatsApp,
like a web, and tie thosetogether.
And what we found?
These giants are good at whatthey do.
I'm not even going to deny that, but how to get the most out of
them takes a lot of time andeffort, and so it's often when
(29:45):
they're thinking of adding a newmodule.
At the giants of Adobe orSalesforce, we're like, hey, we
can do that too, and we do itreally fast and quick, and
that's kind of like what we'reknown for.
And so we're like, hey, you'reusing email already.
Great, you're doing webpersonalization Great.
You want to do mobile?
Hey, we're here to help youwith that.
We can do that and we canintegrate.
We work with Salesforce.
We integrate with them directly.
You can pass the data email tomake sure it touches WhatsApp
(30:11):
and it's syncing and it goesback and gives a better web
experience.
And we found just doing thingsthat way does two parts.
One it's actually about thebuyer, not even the competitor.
I'm going to say that the buyerfeels at ease, that it's worth
making the investment with youBecause they again, they've had
these relationships for yearsand years as a company.
They're not going to trust whoyou are just because you said
(30:34):
you could do it.
So one they feel okay, you'reintegrated, great, you're
certified by them.
You're saying you just wantthis part and you're saying that
because it's going to make iteasier for my life and what I
want to do, not because you havethe better product and you're
understanding I'm still going touse these products.
Okay, cool, you're making verymuch about me and the problems
and the challenges I have tosolve, not about you and your
product.
And that's how we try toposition it and engage and talk
(30:57):
to the users and our potentialbuyers, because we're trying to
put ourselves in their situationand be like what would make
them actually like consider us,not kick out these current
vendors, but consider us and anyperson that's a purchaser that
has whatever decision makingsthey're always thinking about
hey, do I know you?
Are you reputable?
What's it going to take if Iwant to use you, like to get you
up and running, and who elsecan I talk to you?
(31:20):
In my space, my industry thathas used you?
And these are three things wetry to constantly cover our
bases on, and that's when wetalk and market to the giants
and engage with people who areusing them.
We try to focus on like, hey,it's easy to get up and running
with us.
This is how our migration looks.
Here are other people that havedone it.
This is a scale at whichthey've operated.
This is where, going back towhere we talk about, like the
fundamentals of marketing.
These are the fundamentals ofmarketing, and it's not like I
(31:49):
knew these fundamentals.
I got them by talking tocustomers when I'd be like hey,
why aren't you considering us?
What does it look like?
They're like well, these arethree things.
Why do I care about these threeIf I don't?
Kevin Kerner (31:58):
have these three, I have a high likelihood of
getting fired or not being ableto purchase a solution or
question for what I did.
So, yeah, yeah, yeah, the, the,the, uh, the platform play is a
smarter one, uh, because theyalso your cost of acquisition is
probably lower if you'reactually just working as a plot,
you know you're, you're leaninginto that, pull their plot,
those bigger platforms to take.
Uh, you're leaning into thosebigger platforms to take not
take business from them, but bein the wake of some of the
(32:18):
opportunities that come from.
So I think that's great and youhave to use some of those
fundamentals of trust.
You know, customerunderstanding, listening to the
customer, those are all reallyimportant things.
Aditya Vempaty (32:32):
They totally are , and it's what fuels us and, as
you said, ast, astutely, itdrives down customer acquisition
costs.
And then also, you know,sometimes you have to take the
positioning of hey, we're, we'rethe new innovative toy you want
to come play with.
Right, and what you realizewith these big players and these
big organizations is everyonehas budgets to go experiment
with new stuff, as we justtalked about, even for tooling.
Yeah, because they want to trysomething new.
(32:53):
And it's like, if you proveyourself there, you get the
wedge and you can startexpanding.
But you need to prove yourselfat least in a small wedge before
they give you the big pie.
Kevin Kerner (33:01):
Yeah, makes sense.
I wanted to ask a questionabout your team because, given
the way that you're buildingyour go-to-market heavily
trust-based, using customers asthe voice of your company it
seems like you'd have to build ateam that also has the same, or
can learn, let's say, the samesort of go-to-market approach.
(33:24):
How have you built the teamLike?
What type of roles do you havein place?
What's most important thatyou've put in place over the
last year?
What type of education,training do you need to give
people?
Aditya Vempaty (33:38):
Like I'm just curious how you built your team.
Yeah, so first off I'll saythis none of this happens
without a great team.
So like bar none, I can tellall these strategies and
everything and you hit the nailactually on the head.
Like all of the marketing andanything you do, I think
requires with the team that buysinto what you're saying and
really like, internalizes it andworks to make sure it's part of
them.
And I've been blessed with ateam that does that.
A few folks on the team I'veworked with for previous
(33:59):
companies also well, and they'vemoved on to MoEngage with me
and fewer new additions.
And one of the things I tellthem, like there are four
non-negotiables to be part ofthis team, right, and the first
non-negotiable is it's alwayscustomer problems first.
That's like non-negotiable.
The second one is growth mindset.
You have to constantly pushyourself, try new things, and
(34:19):
that comes from talking tocustomers.
That comes from learning whatothers are doing.
You need to constantly pushyourself in doing that.
And the third one, right, itcomes down to ask for
forgiveness, not permission.
I want you to try stuff.
You fail, that's fine, justkeep me updated.
You're trying stuff and tell mehow you're trying stuff like
document it before you go try it, but go try it and if it
(34:39):
doesn't work, it doesn't work,and you tell me why.
And the fourth is trust.
We trust you.
You have to trust us.
Expect that all of us have eachother's backs, meaning if shit
hits the fan, tell me shit'shitting the fan and I can help,
because we're doing marketingand, in the grand scheme of
things, whatever you do, as longas it's not illegal, we can
reverse it.
(34:59):
And you don't.
You know, murder somebody, likethose are like the two things I
can't do anything about to helpyou.
But everything else I can helpyou with in any shape or form,
and it's not that bad, trust me,it's not that bad.
Kevin Kerner (35:11):
But those are go ahead.
I was just gonna say that'sreally good and get letting
people have the because you knowI run an agency as well letting
people have the room to makemistakes, because we're all
going to make mistakes and thegood stuff usually comes from
some mistake that was madepreviously.
I think it's really reallysmart.
And a lot of marketingorganizations, especially some
(35:31):
of the bigger ones I mean youwere at dell you feel really
you're kind of hamstrung a bit,just kind of frightened by
making the wrong not that Delldoes this, but just making the
wrong decision and it's aterrifying position to be in if
you're a marketer because, likeyou said, most of the marketing
decisions, if you make bets thatare not like, considered
internally, like solid, likeeveryone's eyes are on you right
(35:53):
At those organizations, there'sway more pressure and you need
that environment, as you said,to let people experiment.
Aditya Vempaty (35:59):
And so most of the team that's where I push
them, or I push them in thegrowth mindset, to be creative.
I push them to take those betsand be like I need you to do
this.
And then the customer.
And it's almost like ade-risking mechanism where, if
you talk to the customer, youunderstand what they care about,
don't care about what gets themexcited and doesn't, which
allows you to go and try newthings, which allows you to go
and put new campaigns into placeand like tell me afterwards and
(36:20):
if it doesn't work, you had areasoning and a justification on
how you approach it and why youdid it.
And the last part is you'retrusting your team, one and each
other.
That is like a key, key thing.
You trust this person will haveyour back and you trust that
you'll have.
They trust that you have theirback.
And without those four tenants,like I don't think, at least for
(36:40):
me, I can't build a teams thatwill buy into this type of
thinking, because this type ofthinking is very much not your
traditional marketing.
It is, I would say, pushing theboundaries to think very
differently and not think somuch internal focus but external
focused, which is what not mostmarketing teams do.
And so the team has bought intoit, right, and it takes time
and effort.
But I'm always like hey, howwould you talk to the customer?
You wrote something like this.
(37:01):
Do you really think the customerlike gives a shit what you just
wrote?
Like reread it and like andtell me and oftentimes that
question, funny enough out ofeverything else for growth and
creativity is read it out loudand tell me is this something
you'd want to send?
And man that so quickly?
They're like oh wow, I wouldnot say this out loud.
Then I'm like then why'd youput it on the paper?
And it's not meant to be like aknock.
(37:23):
It's like giving them the toolsso they can like do this
without me around, withouthaving to lean on me, that they
can be self-sufficient and havethe creative ideas and outputs
100, 100 like would you buy this?
Kevin Kerner (37:36):
would you buy this piece of content?
Well, no, I wouldn't know, it'snot good.
No, yeah, and I've done those.
I've written that type of stuffmyself.
I'm like, oh my gosh, this isyeah, and like if you can't say
it out loud with the straightface and you feel good about it,
it's like yeah yeah yeah, forsure, Give me the X, you know so
so you guys, so you've been inthis position for a couple of
(37:58):
years, over the next, let's say,12 months.
Obviously, there's a lot ofchange.
Right now, it's crazy for otherCMOs or marketing leaders that
might be listening.
Aditya Vempaty (38:13):
What's the one thing you'd say they should
double down on for the next 12months?
I think the biggest thing thatyou need to double down,
regardless of what industryyou're in, is understand, I
would say, how your audiencedigests information from who,
from where and what channel.
That is going to change so muchand if you constantly don't ask
them and get that information,that is what's going to lead to,
you know, jobs being lost.
(38:33):
It's not the asset you produce,it's not the webinar you're
doing or the event you're doing.
It's that you didn't spend timeunderstanding how they consume,
where they consume and who theyconsume from and what's the
medium they consume in.
Because, yeah, it's as simpleas that.
If that's a fundamental thingand that's a foundational thing,
that will never shift how theydo.
It may shift, but that learningneeds to constantly happen.
(38:54):
And, like on my team, back tostructuring, like I should cover
that real quick.
And this relates is we havesomeone who owns demand gen for
North America.
We have someone who ownscontent for North America.
We have someone who owns events.
We have someone who owns design, and they have tertiary support
systems underneath that arefrom India and everyone has
employees in India.
And then we started a PMM.
We have a central PMM team.
(39:14):
This PMM is going to focus onNorth America and one of the
things I'm commissioning her ishey, every month you get X
amount of budget, but I need youto talk to a customer every
week, or prospect orpractitioner, and give me
feedback and feed the team thisinformation every week without
fail, and you can pay them likeX amount of time, x amount of
money for 30 minutes of theirtime, but this is non-negotiable
.
You need to do this every monthand I told them all in the
(39:36):
interview process.
And this goes back to knowingthe channel, what they're
looking to solve, who they learnfrom, why they learn from, and
this gives us a constant pulseon it.
And with AI now you can put itall into a doc and be like and
put the date and be like how arethings changing, what are the
channels they're using, how arethey shifted by industry or
vertical or company size, andthat way, the entire team starts
(39:58):
to have, I would say, aWikipedia or customer Wikipedia
to learn that.
Yeah, long story short, I thinkthat's what CMOs should focus
on.
Kevin Kerner (40:05):
Yeah, 100%, 100%, because it's changing so much.
It's just crazy how you wonderwhat channels that are in place
today that are the best, ormaybe they're the channels that
everyone always uses and howthat's going to change a couple
of years from now.
It's just, it's just reallywild.
Even things like in the B2Bspace, like LinkedIn.
What will be the future ofLinkedIn as it gets more crowd,
(40:27):
just more crowded, as morepeople are using it?
Like, what's the?
What about video content?
Like, how will video contentchange Because everyone's using
video now?
So so if everyone jumps on onebad wagon or the next, like what
is the next thing?
So watching channel is reallyan interesting thought.
That should be like.
It should be watched becauseit's I don't know.
(40:47):
I couldn't tell you what'sgoing to happen unless I was
talking to customers andwatching it, but things are
going to change really wild.
But you hit the nail on thehead right.
Aditya Vempaty (40:55):
Change is just like the symptom right.
But the root cause not rootcause.
I say, like the foundation totackle change is constantly
talking to the customer andhaving a pulse on them, Like
that won't stop.
If you do stop it, then thechange will kick your ass.
But if you're constantlytalking to them, you'll see the
change happening.
You'll see how they consume,You'll see what matters to them
(41:16):
as it's happening, or it's aboutto happen, or or you're in the
midst of it.
So it's almost like havinganswers to the test, even if the
test questions keep changing.
Kevin Kerner (41:23):
Yeah, that's right .
That's really well said.
Okay, cool.
Well, this has been great.
I want to keep you for so muchlonger.
There's so many things I haveto ask, but I wanted to end on
something I do on all thesepodcasts called AI roulette
questions.
So I've put your profile intoperplexity, along with your
company, all your recent posts,the kind of outline of the
(41:45):
conversation that we puttogether for today, and I'm
going to press send.
It's going to give me aquestion, and I have no idea
what the question is.
My only advice to perplex youis to just make it a spicy
question, or?
something that I wouldn't havethought of myself, and that's
pretty.
I'm not that smart, so itshould be able to outdo me here.
So let's see what it does, andsome it's come up with some
really crazy stuff.
Let me.
Aditya Vempaty (42:04):
I'm excited, I press send here, Interesting.
Kevin Kerner (42:11):
Okay, well, this is good in line with the
questions that we just hadaround team.
So if AI had to pitch itselffor a job on your marketing team
, what would its biggestexaggeration be during the
interview?
Aditya Vempaty (42:21):
Biggest exaggeration.
The biggest exaggeration is itwould tell me to talk to all my
customers.
It would tell me these are theproblems my customers have.
Then, when I looked at it, itwould be just blog posts that
are found on the internet and itwould work, and it would just
use generic language and tell methat my product is the best
product ever and that mycompetitors are garbage and that
everyone loves me.
(42:42):
That's the exaggeration.
I would say everything I'mdoing is great.
Kevin Kerner (42:45):
Everything's fine, you don't need to do anything
and you're the best.
I don't know if you saw this,but in the latest iteration of
ChatGPT-5, they're explainingnow that the AI is now using
primarily search what it findson the web.
So it's using its reasoningagent but it's not trying to
(43:05):
memorize all information itself,which is really interesting
because you're going to have theAI more reason on publicly
available information, versuswhat they were thinking was that
it would have some, you know,knowledge beyond knowledge of
everything itself, I mean whatdoes this mean?
Aditya Vempaty (43:25):
This tells me more and more they don't know
how to make the AI reason.
Yeah, let me do this.
Oh, it didn't work.
Wait, let me.
More and more.
They don't know how to make theAI reason.
Yeah, let me do this.
Oh, it didn't work, let me trythis.
It didn't work, let me try it.
That's where you nailed it whenyou said everything's changing
because those fundamentalsthey're not sure which is the
fundamental thing to go investin.
Kevin Kerner (43:38):
Yeah, yeah, totally.
I haven't been super happy withChatGPT 5, really.
It was like when they firstannounced 4, when they had 4 and
they were saying that 5 wasgoing to be amazing, and then 5
came out and it just kind ofunderwhelmed me up to this point
.
So I'm a little less AI atleast Chachapiti AI happy right
(43:58):
now, because I was reallyexpecting it to be a giant leap.
Aditya Vempaty (44:03):
I've had to retrain it.
Yeah, I agree, like heyremember this, remember this,
remember this.
So I, yeah, I agree, like hey,remember this, remember this,
remember this.
So I had to retrain it to getback on the, on understanding
how I talk and how I say stuff.
Kevin Kerner (44:15):
Yeah, so I mean, I'm not complaining, I still
great.
I wouldn't want to lose it.
So please, sam altman, don'tlisten to this and take it away
from me.
Aditya Vempaty (44:24):
But I definitely need it don't take my ai friend
away from me, please.
That's right well it's Well.
Kevin Kerner (44:30):
it's been great.
It's been great getting to knowyou here on the podcast.
Really good advice on a lot ofdifferent things.
I will urge people to followyou on LinkedIn, and is there
any other way that people shouldget ahold of you if they want
to talk more?
Learn more from you?
Aditya Vempaty (44:43):
LinkedIn is the best.
Send me a message, I'm, youknow, try to respond as much as
I can and I truly believe inpaying it forward.
If you're going to send me amessage and you need some help,
please go for it.
Just don't send me a messageand try to sell me things,
because I'm open to being sold.
Don't send me a message underthe guise of trying to sell me
something.
Kevin Kerner (44:59):
Yeah, well cool, I did just great.
Thank you so much for being onthe show.
I really appreciate it andhopefully we will catch up soon,
yep.
Hey there, I'm Kevin Kerner, the host of Tech
Marketing Rewired, and today'sepisode is with Aditya Venpati,
vp of Marketing at MoEngage.
I'm really excited to talk toAditya because I've followed his
content on LinkedIn for a while.
It's sharp, practical and thekind of marketing advice you can
really use I know I have.
What makes this conversationespecially interesting is the
(00:20):
complexity of the market thathe's in.
Moengage sells to marketers,sells in to B2B2C companies and
positions itself as an AI-firstplatform, all while competing
with giants like Adobe,salesforce and HubSpot.
Aditya shares how his teamnavigates those challenges,
where they're finding successand how he's balancing bold new
plays with timeless marketingfundamentals.
(00:42):
But before we dive in, a quicknote at Mighty True, we help
tech brands navigate thecomplexities of selling
technical products to theircustomers, and right now we're
offering a one-time AI searchanalysis.
It's a way to see how findableyour brand is in both
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You know, with all the changeshappening in AI, it's a powerful
snapshot of where you standtoday.
(01:03):
So if you'd like one, send mean email at AISearch at
MightyEntrycom and I'll get youset up with next steps.
Let's get into it.
This is Tech Marketing Rewired.
All right, everyone, welcome toTech Marketing Rewired.
Today's guest is Aditya Vempati.
(01:24):
Aditya is an engineer by trade,turned marketer, investor,
mentor and now VP marketing atMoEngage, which is a really cool
AI-first customer engagementplatform, and I've been
following Aditya's content for awhile on LinkedIn.
It's just really good advicefor both strategic and
in-the-trenches marketing stuffthat I, frankly, I've used much
(01:46):
of it in my own work, so I hadto reach out to him.
I reached out to him kind ofcold, aditya, to get you on the
show, and I really am superhappy to have you here.
So, aditya, welcome to the showand how you doing.
Aditya Vempaty (01:58):
Good Thanks for having me, kevin.
I'm really grateful for theopportunity to speak.
You know, share our knowledge.
I can share and pay it forwardwhere I can.
You know these moments are,regardless of how frequent or
infrequent they are.
It's always nice to chatmarketing and share the
knowledge where I can with folkslike yourself and be given a
platform to do it.
Kevin Kerner (02:16):
So thank you Love it, love it, love it.
So I know you've had a reallyinteresting path into B2B and
you know you're doing a bunch ofstuff at MoEngage that I've
been keeping up with.
But I'm excited to dig into allthat.
But before we get into thedetails, for folks who may not
know you, your full background,can you walk us through your
career journey and just realquickly and then give us a quick
overview of MoEngage, just forcontext?
Aditya Vempaty (02:38):
Yeah, so I mean career journey.
As you said, I was an engineerby trade and I like to say
marketing stole my heart.
And, as you said, I was anengineer by trade and I like to
say marketing stole my heart.
And one of the things thatreally became apparent was, you
know, I was good at engineeringbut I was never going to be a
top 1% engineer and what Irealized is I could be a top 1%
marketer.
That's not to like knockmarketers, it's just I think my
brain was wired where I neededthe human interaction and I
(03:00):
thrived on the creativity andalso using the data where
possible.
And I, you know, growing up,firmly felt like hey, to be
successful you got to be likethe top of your craft, you have
to be top 1%.
And what does that take andwhat does that look like?
And marketing to me called meand stole my heart and been
fortunate to be a runningmarketing at a few organizations
like Amplitude, unit 21,synthego, and been at early
(03:23):
stage companies that have beensuccessful like Nutanix, and
really seen how things are done,been able to run with things
and help them scale and grow andalong the way, really realized
you know it comes down to yourcustomers and their problems
above all, and no matter whatkind of marketing, what industry
you're in I've been inindustries like fraud and
(03:43):
compliance, all the way throughanalytics to genome engineering,
and ultimately it comes down toyour prospects and their
problems and your productsreally don't matter.
What they're trying to solve iswhat really matters and how they
try to do it and how it impactstheir day-to-day and their job.
And if you can help them dothat, then you start building
trust.
And if you can educate them onhow that that looks like to
solve their problems, that alsohelps build trust.
(04:05):
That allows you to haveconversations with them to
potentially buy your productsand your solutions.
But that's been like theoverarching theme of my career.
Kevin Kerner (04:12):
That keeps coming back over and over, regardless
of the ai shift, regardless ofnew channels I wonder if your
engineering background,especially since you're in tech,
you've always been kind of likemore in the tech side of things
.
I wonder if the engineeringbackground gives you that like
it's got to work for the user,it's got to work for the
engineer, the actual end user,you think that's the case?
Aditya Vempaty (04:31):
I think it is heavily actually now that you
think about it like, becauseyou're always working backwards
like did this solution work?
Did it pass the qa test?
Did it actually, like when Iput it into code, into
production, do what it'ssupposed to do, or even testing
to do what it do is supposed todo?
And it's almost like you'realways answering to a larger
master or a larger like entitythat like judges you, and that
(04:53):
judgment is usually did it dowhat it was supposed to do more
than like and solve the problemmore than like.
Oh, it's cool, it's a greatfeature.
So that's a that.
So that's a good observationand I think I do lean towards
that.
And I'm always thinking like,hey, if I was an end user, would
I buy this, would I use thisproduct?
And like is this how I wouldtalk to somebody?
Is this colloquial in the senselike if I'm having a
(05:15):
conversation?
Are these the things I wouldsay where I'm just writing this,
to write it, to sound smart andlike?
Those are often things that, asan engineer, I started thinking
of and you're definitely right,and I think that progressed.
And one other tidbit that reallylike set me on this path more
than anything else Fun fact,most people don't know this is
when I shifted from engineeringto marketing.
(05:36):
I actually was a SDR and ademand gen person for the first
like eight months of my careerand I was dialing 80 to 100
people a day, selling theminfrastructure, and I got to
learn so much and how littlelike one with the coding side
and two with just doing thisdialing and getting people's
attention, what would get themto continue to talk with me?
(05:57):
And that's where it was verymuch about them and their
problems and nothing about whatI had to say yeah, yeah, that's
like the killer combination.
Kevin Kerner (06:04):
Actually, engineer , sdr marketer, you've had to
actually use the product.
You had to actually sell it topeople on the phone, which I did
.
I started my career at AdvancedMicro Devices as an SDR way
back in the day.
Man, nothing teaches you likethe product and the customer,
like getting on the phone anddialing or getting hung up and
then doing it over and overagain until you're like wait,
(06:27):
someone actually talked to me.
Aditya Vempaty (06:28):
Wait, they gave me three seconds, they gave me a
minute.
What am I doing here?
Kevin Kerner (06:30):
that I didn't do before.
Tenacity, total tenacity that'ssuper cool.
What really stands out to meabout MoEngage and one of the
conversations I wanted to getstarted with you is that you're
selling to marketers who are areal skeptical bunch and you're
selling in the MoEngage platforma very AI first product.
I've talked to a lot of peoplethat have had AI in the product
(06:53):
which you guys.
You're also a database ledproduct, but there's a strong AI
positioning to it Seems likethat's a whole added layer of
complexity to have both sellingto marketers but also kind of ai
first in your messaging.
I have those dimensionsinformed how you build your, how
you've been building yourgo-to-market at all yeah, so
(07:16):
it's.
Aditya Vempaty (07:16):
We thought a lot about this and and the thinking
wasn't so much like, hey, slapa label of AI on it and ship it
out the door right.
Million gauges existed beforethe AI.
I would say like upturn hashappened and everyone's focused
on it, and we're more like howdo we like our CEO does a great
job of this?
And we also like getting a linearound like how can whatever we
(07:37):
do help marketers be more humanand be more creative?
We should not be obscuring themfrom that.
We should enable them to dothat.
And what is the AI?
Products that we can introduceinto our platform that feel
native and isn't like anafterthought of bolting on, but
something that feels like it'spart of the flow and it makes
(07:59):
sense to have AI here versus nothave AI here, and where I can
step in immediately and help youaccelerate, versus where it's
like, huh, this doesn't makesense.
And so a lot of that thoughtwent into making it human
centric marketing and like usagebased versus you can do AI
everywhere and anywhere, andwe've seen cases like that, and
so that's how it's allowed us tomarket in a very different way,
(08:21):
in being like how do we bringthe humans first.
How do we make our prospectsand audiences heroes?
And that's why it's trickleddown across the board and that's
how we're trying to punch aboveour weight.
It's like how do we always becreative, have a human element
to it, where it's not just likehuman, like hey, put a picture
of a person and call it humanright.
No, how do we tell the storiesof as you said, they're
(09:03):
skeptical, especially marketersis trust, and how do you build
that trust when they have aplethora of choices to select
from?
And the thinking was how do weconstantly talk about their
problems, and talk about theirproblems across different
mediums, but also do it wherethey do research and learn from?
That could be channels orthought leaders or other brands
that we can partner with as well, and that's how we've tried to
(09:26):
punch above our weight, asyou've said, and the way we've
been able to do that is workingwith partners, working with
practitioners who may use othercompetitors to be very honest,
but telling their stories sothat other practitioners
associate us with solvingproblems, even if they may not
use our product, and to buildthe brand and the trust out.
Kevin Kerner (09:49):
Yeah, super interesting.
And then the the fact that theproduct also takes into account
the human nature of trying tohumanize using the AI inside the
product.
It's kind of a cool tie thatyou actually focus on the human
aspect of marketing, sort oftrust-based stuff.
How has that played out for you, because I've heard a lot of
(10:11):
people talk about focusing onthe customer and making sure
that the customer voice is ineverything.
How has that actually playedout in some of the strategies
for you?
Aditya Vempaty (10:21):
Yeah, so oftentimes I joined MoEngage
about like two, two and a halfyears ago and oftentimes when
you come in and you're marketingto marketers, I think,
marketing to marketers, there'sa fine line between being really
cheesy and over the top to gettheir attention versus like
being too serious, and it's noteasy to cross that line, versus
(10:44):
like being too serious and it'snot easy to cross that line.
The reason I bring that up iswe actually try to focus on
being funny and human and usingnostalgia as a way to reach
these marketers, because a lotof the marketers that are now in
VP roles, c-level roles, arepeople that were kids in the 80s
(11:04):
and the 90s, and what I foundis nostalgia really triggers a
sense of positive emotion andthat is where a lot of our
marketing comes from.
Like how do we drive positiveemotion?
Like when you associate withmonogamy, if you don't buy, even
if you don't think it's theright fit, how do we make you
feel a positive emotion?
And everything we do in ourmarketing is focused on that.
(11:24):
Like you mentioned the customerengagement book.
Yes, it's called Adapt or Die,but if you look at the entire
thing, it doesn't look like die,it looks like adapt and
everything around.
It is like a positive messageof how you should go and adapt.
But the die is there to be.
Like, hey, you need to thinkabout it, because if you don't
adapt, this is the consequence.
But we want you to adapt andeverything is about adapting.
And so all our marketing is verylike not like rah, rah positive
(11:46):
, but like, hey, there's a go,be do the thing that makes you
feel happy and excited.
How can we help you do that?
And that's how we believe youcan build trust and that's how
we believe we should be a mediaoutlet or a news source for you
to learn from.
Like, hey, there's somethingnew about MCPs.
Let's go talk to someone who'sa practitioner who doesn't even
use our product, may even useour competitor's product, but
can we get them to give us aquote and tell us how they're
(12:07):
thinking about it and can we putthat onto our site?
And or, literally again,customer engagement book.
We have 13 authors from ninedifferent companies, like
Grammarly, hulu, wealthsimple,equinox, and a lot of them
aren't using, but we want tostill tell their stories through
the book and we want to stilllet that resonate.
So it's like, oh wow, theseguys are actually solving the
problem of customer engagementand telling and using examples
(12:29):
that drive the industry forward.
Hey, maybe this is an entity Ican trust.
Kevin Kerner (12:34):
Yeah, I think that the book is a really great
example of that.
I guess customer led marketing,or maybe thought leadership led
marketing, is really a uniqueasset because it's both in a
bunch of different ways.
I mean, you're getting otherpeople's opinions on how they
actually do, sort of in thetrenches stuff.
It's a well-designed piece.
(12:54):
Like from a creativeperspective, it's something
that's like a coffee table book.
Aditya Vempaty (12:58):
You took the words out of my mouth.
Yeah, yeah, we wanted to be acoffee table book.
Kevin Kerner (13:02):
Yeah, you kind of want to read it.
How did you pull that off,cause it seems like quite a big
effort to get that done.
Aditya Vempaty (13:09):
Yeah, it's a big undertaking, it doesn't.
I would be remissed if I didn'tsay I had the pleasure of
having an awesome design teamand an awesome content team and
without those equations we wouldnot get that book.
Uh, the book, to give youcontext, took about eight well,
seven months to do to coordinatethose 13 authors.
And the real key behind thatwas we wanted to put an asset
(13:32):
out there that was for theindustry and that was done by
practitioners in the industryand not led by a vendor.
Yes, we led it, but we havevery, I would say, few
vendor-led comments throughoutthe book.
We have more practitioner-ledcomments through these big
brands that others can learn asan example from.
And it was really about how doyou make you learn, how do we
(13:52):
make you feel like your job isdifficult but there are ways to
solve it, and how do we make youfeel that you can consume this
asset in a novel nostalgic way.
Hence the physical book.
There's a PDF of it, but wefelt like, as you said, having
that book on your coffee table,the way we designed it, like it
(14:12):
was meant completely to drive asense of nostalgia, because it's
in the physical format, butalso the design and creatives to
feel like, hey, this is amarketer who's marketing to me,
but speaking my language ofmarketing, which is like the
design and the aesthetics andthe layout, and obviously the
content has to back that right.
If you think about it this way,the content is the fuel to the
engine that is the creativityand the assets that are
(14:35):
representing.
Kevin Kerner (14:36):
Yeah, you know, the other thing about that book
too is and I've seen it onLinkedIn a bunch is that because
you got all these other brandsand marketers actually talk
about you know, whatever theywere talking about, they
actually promote it too.
So there's quite a bit of it'slike.
It's like you built an asset,you had other people involved in
that asset, but then thoseother people are promoting it
(14:56):
and there's a lot of people inthe book.
So it's this amplificationeffect across all these other
people that had to drive a lotof trust in your brand because
you're the, you know, the guysputting it together.
It was really smart yeah, thankyou.
Aditya Vempaty (15:11):
I mean again, it's a team effort, but we
really want to make anything.
We do want to make suredistribution is baked in to any
asset, produce and people assumedistribution is an email list,
posting on linkedin social media, putting ads behind it.
Me and the team think about itdifferently and I push the team
to think about it differentlyalso, because distribution
actually should be innatelybuilt in to the asset, meaning
(15:33):
it should have a partner, itshould have a practitioner, it
should have a customer, someonethat also is tied to the outcome
, with you, like they win, youwin, you win, they win.
So there are shared interestsand this is why the book did so
well is because there are 13different authors, as you said,
that were amplifying this andsharing it, because they
themselves are so excited thatthey're a part of a book, a
written asset that isn't just onthe web that someone can
(15:56):
download, but they themselvescan send it and give to their
colleagues, et cetera, and soforth.
Kevin Kerner (16:00):
Yeah, there's a certain amount of like built-in
virality to it, like when youthink and I DG, I hadn't thought
about distribution being thatyou invite additional people to
actually be part of the contentand that's almost guaranteed
distribution.
So it's super smart in thatregard.
Can you share any success fromthat early on?
I mean, it's only been a couplemonths, but is it working?
Aditya Vempaty (16:22):
Yeah, it's been about two months since it
launched and we have over about2,200 downloads, yeah, and about
600 physical copies and we'vepenetrated into, I would say,
like getting awareness and outof our you know top 400 accounts
, we've gotten awareness becauseof the book into 25% of them.
(16:43):
That's amazing Copy.
It's been delivered to themphysically.
They know who we are.
Now we're seeing them engagewith our brand in.
Kevin Kerner (16:55):
Yeah, it's very interesting, especially given
that you're tying it to kind ofa nostalgic piece of the buyer
persona, the fact that peoplemight want a book and it's even
looks even it's designed alittle nostalgic looking.
So it's really interesting.
I wonder if the other thingthat I've noticed you guys do
quite a bit of and you postquite a bit on this is events,
and I've seen a lot of othercustomers sort of lean into
(17:16):
events because it is verypersonal.
How have events become part ofyour, this trust-based
go-to-market strategy?
Aditya Vempaty (17:26):
yeah, so one of the things right if you zoom
back, like any industrywhichever I've had the privilege
to work in like I always thinkabout how can you make things
personal and experiential.
And because the entire goalagain is to make someone feel
something, if they don't feelsomething when they interact
with your brand or come to yourevent or any asset, you have you
kind of lost them right.
(17:47):
And if they just eye roll,checkbox, move on, you've lost
the narrative, you've lost theirattention, you've lost, you
know, the potential to get themto engage with you again.
And so with events, we alwaysthink is, whatever events we do,
can they walk away feeling likethey had a great experience?
And it doesn't matter if it's atrade show, doesn't matter if
it's a lunch and learn, itdoesn't matter if it's a dinner.
Like, how can you make sure theexperience feels personal and
(18:10):
they walk away being like, damn,that's pretty awesome.
I'm going to think of them whenI have something else coming up
.
And the way we use it is we havea plethora of things, but we
are a customer engagementplatform, so how do we engage
you?
And we talk aboutpersonalization at scale and
cross-channel marketing, so howdo all our events support that
level of engagement At Shopify.
This year we were at Shopify,we were at MAU, we had Stanleys
(18:36):
that were custom engraved withyour name.
That's the engagement aspect ofit.
But the other aspect thatactually worked even better than
the Stanleys was we hadhangover kits at ShopTalk and
it's a three-day event and thehangover kit or sorry, we called
them hydration kits we had eyemasks, advil liquid IV for
anyone to come up and take.
We had a bunch of them at thebooth and we actually saw people
.
Kevin Kerner (18:56):
I bet you got rid of all of them.
I bet everything sold out.
Aditya Vempaty (18:59):
Oh man, it was for free right.
And people just walked up andsaid these are so great, these
are so great.
I need this.
And we would see people comingdoing that and start having
conversations with us.
And then they're like, oh,you're giving me a Stanley.
What is that?
Like, what do I need to do toget that?
I'm like, well, are you an ICP?
Like, yes, you're a great.
Like why don't we chat?
Let's set up a meeting andwe'll give you a custom engraved
Stanley, like on my wife or theloved one.
(19:30):
And so, like that's how theentire customer engagement,
we're engaging you, we're makingit personal for you and you're
getting something of value fromus out of the gate, before we
even ask anything of valueexchange back from you.
And that's how we thought aboutevents.
And then we do events, usuallylike dinners we try to keep a
little smaller, but do them inlike nice, intimate restaurants,
Even 10 people, even if itcosts, like you know, five to
(19:53):
$7,000, like it's a restaurant.
You're like I want, beenwanting to go to that, but damn,
they have a restaurant there.
Oh, the guest list looks good.
I'm going to get some value outof this.
And that's how we try to curateeverything.
It's not easy, Don't get mewrong, and we don't try to do a
bunch of them.
Kevin Kerner (20:11):
But whichever ones we do, we try a tech marketing
rewired event about a month agoand it was great and it was.
You're right, it's about 5,000bucks.
We've got about 20 people there, but it was really great
conversation.
I'm sure people took away alittle bit about our brand and
the podcast and stuff that we'redoing.
That's really good.
I think I see more of those inthe future for either.
(20:31):
The other thing I was thinkingis breakfast, like doing some
sort of a meetup.
Breakfast is a great thing.
Have you tried any of that typeof?
No, we haven't done thebreakfast.
Aditya Vempaty (20:40):
I was actually going to ask you like what you
know, to a conversation here.
It's like where have you guysseen work?
Have you done it before?
What's the value there?
Kevin Kerner (21:01):
I've been to a kind of stimulating conversation
.
I think that's good forbreakfast and we had topics and
then we discussed the topics.
It was great.
It was really good.
That was more networking, Iguess.
Yeah, like you know, more of alike coffee talk sort of thing,
so it was really cool yeah, thebreakfast thing we had.
Aditya Vempaty (21:23):
We did brunch sponsorship at bigger
conferences and, like mau, itworked in a sense.
We got leads, but we realizedthere was nothing personal about
it.
Like that, 300 people therethat came for brunch and you
scan a badge, they scan yourbadge and like, okay, this, like
it's not personal, it's notgoing to leave to like you
feeling any better of likegetting breakfast and knowing
who we are, and so that's where,if we're doing breakfast, we're
(21:46):
definitely now like, hey, let'sdo it smaller, let's do it more
intimate, yeah, and let's likepick up a spot where people know
this is a brunch spot.
They're like I've been wantingto go to that spot.
Okay, I'll come by and I'll,I'll try it out.
And that's how, again goingback to like the experiential
that drives the engagement andthe emotion, trying to tie that
back constantly to build trust.
Kevin Kerner (22:05):
It's really smart With all these tactics and tools
and channels.
I mean you're leading amarketing effort at a really
fast growing company.
How do you decide where tofocus, like what's the process
of your system you put in placeto say this is where we're
focusing for the quarter?
Aditya Vempaty (22:21):
Yeah, we think about it actually we do yearly
planning but the bigger part iswe think about it in like two
quarter sprints and we look athey, what are the bets that
we're going to take for thisquarter and what are the long
term bets we're going to takefor the next two quarters?
And then the thinking becomesokay, what are these short-term
bets going to yield?
And the short-term bets usuallylike the dinners, like the blog
(22:42):
post, content from, like otherpractitioners that we can get in
, things that we know will boostthe brand visibility
immediately are like the currentquarter ones.
And the reason like you hear mesay brand and not like pipeline
, is because our industry, inthe space we're in, is very
brownfield.
It's not a new category.
There's like big playersalready that have had accounts
(23:04):
come in and that they're in andwe're not doing full rip and
replace, because that's not whatwe want to position ourselves.
We want to say we coexist withthe big players, but we still
need them to think about us inthe sense that we are like an
addition to what you have,because rip and replace takes
way longer and so, as a resultof being that space, we need to
constantly get our brandappearing in front of them over
(23:26):
a timeframe, constantly, andthat's when they start.
When they have the need,they'll come in and look at us.
And because we're in agreenfield space sorry,
brownfield space, not agreenfield space so that's why
you'll see us talk aboutpractitioners more using their
brands, as I said earlier, andlike how do we get blog posts
from practitioners who are noteven our customers?
Those are like the short termbets that we're thinking of.
How do we do webinars with them?
(23:46):
How do we, you know, get themto share LinkedIn wins, as
whatever they have and campaignsthey're doing?
And those are like the shortterm.
The longer term bets are likethings like the book what are
things that have a built invirality, that takes longer to
execute but has that like designbar and that has that brand
(24:07):
halo cachet that now you'll beknown for for like the next 12
to six to 12 months, and that'show we think about our planning.
And obviously this all relatesback to pipeline and relates
back to generating pipeline andsupporting the organization.
All of this doesn't happen ifthat doesn't happen, right.
And so in anything I'm doing,we always talk about one, as I
mentioned, distribution, andthen two how does this make
(24:29):
someone get into our database?
How does this?
How can we target this to thetarget accounts we want to break
into, to stand out from thenoise, right?
And so a lot of the quarter toquarter stuff is always focused
on breaking into target accountsand then the longer, bigger
halo stuff is again ties back tobreaking into larger accounts
that are brownfield.
But now we have a bigger piece,like the book.
(24:50):
It's gotten us into targetaccounts that otherwise wouldn't
care about us because this isso different, so unique and had
so many other authors baked intoit.
And that's how we think aboutit from the long-term breaking
accounts to the short-termbreaking into accounts Is that?
Kevin Kerner (25:01):
is that influenced how you structure your budgets
Like do you have an experimentsort of experimental budget or a
big anchor content budget andongoing budget?
Aditya Vempaty (25:10):
Yeah, so ongoing budget, usually like, you have
your ad spends, right, and youhave the content investments on
a monthly basis to rank for youknow the GOs and the AIOs and
whatever acronym is for AI withsearch.
Now, right, we have thosebudgets, we have to make those
investments.
But the experimental budgets,yes, they're there.
The book was an experimentalbudget, right, and we're going
to do something else.
That's another experimentalbudget, and what's interesting
(25:34):
is it's the experimental budgetstake more time and creativity
than money.
The money aspect actually isn'tthe big part of the
experimental budget.
I often find like the bookactually didn't cost that much,
like if you look at the grandscheme of things, but the time
it took and the creativity tookwas way more.
And so I find like when youbudget for experiments, you
(25:56):
actually have to budget timemore than you do money, because
it involves more manual labor,because it's something people
haven't done or they haven'toperationalized or it's not as
smooth.
So that's what I found Like.
Kevin Kerner (26:07):
When I do that the experiments definitely it's in
a different realm of measurementthan the normal ones Super
interesting, and you couldprobably make the case that the
experiments, if they pay out, ifthey're different, they may
even pay off bigger.
So you might it sounds like inthis case you might've spent
less for the actual production,more in terms of like brain
power and time, because it tooka long time to do, but it seems
(26:28):
like it's paying off bigger toobecause you took a bigger bet
exactly and in like planning andstuff, what I found is the
bigger, bolder bets have workedout way more often than, funny
enough, the ones you expect towork.
Aditya Vempaty (26:43):
Yeah, like I've actually found, going back to
what you're saying, like thechannels I thought would work
are not working anymore andthese bigger bets are the ones
that are really moving theneedle more and more now than
the channels.
I thought that would work andthat's where you're like
everything is flipped all of asudden and it is happening
because of AI and because of theentire way people are searching
has shifted, I'm sure with you,with me, like the fact that we
(27:06):
just go to chat GPT and look upsomething like is this a source
actually right?
Let me dig deeper and theentire workflow of how you
consume and learn for purchasingsomething or a problem you have
as, as changed, and I knoweveryone's talked about it, but
the downstream effects are howyou buy, even for b2b's, has
changed, right, and we sell theb2b's, we sell the b2c's and
(27:27):
thus, like the channels I thinkshould work aren't working and
we have to rethink thosechannels.
And that that's where my budgetgoes to and that's's actually
become more of the experimentthan the big bets, where the big
bets seem like big bets andbold, but in fact they're more,
I would say, dependable thanthis right now.
Kevin Kerner (27:45):
Yeah, isn't that wild?
And I don't.
It's a really good advicebecause I don't think people not
all of the marketers that Iknow budget for experiment.
Not all of the marketers that Iknow budget for experiment.
They don't have an experimentbudget.
It's just kind of all in andyou might think of an experiment
every once in a while and kindof have to sell the ELT for some
(28:06):
budget there.
But the really smart marketersthat I know are actually like
planning in percentage 15% orwhatever for experiments and
they're paying off.
I don't know if you've read UdiLedergore's Courageous
Marketing, but it's really goodin that regard.
It talks about punching aboveyour weight and experiment
budget but Gong.
Aditya Vempaty (28:27):
I think, does a good job of that.
I saw that book everywhere too,and I was like I need to.
Kevin Kerner (28:31):
I didn't get a chance to read it.
Aditya Vempaty (28:33):
But I haven't read it yet.
Kevin Kerner (28:35):
Yeah, plug for the plug for that book.
Um, you mentioned the, the big,the, the big giants in the
category.
So you're not, you're competingagainst some small little
players called like Adobe andSalesforce and you know
ginormous companies and youmentioned before like the
platform play, versus being adirect category competitor.
How do you approach competingin that kind of environment
(28:56):
without you know, waking one ofthem up that you're, you know, a
major competitor and goingafter you Like what's the
strategy?
Aditya Vempaty (29:03):
Yeah, I mean, the big thing is we are just
coexisting with you.
We're not trying to rip andreplace right.
There's years of relationship,data, trust that they have built
with the brands who use them,but often as new methodology not
new methodologies, but newconsumer behavior patterns have
emerged for these B2C brands andhow their audiences consume and
(29:25):
engage.
The folks who are running thesesystems are looking to engage
people on these platforms, likean Instagram, like a WhatsApp,
like a web, and tie thosetogether.
And what we found?
These giants are good at whatthey do.
I'm not even going to deny that, but how to get the most out of
them takes a lot of time andeffort, and so it's often when
(29:45):
they're thinking of adding a newmodule.
At the giants of Adobe orSalesforce, we're like, hey, we
can do that too, and we do itreally fast and quick, and
that's kind of like what we'reknown for.
And so we're like, hey, you'reusing email already.
Great, you're doing webpersonalization Great.
You want to do mobile?
Hey, we're here to help youwith that.
We can do that and we canintegrate.
We work with Salesforce.
We integrate with them directly.
You can pass the data email tomake sure it touches WhatsApp
(30:11):
and it's syncing and it goesback and gives a better web
experience.
And we found just doing thingsthat way does two parts.
One it's actually about thebuyer, not even the competitor.
I'm going to say that the buyerfeels at ease, that it's worth
making the investment with youBecause they again, they've had
these relationships for yearsand years as a company.
They're not going to trust whoyou are just because you said
(30:34):
you could do it.
So one they feel okay, you'reintegrated, great, you're
certified by them.
You're saying you just wantthis part and you're saying that
because it's going to make iteasier for my life and what I
want to do, not because you havethe better product and you're
understanding I'm still going touse these products.
Okay, cool, you're making verymuch about me and the problems
and the challenges I have tosolve, not about you and your
product.
And that's how we try toposition it and engage and talk
(30:57):
to the users and our potentialbuyers, because we're trying to
put ourselves in their situationand be like what would make
them actually like consider us,not kick out these current
vendors, but consider us and anyperson that's a purchaser that
has whatever decision makingsthey're always thinking about
hey, do I know you?
Are you reputable?
What's it going to take if Iwant to use you, like to get you
up and running, and who elsecan I talk to you?
(31:20):
In my space, my industry thathas used you?
And these are three things wetry to constantly cover our
bases on, and that's when wetalk and market to the giants
and engage with people who areusing them.
We try to focus on like, hey,it's easy to get up and running
with us.
This is how our migration looks.
Here are other people that havedone it.
This is a scale at whichthey've operated.
This is where, going back towhere we talk about, like the
fundamentals of marketing.
These are the fundamentals ofmarketing, and it's not like I
(31:49):
knew these fundamentals.
I got them by talking tocustomers when I'd be like hey,
why aren't you considering us?
What does it look like?
They're like well, these arethree things.
Why do I care about these threeIf I don't?
Kevin Kerner (31:58):
have these three, I have a high likelihood of
getting fired or not being ableto purchase a solution or
question for what I did.
So, yeah, yeah, yeah, the, the,the, uh, the platform play is a
smarter one, uh, because theyalso your cost of acquisition is
probably lower if you'reactually just working as a plot,
you know you're, you're leaninginto that, pull their plot,
those bigger platforms to take.
Uh, you're leaning into thosebigger platforms to take not
take business from them, but bein the wake of some of the
(32:18):
opportunities that come from.
So I think that's great and youhave to use some of those
fundamentals of trust.
You know, customerunderstanding, listening to the
customer, those are all reallyimportant things.
Aditya Vempaty (32:32):
They totally are , and it's what fuels us and, as
you said, ast, astutely, itdrives down customer acquisition
costs.
And then also, you know,sometimes you have to take the
positioning of hey, we're, we'rethe new innovative toy you want
to come play with.
Right, and what you realizewith these big players and these
big organizations is everyonehas budgets to go experiment
with new stuff, as we justtalked about, even for tooling.
Yeah, because they want to trysomething new.
(32:53):
And it's like, if you proveyourself there, you get the
wedge and you can startexpanding.
But you need to prove yourselfat least in a small wedge before
they give you the big pie.
Kevin Kerner (33:01):
Yeah, makes sense.
I wanted to ask a questionabout your team because, given
the way that you're buildingyour go-to-market heavily
trust-based, using customers asthe voice of your company it
seems like you'd have to build ateam that also has the same, or
can learn, let's say, the samesort of go-to-market approach.
(33:24):
How have you built the teamLike?
What type of roles do you havein place?
What's most important thatyou've put in place over the
last year?
What type of education,training do you need to give
people?
Aditya Vempaty (33:38):
Like I'm just curious how you built your team.
Yeah, so first off I'll saythis none of this happens
without a great team.
So like bar none, I can tellall these strategies and
everything and you hit the nailactually on the head.
Like all of the marketing andanything you do, I think
requires with the team that buysinto what you're saying and
really like, internalizes it andworks to make sure it's part of
them.
And I've been blessed with ateam that does that.
A few folks on the team I'veworked with for previous
(33:59):
companies also well, and they'vemoved on to MoEngage with me
and fewer new additions.
And one of the things I tellthem, like there are four
non-negotiables to be part ofthis team, right, and the first
non-negotiable is it's alwayscustomer problems first.
That's like non-negotiable.
The second one is growth mindset.
You have to constantly pushyourself, try new things, and
(34:19):
that comes from talking tocustomers.
That comes from learning whatothers are doing.
You need to constantly pushyourself in doing that.
And the third one, right, itcomes down to ask for
forgiveness, not permission.
I want you to try stuff.
You fail, that's fine, justkeep me updated.
You're trying stuff and tell mehow you're trying stuff like
document it before you go try it, but go try it and if it
(34:39):
doesn't work, it doesn't work,and you tell me why.
And the fourth is trust.
We trust you.
You have to trust us.
Expect that all of us have eachother's backs, meaning if shit
hits the fan, tell me shit'shitting the fan and I can help,
because we're doing marketingand, in the grand scheme of
things, whatever you do, as longas it's not illegal, we can
reverse it.
(34:59):
And you don't.
You know, murder somebody, likethose are like the two things I
can't do anything about to helpyou.
But everything else I can helpyou with in any shape or form,
and it's not that bad, trust me,it's not that bad.
Kevin Kerner (35:11):
But those are go ahead.
I was just gonna say that'sreally good and get letting
people have the because you knowI run an agency as well letting
people have the room to makemistakes, because we're all
going to make mistakes and thegood stuff usually comes from
some mistake that was madepreviously.
I think it's really reallysmart.
And a lot of marketingorganizations, especially some
(35:31):
of the bigger ones I mean youwere at dell you feel really
you're kind of hamstrung a bit,just kind of frightened by
making the wrong not that Delldoes this, but just making the
wrong decision and it's aterrifying position to be in if
you're a marketer because, likeyou said, most of the marketing
decisions, if you make bets thatare not like, considered
internally, like solid, likeeveryone's eyes are on you right
(35:53):
At those organizations, there'sway more pressure and you need
that environment, as you said,to let people experiment.
Aditya Vempaty (35:59):
And so most of the team that's where I push
them, or I push them in thegrowth mindset, to be creative.
I push them to take those betsand be like I need you to do
this.
And then the customer.
And it's almost like ade-risking mechanism where, if
you talk to the customer, youunderstand what they care about,
don't care about what gets themexcited and doesn't, which
allows you to go and try newthings, which allows you to go
and put new campaigns into placeand like tell me afterwards and
(36:20):
if it doesn't work, you had areasoning and a justification on
how you approach it and why youdid it.
And the last part is you'retrusting your team, one and each
other.
That is like a key, key thing.
You trust this person will haveyour back and you trust that
you'll have.
They trust that you have theirback.
And without those four tenants,like I don't think, at least for
(36:40):
me, I can't build a teams thatwill buy into this type of
thinking, because this type ofthinking is very much not your
traditional marketing.
It is, I would say, pushing theboundaries to think very
differently and not think somuch internal focus but external
focused, which is what not mostmarketing teams do.
And so the team has bought intoit, right, and it takes time
and effort.
But I'm always like hey, howwould you talk to the customer?
You wrote something like this.
(37:01):
Do you really think the customerlike gives a shit what you just
wrote?
Like reread it and like andtell me and oftentimes that
question, funny enough out ofeverything else for growth and
creativity is read it out loudand tell me is this something
you'd want to send?
And man that so quickly?
They're like oh wow, I wouldnot say this out loud.
Then I'm like then why'd youput it on the paper?
And it's not meant to be like aknock.
(37:23):
It's like giving them the toolsso they can like do this
without me around, withouthaving to lean on me, that they
can be self-sufficient and havethe creative ideas and outputs
100, 100 like would you buy this?
Kevin Kerner (37:36):
would you buy this piece of content?
Well, no, I wouldn't know, it'snot good.
No, yeah, and I've done those.
I've written that type of stuffmyself.
I'm like, oh my gosh, this isyeah, and like if you can't say
it out loud with the straightface and you feel good about it,
it's like yeah yeah yeah, forsure, Give me the X, you know so
so you guys, so you've been inthis position for a couple of
(37:58):
years, over the next, let's say,12 months.
Obviously, there's a lot ofchange.
Right now, it's crazy for otherCMOs or marketing leaders that
might be listening.
Aditya Vempaty (38:13):
What's the one thing you'd say they should
double down on for the next 12months?
I think the biggest thing thatyou need to double down,
regardless of what industryyou're in, is understand, I
would say, how your audiencedigests information from who,
from where and what channel.
That is going to change so muchand if you constantly don't ask
them and get that information,that is what's going to lead to,
you know, jobs being lost.
(38:33):
It's not the asset you produce,it's not the webinar you're
doing or the event you're doing.
It's that you didn't spend timeunderstanding how they consume,
where they consume and who theyconsume from and what's the
medium they consume in.
Because, yeah, it's as simpleas that.
If that's a fundamental thingand that's a foundational thing,
that will never shift how theydo.
It may shift, but that learningneeds to constantly happen.
(38:54):
And, like on my team, back tostructuring, like I should cover
that real quick.
And this relates is we havesomeone who owns demand gen for
North America.
We have someone who ownscontent for North America.
We have someone who owns events.
We have someone who owns design, and they have tertiary support
systems underneath that arefrom India and everyone has
employees in India.
And then we started a PMM.
We have a central PMM team.
(39:14):
This PMM is going to focus onNorth America and one of the
things I'm commissioning her ishey, every month you get X
amount of budget, but I need youto talk to a customer every
week, or prospect orpractitioner, and give me
feedback and feed the team thisinformation every week without
fail, and you can pay them likeX amount of time, x amount of
money for 30 minutes of theirtime, but this is non-negotiable
.
You need to do this every monthand I told them all in the
(39:36):
interview process.
And this goes back to knowingthe channel, what they're
looking to solve, who they learnfrom, why they learn from, and
this gives us a constant pulseon it.
And with AI now you can put itall into a doc and be like and
put the date and be like how arethings changing, what are the
channels they're using, how arethey shifted by industry or
vertical or company size, andthat way, the entire team starts
(39:58):
to have, I would say, aWikipedia or customer Wikipedia
to learn that.
Yeah, long story short, I thinkthat's what CMOs should focus
on.
Kevin Kerner (40:05):
Yeah, 100%, 100%, because it's changing so much.
It's just crazy how you wonderwhat channels that are in place
today that are the best, ormaybe they're the channels that
everyone always uses and howthat's going to change a couple
of years from now.
It's just, it's just reallywild.
Even things like in the B2Bspace, like LinkedIn.
What will be the future ofLinkedIn as it gets more crowd,
(40:27):
just more crowded, as morepeople are using it?
Like, what's the?
What about video content?
Like, how will video contentchange Because everyone's using
video now?
So so if everyone jumps on onebad wagon or the next, like what
is the next thing?
So watching channel is reallyan interesting thought.
That should be like.
It should be watched becauseit's I don't know.
(40:47):
I couldn't tell you what'sgoing to happen unless I was
talking to customers andwatching it, but things are
going to change really wild.
But you hit the nail on thehead right.
Aditya Vempaty (40:55):
Change is just like the symptom right.
But the root cause not rootcause.
I say, like the foundation totackle change is constantly
talking to the customer andhaving a pulse on them, Like
that won't stop.
If you do stop it, then thechange will kick your ass.
But if you're constantlytalking to them, you'll see the
change happening.
You'll see how they consume,You'll see what matters to them
(41:16):
as it's happening, or it's aboutto happen, or or you're in the
midst of it.
So it's almost like havinganswers to the test, even if the
test questions keep changing.
Kevin Kerner (41:23):
Yeah, that's right .
That's really well said.
Okay, cool.
Well, this has been great.
I want to keep you for so muchlonger.
There's so many things I haveto ask, but I wanted to end on
something I do on all thesepodcasts called AI roulette
questions.
So I've put your profile intoperplexity, along with your
company, all your recent posts,the kind of outline of the
(41:45):
conversation that we puttogether for today, and I'm
going to press send.
It's going to give me aquestion, and I have no idea
what the question is.
My only advice to perplex youis to just make it a spicy
question, or?
something that I wouldn't havethought of myself, and that's
pretty.
I'm not that smart, so itshould be able to outdo me here.
So let's see what it does, andsome it's come up with some
really crazy stuff.
Let me.
Aditya Vempaty (42:04):
I'm excited, I press send here, Interesting.
Kevin Kerner (42:11):
Okay, well, this is good in line with the
questions that we just hadaround team.
So if AI had to pitch itselffor a job on your marketing team
, what would its biggestexaggeration be during the
interview?
Aditya Vempaty (42:21):
Biggest exaggeration.
The biggest exaggeration is itwould tell me to talk to all my
customers.
It would tell me these are theproblems my customers have.
Then, when I looked at it, itwould be just blog posts that
are found on the internet and itwould work, and it would just
use generic language and tell methat my product is the best
product ever and that mycompetitors are garbage and that
everyone loves me.
(42:42):
That's the exaggeration.
I would say everything I'mdoing is great.
Kevin Kerner (42:45):
Everything's fine, you don't need to do anything
and you're the best.
I don't know if you saw this,but in the latest iteration of
ChatGPT-5, they're explainingnow that the AI is now using
primarily search what it findson the web.
So it's using its reasoningagent but it's not trying to
(43:05):
memorize all information itself,which is really interesting
because you're going to have theAI more reason on publicly
available information, versuswhat they were thinking was that
it would have some, you know,knowledge beyond knowledge of
everything itself, I mean whatdoes this mean?
Aditya Vempaty (43:25):
This tells me more and more they don't know
how to make the AI reason.
Yeah, let me do this.
Oh, it didn't work.
Wait, let me.
More and more.
They don't know how to make theAI reason.
Yeah, let me do this.
Oh, it didn't work, let me trythis.
It didn't work, let me try it.
That's where you nailed it whenyou said everything's changing
because those fundamentalsthey're not sure which is the
fundamental thing to go investin.
Kevin Kerner (43:38):
Yeah, yeah, totally.
I haven't been super happy withChatGPT 5, really.
It was like when they firstannounced 4, when they had 4 and
they were saying that 5 wasgoing to be amazing, and then 5
came out and it just kind ofunderwhelmed me up to this point
.
So I'm a little less AI atleast Chachapiti AI happy right
(43:58):
now, because I was reallyexpecting it to be a giant leap.
Aditya Vempaty (44:03):
I've had to retrain it.
Yeah, I agree, like heyremember this, remember this,
remember this.
So I, yeah, I agree, like hey,remember this, remember this,
remember this.
So I had to retrain it to getback on the, on understanding
how I talk and how I say stuff.
Kevin Kerner (44:15):
Yeah, so I mean, I'm not complaining, I still
great.
I wouldn't want to lose it.
So please, sam altman, don'tlisten to this and take it away
from me.
Aditya Vempaty (44:24):
But I definitely need it don't take my ai friend
away from me, please.
That's right well it's Well.
Kevin Kerner (44:30):
it's been great.
It's been great getting to knowyou here on the podcast.
Really good advice on a lot ofdifferent things.
I will urge people to followyou on LinkedIn, and is there
any other way that people shouldget ahold of you if they want
to talk more?
Learn more from you?
Aditya Vempaty (44:43):
LinkedIn is the best.
Send me a message, I'm, youknow, try to respond as much as
I can and I truly believe inpaying it forward.
If you're going to send me amessage and you need some help,
please go for it.
Just don't send me a messageand try to sell me things,
because I'm open to being sold.
Don't send me a message underthe guise of trying to sell me
something.
Kevin Kerner (44:59):
Yeah, well cool, I did just great.
Thank you so much for being onthe show.
I really appreciate it andhopefully we will catch up soon,
yep.
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