Thomas van den Hof – Just Eat Takeaway.com

Thomas van den Hof is Marketing Lead for the Netherlands at Just Eat Takeaway.com, a leading global online food delivery marketplace active in 24 countries. As a country marketing manager, Thomas spends one-third of this time working on analyses, monitoring how the business is doing and seeking new opportunities. Next to that, Thomas focuses on consumer research, translating insights to the marketing calendar and creating various marketing campaigns. Lastly, Thomas spends another one-third of his time working on stakeholder management. Thomas: “Marketing is highly specialised nowadays, and we have many specialised teams and experts. Our job is to inform those teams on what is happening in the different markets and ensure they receive our assets. We stay in close contact with many different departments like sales and customer service, but also with external parties such as the restaurants on our platform. And for some larger partnerships we have dedicated teams, like for our partnership with the UEFA football leagues and recently the European Championship Football.”

MAIN KPIS FOR BRAND GROWTH

Thomas shares that as a company Just Eat Takeaway.com is very much marketing-driven, and primarily focuses on growth: “We are a relatively young business, and the category is still growing. We have a market penetration of 40% in The Netherlands, which means that many potential Dutch customers are still using the phone to order. We strongly believe that using our app or website provides a way better experience and we will be able to convince most of these remaining customers to switch. We are very ambitious, and to realise our goals we continuously work on our top of mind brand awareness. Many customers only order once or twice a year, and decide to do so relatively last minute. At the moment they’re making that decision, you need to ensure you are top of mind. Having a high Top-of-Mind Awareness and maintaining that is a very important KPI for us.

Next to that, we can grow in two different ways, either by adding new customers to our platform or by getting existing customers to order more often. Orders are the holy grail of our growth, but we need to be mindful at the same time. The end doesn’t always justify the means, so in our performance channels we keep a close eye on our cost per order and cost per acquisition of new customers. You can’t spend tons of money trying to get a new customer if there is a negative ROI.”

“Many customers only order once or twice a year, and decide to do so relatively last minute. At the moment they’re making that decision, you need to ensure you are top of mind.”

“Because we are a marketing-driven business, we have a highly specialized talented marketing department and we invest a large part of our overall budget into marketing. In markets where sales are well-developed but marketing isn’t, brand growth only really starts picking up when you start deploying marketing activities at scale”, Thomas continues. “At the same time, when entering a new market you need to build supply of restaurants first before investing into marketing.. You can have countless marketing activities, but if you don’t have a good variety of offerings at restaurants in a certain area, or even any restaurants at all, there’s no point. Having the right supply, for which you need a sizable sales department, is essential before you can start growing with marketing. Marketing and sales therefore can’t exist without each other.”

THE VITAL ROLE OF DATA

According to Thomas, data is crucial when making marketing decisions within the company: “Almost everything we do is data-driven. We have a huge database with data going back 20 years, carrying a ton of information on what consumers do on our platform, what they are looking for, and what they order. Data is at the base of our entire marketing strategy and all decisions taken. Within performance marketing, everything is data-driven, but also on the ‘softer’ side we do a lot of pretesting of creatives. The number of tests is probably in proportion to the growth of our company: the more you test, the more you learn and the faster you grow. However, the fact that we are a very dynamic business can be challenging. You don’t always get the opportunity to test an asset before launch. When you think about it, it’s strange how marketing has launched campaigns for years based on marketers’ opinions rather than consumers’ judgement. We therefore strive to always pre-test before launch.”

In response to companies still relying too much on gut feeling, Thomas shares how this has led to many disruptors entering the market: “The proof is out there, the Lean Start-up came out 10 years ago, and growth hacking has been around for quite some time. There are still companies that can’t shake a more ‘old-fashioned’ way of working, which is why you see disruptors entering the market successfully. We at Just Eat Takeaway.com envisioned an easier, faster way for consumers to order their favorite food. Now, we are expanding into the B2B-domain via Takeaway Pay because we identified opportunities for change in that market as well.”

FROM INSIGHT TO CAMPAIGN

Throughout the year, Thomas’ department conducts an extensive consumer study, e.g. examining penetration in different age groups, household compositions, but also drivers/barriers to use their service, their offers, and why people prefer take-away over delivery. Thomas: “This study provides us with a lot of valuable insights. An example is that people don’t order – or order less often – because they feel it’s unhealthy. That’s an interesting data point because you can then show people there are plenty of healthy options available. This summer we ran a campaign with two restaurant partners, SLA and Eazie, and the feedback is very positive. It’s great to see a data based insight from a consumer study translated into a marketing campaign that delivers results.”

MAIN CHALLENGES

When it comes to challenges in data-driven decision making, Thomas highlights how you can get lost in the vast amount of data, and how strategy and vision are always needed: “Data can be interpreted in many different ways, but behind that data, there is still a strategy and a vision you need to employ. When the data shows certain areas fall behind in terms of orders, are you spending your budget and energy to grow that area, or are you choosing to further grow an area where numbers are already high? Despite the data, you still need to make a strategic decision. Next to that, you need to think about your research and whether you’re not steering your consumer in a certain direction. When you test a few campaign slogans and one comes out as the winner, it may be the best of the lot, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good. We may have taken a data-driven decision, but if everything we presented to the consumer was subpar, the end result is still bad.”

“It’s great to see a data-based insight from a consumer study translated into a marketing campaign that delivers results.”

LEVERAGING A.I. IN MARKETING

When it comes to trends, Thomas shares how the use of A.I. will become even more important: “We have a lot of behavioural data, and marketing is shifting from a demographic perspective – launching a campaign among males between 18 and 25 years old – to launching a campaign based on interests and behaviour. Two women aged 30 living in Amsterdam can be demographically similar, but their backgrounds and orientations could be completely different. When people only order during the week, I’m curious how we can get them to order on weekends. Whether that person is an 18-year-old male or a 63-year-old woman matters less. It’s their behaviour that counts. When you use A.I. properly on behavioural data, it can lead to many good insights that you can then use to steer your marketing activities. We are not quite there yet, but it is absolutely the direction we want to move towards.”