Executive: Sarah Cascone, Chief Marketing Officer
Company: Appriss Retail
Industry: Retail technology (returns, fraud, profit protection)
Company Snapshot: Helps large retailers reduce fraud, manage returns, and protect profit across in-store and online channels.
Format: CMO Journeys Interview
Why It Matters
Sarah Cascone didn’t plan on a marketing career—and that’s why her perspective feels grounded. She learned marketing through live rooms and real conversations, then carried those lessons into SaaS and enterprise retail tech. Now, as the first CMO at Appriss Retail, she’s clear about what earns trust and what wastes time—especially with agencies.
Their Path, in Short
Sarah grew up in Brooklyn and studied psychology in college. She once thought she’d become a criminal psychologist, but chose a different path because that work felt too depressing day to day.
Instead, she poured herself into events and conferences. At Worldwide Business Research, she learned how to plan and execute a conference from the ground up—connecting messaging, experience, and audience.
Then she moved into SaaS and joined Bluecore in its early days. Over time, she expanded her scope from events into PR, content, design, demand gen, and product marketing—until she was running the full marketing function. That shift was defining: marketing couldn’t be separate activities. It had to operate as one engine, embedded with sales and customer success, with shared goals and accountability.
Now she’s applying those lessons at Appriss Retail in a more complex enterprise context.
Big Themes From the Conversation
Sarah has a simple belief about speed: “Speed forces clarity.” Under revenue pressure, she said, you don’t have time for confusion or “politeness theater.” Direct communication becomes an efficiency strategy—clear feedback, tough conversations, fast decisions.
Her events background still shapes her filter for what works. Events taught her pattern recognition—what lands, what doesn’t, and why. But they also anchored her in something more basic: everyone is selling to a human being. Being memorable, real, and trustworthy isn’t extra. It’s the foundation. And she uses a blunt test: if your message doesn’t work in a live conversation, it won’t work in a campaign.
She’s also decisive about “no.” She pushes back on brand-versus-demand debates because she sees them as a false binary. She says no to work that doesn’t move pipeline, accelerate it, or expand it—and she says no to shiny objects without a clear business case.
Watch CMO Journeys Interview
How They Choose the Right Agency Partners
When I asked Sarah what gets her attention from an agency, she didn’t talk about a portfolio. She talked about a point of view.
She wants agencies to lead with perspective and evidence that they understand her business model. She said she gets too many pitches built for SMB or mid-market motions, even though she operates in enterprise. That tells her the agency didn’t do the work—and it signals a lack of respect for her time.
That same respect-for-time lens shapes who should be approached first. Sarah’s view: It depends on the size of the problem and how tactical it is. If an agency is pitching something that clearly sits with someone else on her team, going straight to the CMO can feel misaligned. But if the problem is truly significant, then it makes sense to reach higher. Match your ask to the scale of impact.
What separates great partners from the ones that struggle? Sarah said great agencies become an extension of her team—comfortable embedding not only with marketing, but with the broader org, and even working across leaders like the CRO and CPO. They understand strategy deeply, and the work reflects it. Most importantly, they reduce her cognitive load. They don’t create more decisions. They remove them.
She described her marketing team as two pillars: product marketing, which tells the story in market (including content and thought leadership), and growth marketing, which distributes it (including outbound and events).
And then there’s her favorite way to build credibility: executive conversation. Sarah described creating owned community moments for VPs and above—behind-closed-door strategy discussions that include customers and prospects, plus subject matter experts outside her company. The goal is to keep a real conversation going between major industry events, so the next step isn’t always “take a sales meeting.” It’s: add value without obligation, and earn the right to go deeper.
She also chooses partners with intent. She works with a content agency, StoryArb, because they’re strong at editorial, subject-matter-expert-driven playbooks and newsletters—“the kind of content people actually want to read.” She also works with a retail-focused PR agency to extend the story through press releases, bylines, commentary, awards, and interviews.
Agencies can learn from her community approach. Curated roundtables can build trust in a way cold outreach often can’t. That’s also why Next Big Win runs an Executive Access Program—executive roundtables designed to help agencies and partners build relationships with senior leaders through candid, small-group conversations. Learn more here.
What Stood Out
Sarah’s mix of intensity and self-awareness is striking. She talked about what it feels like to “shoulder an entire function,” and how that requires a personal operating rhythm that’s sustainable.
She also named a hard unlearning: assuming she knows better than the person in front of her. That openness—paired with her speed—is a rare combination, and it says a lot about how she leads.
Inside Scoop
This article focuses on the journey, the leadership philosophy, and how this CMO works with agency partners.
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