The goal of this interview series is to inspire and help people to transition their career into a new or next experimentation related role. In this edition Annika Dunaway shares her journey. Annika is Product Manager at Aampe.
It’s a constant experiment in our minds. It is important to not be afraid of failure. Fear limits us while actions free you from your doubts.
Annika Dunaway
Please introduce yourself to our readers.
Hi, I’m Annika, and I’m a Product Manager at Aampe! 👋 For the past decade, I’ve worked in CRM and as a Senior Growth Consultant across various industries. During my time in CRM, I dedicated most of my time to campaign experimentation and optimization, understanding user journeys on the product, and discovering what ultimately leads to conversion.
What is your current experimentation role and what do you do?
Currently, I am a product manager at Aampe, a reinforcement learning infrastructure for mobile apps.
Our co-founders—a Ph.D. anthropologist, Ph.D. neuroscientist, and Ph.D. data scientists—designed a system that allows teams to set up and run hundreds of thousands of parallel tests, using a specialized control group and AI Agents that crawl apps’ full event stream data while choosing and executing the next best actions for each user. These agents also report back the data they discover on individual users and content data, which helps companies enrich their internal metadata for applications like improving recommender system performance.
In my product management role, I have to understand our customers’/prospects’ pain points and challenges. (For example, when we build new features or make changes to our product, it’s important to know if it is going in the right direction).
As our system is very different from the flowchart-style user journey builders that our customers are accustomed to, I need to help our customers understand their user personas and define a semantic tagging/taxonomic strategy. If done correctly, these labels, combined with our testing infrastructure, can teach our customers anything about their users.
How did you enter the experimentation space? What was your first experimentation related role?
Throughout my career, I have experimented with campaigns, content, images, timing, frequency, and other measurable indicators. I started experimenting as a junior CRM Manager while working for Delivery Hero. I found it interesting from the start what you could learn about your audiences by testing your messages.
How did you start to learn experimentation?
Learning how to run successful experiments was a necessity for my job, as I couldn’t learn how to increase conversions or optimize discounts without running tests. Testing helped me understand what specific features drove the conversions. I remember being very excited every time I sent an email or push notification and analyzed the results.
In the beginning, I made a lot of mistakes, but those mistakes led to valuable learning.
How do you apply experimentation in your personal life? (what are you tinkering with or always optimizing?)
Isn’t life always about trial and error? How do you know what is right or wrong?
One such example is a decision I made last year to move to the Canary Islands, where I had only been twice. I couldn’t possibly know if I would like to live here or not, but I moved and so far, it’s been amazing. If I had been unhappy, it would be a failure and I would need to move on to the next experiment.
Naturally, I believe that many humans think in a way of likelihood. How likely is someone to be happy or unhappy after doing something specific? It’s a constant experiment in our minds. It is important to not be afraid of failure. Fear limits us while actions free you from your doubts.
What are you currently doing to keep up with the ever-changing industry?
I was always very curious and still am, and I consider myself a rather early adopter. That means if I see an interesting app or software, you can be sure I’ll check it out. It is important to understand where we’re heading in the future. I also read a lot of articles and listen to podcasts to stay up-to-date on new technology and industry trends.
Additionally, I appreciate any kind of exchange and conversations with current or former colleagues or other industry leaders.
What recommendations would you give to someone who is looking to join the experimentation industry and get their first full-time position?
Don’t be afraid of making a change. Look for experimentation communities like Slack or LinkedIn to learn from experts in the field. Bring a lot of curiosity—that’s important for any new challenge. Actively seek conversations with people in this field to learn from. You can do tons of online courses but nothing beats the experience people have.
Which developments in experimentation excite you? How do you see the field changing in the next 5 to 10 years?
Traditional A/B testing will not be around for another ten years. With technology advancing and machine learning being more accessible to companies, experimentation will be fully automated to be able to experiment at scale.
Just look at how reinforcement learning, a machine learning technique that trains software to make decisions to achieve the most optimal results, is advancing and what big players like Netflix and Spotify are using to improve their user experience.
Technologies like this are now becoming available to smaller companies who cannot afford to bring on Data Scientists to build those models for them, and this accessibility to new capabilities will only advance in the future.
Is there anything people reading this can help you with? Or any parting words?
I’m always happy to exchange thoughts and listen to people’s challenges with their tech stack and day-to-day business. If there are people out there who would love to talk and share their thoughts, please contact me 🙂
Which other experimenters would you love to read an interview by?
I don’t have anyone particular in mind, but people with a data science background have pretty interesting views.
Thank you Annika for sharing your journey and insights with the community.
