If you live in the world and eat, chances are you’ve engaged with Delivery Hero. The food delivery titan, founded in 2011 by Niklas Östberg, is aiming to alter the online food ordering industry, and from its sheer girth it seems that the disruption is real. Delivery Hero operates out of Berlin with a 1,000-employee headquarters, and is active in 40 countries. PostFunnel sat down with Matt Dyson, Delivery Hero’s Senior CRM Manager, to try and understand what it’s like to market to tens of millions of existing customers in tens of different markets and languages. We also ordered a pizza.
PF: What are the most pressing retention issues you’re dealing with right now?
Matt Dyson: As acquisitions become increasingly harder, securing that somewhat-elusive second order becomes the key, as well as understanding how to do this from a campaign and incentive perspective. I also have to consider predicted CLTV (customer lifetime value) to ensure that second order is as profitable as possible.
For this and all other CLC communications, data and automation are always a challenge. Making sure I have the needed data to personalize and execute campaigns that are reliably synched with all the tools is an ongoing mission. Especially as increasingly complex computed fields are added to help improve and optimize.
Lastly, we’re facing the issue of measuring a clear and accurate view of uplift on not just the campaign level, but for all CRM activities. We strive to get a better understanding of the true value our CRM program is adding.
What are the challenges of marketing globally?
There are lots of challenges (and pleasures, of course) in marketing globally. The two that stick out for me though are tech implementations and intricacies of local markets.
With multiple platforms worldwide, implementing a new tool or adding a new feature isn’t as easy as copy and paste. It takes time and effort in terms of buy in, setup and testing with multiple groups of stakeholders. However, doing so on a global scale spells a need for numerous testbeds for new innovations and countless insightful perspectives from great people.
Secondly, the intricacies of local markets always keep me busy. Whether it’s me trying to find a work-around for personalizing Push Notifications in languages where adding a single dynamic field can change the whole sentence structure, or understanding exact marketing permission legislation in a new country. There’s never a dull moment.
What are your KPIs?
My main KPI’s have historically been CRM Orders, Share & CPRO. And I still track these closely, as well as more granular campaign engagement metrics, as you would expect. These are crucial so that I can see trends over time and ensure they are constantly improving. But more recently I have been looking into total uplift in CRM activities in terms of cohorts, frequency and recency rates. And NPS scores also count as a metric for the wider customer experience.
During your years as CRM manager, how did the discipline change?
A few years ago, a CRM manager in my experience level was simply an Email Marketing Campaigns manager. Desktop was the prevalent platform and your ESP was your main tool. Since then new platforms have become prevalent, new channels have been added and the scope of different technologies on offer has exploded.
The task of simply setting up a campaign has become inextricably more complicated. From selecting an image, a URL and copy for your HTML, through uploading it with your subscriber list, ending with numerous image and copy versions for different channels, multi-routing URLs, deeplinks, tracking parameters, QA, granular segmentation etc. It’s all much more time intensive, and requires a broader set of skills.
At the same time CRM has become a hot topic for many brands and industries, and its remit widened. CRM Managers are now expected, and required, to cover a broader range of the customer experience spectrum.
In addition to the campaign setup in all the usual channels, you need to innovate to find new ones and re-discover old ones. You must be a data expert, know several coding and programming languages, and have a strong technical understanding. Be great at supplier selection and procurement negotiations. You must be an evangelist for the customer. And track and justify the singular and combined benefits of all the disperse range of activities you undertake. It’s a complex, challenging and rewarding role.
Which brands do you think stand out with their retention?
Brands which stand out for their customer retention are those that really invest in the customer. They’re focused on service, they’re personable and they develop a unique user experience.
Brands that take the time to call every acquisition after their first order to check all went well, for example. Or spend hundreds of tech hours working on ways to simplify or gamify a user’s experience of the platform. These things make the direct marketing side of CRM much more fruitful. Whereas brands without such processes or limited features struggle to fill this gap in customer experience with even the most original campaigns.
What is your vision for retention is the future?
Retention in the future is going to widen the remit of CRM still further to include remarketing and to increasingly more touch points where a user can be identified. This will add more channels and more data.
With this will come speed and data volume challenges. Traditionally, a lot of CRM data flows take up to 24 hours to complete, updating daily. But responding to users across this multitude of touch points will require faster reactions for better performance. And updating every facet of customer information in every tool regularly will become very costly. So the storage, formatting and selective sharing of data will be important.
Then measuring the overall impact of this very complex universe of interactions and responses, channels and campaigns, will need to extend to a deeper level to identify the contribution of each. As well as the nudge effect of different combinations and coordination.
Besides these direct and indirect communications with the customer we’ll see a continued focus on customer experience in terms of product design, service processes and social interactions, to name a few. But how this will work organizationally, whether it be a dedicated CX department, a larger CRM team or something else entirely — I’m yet so see the perfect blueprint for.