Q&A with Adikteev’s EMEA Head of Sales, Nadya Krytsyna
Our cheerful and bright Sales Team Lead, Nadya Krytsyna, graced us in this up-close interview on her career journey, the things she has learned throughout, the best strategies for re-engagement, and how clients come first at Adikteev.
Watch the video here:
How long have you been working at Adikteev and what is your job title? How did you end up here?
I’ve worked here for almost 3 years. I started as a Senior Sales Manager and now I’m the Team Lead for EMEA Sales. It was actually a funny story about how I ended up in Adikteev. It was that time when I was adding HRs in my Linkedin profile and somehow I came across Fabrice’s profile. He was a recruiter for Adikteev. Then, he messaged me asking, “We’re looking for a senior sales manager, specifically to cover CIS market/Russian-speaking countries. Do you want to try?” And for me, it actually wasn’t serious. It was like a fun interview and stuff. In a week, I met Emilien and Taoufik. We really had chemistry. I fell in love with the attitude Adikteev has towards its clients. That's why I agreed to join the team. And then the visa process started — it took a long time to go through. But I’m really happy that I successfully became part of the team.
What are some common questions you’ve had from clients?
Actually there are different ones. If we compare the questions in 2019 and today’s, nowadays clients are more mature with retargeting, have more experience, and are more knowledgeable about what’s going on, aware of what retargeting is, and why you should run this campaign. Actually most questions are around how to have successful case studies with retargeting, how to allocate budget, and (which is even more crucial) how to evaluate performance tests because for most it’s still an issue — to have a clear understanding how to measure efficiency of your retargeting campaign. I think that is the main key. And of course, the common question, which is shooting on each and every call, “How do you differentiate from other providers?” It’s a classic one.
What are some strategies that worked really well for the clients that you’ve worked for?
It’s not something that is black or white. It depends on the actual goals of the client and the vertical of the application we’re working with. For example with gaming, we’re focusing more on bringing back inactive payers because the conversion rate from install to purchase for this specific vertical is extremely small (if we’re comparing that with other verticals and sub-verticals). That’s why gaming is super focused on retaining their inactive payers and upselling existing ones. It’s a completely different story for trading and finance verticals. They have a flow of installers. They spend lots to activate the first target action, which can be completing a registration, making the first purchase/deposit, whatsoever… it depends. Fundamentally, retargeting can fall into three classic strategies: activation of the first target action, upselling repetitive target actions plus retain strategy— which all about bringing back inactive users, mostly payers.
What are some common misconceptions about retargeting you’ve come across?
“Oh my God! You’re gonna steal my organic performance!” — this is a common one. They’re confused about how it’s going to work. “How should I know that it’s really working? And the value that is delivered, is it coming from you? And is it jeopardizing any organic performances of our users?” This is the most common one.
How do you clear up those misconceptions?
Fundamentally, with incrementality tests. Then you compare the results you get in the users who are exposed to the ads, then control groups, which indicate the organic behavior of your user base. This is a classic one.
What are you working on right now that’s got you really excited about your job?
I’m the kind of person who’s a bit lazy — it’s a secret! I prefer to dedicate a lot of time to something that I really love. After university, after school, you need to spend at least 8 hours at work… you need to do something you really like. I love sales for being able to meet lots of people with different backgrounds, know their stories and their experiences, and their knowledge about marketing. I fell in love with digital marketing when I entered this sphere and it’s still a never-ending love story between us: exploring different angles starting from user acquisition to retargeting, how it works, what value it brings to the ones who explore it. So, it’s kind of fun. For me right now, I’m super excited about being able to constantly learn something new because digital marketing is a turbulent stuff. It changes all the time. You need to be adaptive to what’s going on in this sphere. It requires you to be flexible, thirsty for knowledge, and talking a lot to different people to get more of those.
What’s been the biggest change or challenge you’ve experienced during your time in the world of app marketing?
I wouldn’t say that it’s the biggest challenge in terms of technical/knowledgeable stuff. It’s more about your personal attitude. Again, it depends on what kind of role you’re holding in your career. For example, I also used to work as an account coordinator — you have different challenges, different work-arounds. When it comes to sales specifically, the biggest challenge is to not take everything personally. Lots of neglect, lots of no-gos: it’s a classic story for each and everyone in sales. You need to take business as it is and not to take it personally. This is something you need to learn and to go through successfully to be cool in sales.
Where do you see app re-engagement headed? What’s the next big thing?
At least for this year and next year, I don’t really see a lot of changes. We’ll see what’s going to happen after Google follows iOS. From there, we’re going to move on with changes again, being flexible and adaptive to what’s going to happen after these changes. So far, I’d say that digital marketing is still growing. I would also mention that, right now, in terms of marketing behavior, we’re getting back to a pre-covid world when we had a stable user performance as it used to be. In the previous years, they were abnormal. Right now, it’s getting back to basics. So far, nothing out of the ordinary. But again we always have something going on — be ready for everything!
Talk a little bit in general about your experience working at Adikteev.
I spend lots of time on my work in sales. We’re not working 8 hours — we work way more. We work flexibly but there’s a lot of stuff to get to our KPIs. For me, it’s super important to have a nice working atmosphere with my team, to be transparent with management and with the team, to be aligned on our goals and policies (internal and external). What I also personally like, and it really matters to me, is the attitude towards clients. When I joined Adikteev, the key factor for actually entering the company was that you really appreciate your clients. It matters for us to deliver value, and on the basis of this value, we build long-term partnerships. The key for me to join the company, no matter what it is, is the attitude towards the clients. For sales, it’s also crucial.