MarTech Interview with Thomas Kriebernegg, General Manager at SplitMetrics Agency

Thomas Kriebernegg, General Manager at SplitMetrics Agency highlights more on the latest trends impacting mobile marketing in today’s digital marketing realm:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Thomas, tell us about yourself and more about AppRadar: what inspired AppRadar and how has it been since being acquired by SplitMetrics?

During my studies in Information Management, I developed a strong interest in online marketing. I specialised in search engine optimisation, helping websites and businesses all around the world to attract users and be found on search engines, namely Google.

When mobile apps and app stores then came along, I could predict that visibility would become a challenge in the future. It seemed logical that there would be more and more apps competing for app store visibility. So I identified this as a market need and began to consult customers that wanted to optimise their apps and gain better app store visibility. Already at the start, I was working with some really big mobile apps and games. At some point, I concluded that I needed to scale the business because working as a freelancer I couldn’t accommodate the workload.

This was the starting point for App Radar. I teamed up with Christian, my technical co-founder, and founded App Radar. Late last year, App Radar joined the SplitMetrics family and now we are on a mission to create a one-stop shop for mobile app marketers and the industry’s largest platform providing AI-powered services.

The merger of App Radar with SplitMetrics marked the biggest milestone in my entrepreneurial career so far. Not only did it click on a personal level, of being part of a bigger team that has the same mindset, openness and willingness to change the industry that we are working in, but it also clicked on a business level. In my new role, I am now overseeing the agency business of SplitMetrics, where we are providing app growth services (organic & paid user acquisition, monetisation & retention optimisation services) to some of the biggest apps and games within the app stores. Having the chance to lead a really experienced and outstanding team with whom I am ready to help our clients achieve and ideally overachieve their goals is a very fulfilling feeling.

How is mobile app marketing evolving today? What key trends will define the industry in 2024 in your view?

AI is the big one. It will keep disrupting how we work with apps, as app developers and marketers, but also how we use apps as end users. Generative AI is still relatively new and as the technology matures, it will become the norm for each martech application to have a Generative AI “assistant”.

The other area that will be interesting to monitor and see how it evolves is XR (extended reality). While it may not become mainstream in 2024, the release of Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest 3 is making some waves and as these technologies become more affordable, marketers and developers will need to adapt. There’s been a lot of talk about how many apps are available for use with the Vision Pro and over the next year, more apps will likely be developed specially for its use. App marketers will have the exciting challenge of working out whether mobile app marketing methods will still apply for XR apps or whether we’ll need to invent new ways!

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Additionally, how are you seeing AI change mobile and app marketing trends today?

I think it’s opening up a lot of opportunities in this space. As AI gets more powerful there will be numerous innovative ways app developers can leverage the technology to create new experiences for users. At the moment, the bulk of apps focus on AI-enabled chat, however, we’ll soon see more AI imagery and audio apps, followed by more complex solutions that use AI in some weird and wonderful ways. In a few years, we may see AI-based apps start to rival gaming apps in terms of revenue generation, innovation and scale of development.

“It’s important to note that AI’s impact hasn’t just been confined to boosting app development, it is also impacting the wider app sector by creating new tools to market apps, support development and handle customer service. Generative AI, more specifically, can be used can be used at each step of the app user lifecycle (Awareness, Acquisition, Engagement & Retention, Revenue, Loyalty)

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Give us an overview of the martech market in Austria: what highlights would you share with global readers?

I wouldn’t consider Austria as an internal martech hub, simply because the country is quite small (around 9 million inhabitants), however, thanks to a very vibrant startup scene there are some hidden champions that also reached international success. Storyblok is a prime example of this – in a relatively short period of time it has become one of the leading players in headless CRM tech.

“Much of the success of Austrian tech comes down to the country’s strong entrepreneurial spirit, world-class education system and quality of life that draws talent from across Europe. Our tech sector may not be as big as Germany, France or the UK, but it certainly punches above its weight in terms of number of startups per head population, valuations and innovation.

Can you talk about the state of modern B2B marketing and martech: what needs to be fixed to drive better digital journeys for B2B end users?

There’s a lot of great tech out there but one of the main challenges is getting larger organisations to adopt it faster. Much of the drag is down to a reluctance to deal with legacy tech stacks that are incompatible with modern martech systems. There’s often an unfounded fear that updating these tech stacks is an expensive, risky and time-consuming process, but that’s an outdated way of thinking. Modern martech is built to be flexible, adaptable and scalable. When organisations do take the plunge and decide to improve the digital journeys of their customers they are often surprised by how easy it is to incorporate new martech platforms. You also really don’t need highly trained ‘power users’ anymore – most martech companies like SplitMetrics prioritise accessibility and intuitive UX for users. Which means they can get up and running on the platform with minimal training.

Outside of adopting better tech there needs to be more of a focus on making better data-driven decisions. Marketers can be guilty of a ‘business as usual’ approach where they are reluctant to update their digital journeys and marketing campaigns because they aren’t fully sure where improvements can be made and fear ‘breaking’ the customer experience. Collecting, analysing and, critically, understanding what your customer and marketing data is telling you is the key to better marketing strategies.

Tell us about the leading B2B tech brands you feel have a robust digital marketing presence and framework (and why): what key takeaways from these picks/choices?

Even though I would not really consider them B2B, rather agnostic to B2B and B2C in my eyes right at the moment OpenAI and in particular ChatGPT as well as Midjourney are software products that are pulling best-in-class marketing practices. Their growth is primarily fueled by their great products, where their users want to share their findings, learnings and creations online and by doing so foster strong word-of-mouth promotion. That supported by continued product development and a very solid communication strategy on how to keep their users updated is for sure a very good example of how easy marketing can be with the right product, at the right moment in time, in place.

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