The odds on the Dutch border
On the day that America chose a president who promised to throw close all borders, Online Tuesday threw just all borders open. During a fascinating evening speakers TNT, Landal Hello and print showed how they deal with the export of their success abroad.
During the heyday of the VOC, 400 years ago, our merchant and business acumen led went out the cost of the voyage and we sailed the world's oceans. That sounds like something relatively simple, but if you purely look at the concept, it's business. Which (digital) wind in the sails there is now. But we make here do use in the export?
Parties that are at the gate in the Netherlands suffer to enter. Amazon, which set a time really comes to the Netherlands, our border has so far only enter through foreign shipping. And if we look at Dutch parties and how they do it in other countries, there is room for improvement. Dutch e-commerce parties are particularly very good at e-commerce in the Netherlands itself, and much less elsewhere - even though this is becoming increasingly important . That was the argument of the moderator of the evening, Richard Smoorenburg , CEO of Traffic4u .
Three speakers spoke during the 65th edition of Online Tuesday on their own mercantile and commercial spirit abroad, namely
Christiaan van der Waal , head of global marketing at TNT , the rollout of digital customer approach across 220 countries
Rick Miller , CMO at Hello Print on how the company in a few years to grow beyond national borders by 1,000 percent sales and
Youri Harmsen , online media specialist at Landal Greenparks , on how to put online channels in order to obtain business abroad.
How and where do you start with exports?
TNT has set up a global transformation in recent years. This began with the task of doubling online sales. That's a pretty ambitious task as the initial revenue represents amounts to nine zeroes. Where are the opportunities (and threats)?
At the time TNT started this project, worked with a website that was extremely outdated. A package of books on Amazon can be ordered in one click - for registered users), TNT was the order of time in some regions in 2014 to less than 27 minutes. And registration was worse: where the process takes at Uber one minute, that could last for TNT to a month.
Christiaan van der Waal, TNT
To go along in this digital age and internationally to stand out, it was necessary to include addressing these issues dramatically. And that can not only change your website. The processes of the organization should be digitized as much as possible.
They began with the customer, because you do it for. And customers are catching quite tricky. Personas are an excuse not to have to talk with your real customers and get to know them. But if you really take the time and effort to talk to your client, you will be amazed how this varies with your completed personas. These are insights that can not be digitized.
"Personas are an excuse not to have to talk with your real customers and get to know them."
The customer journey to work in three periods - the orientation phase, the customer phase and the customer's customer phase - TNT was pulled from the product thinking and moved it to think from the customer. Which touchpoints has this customer and how we make this customer happy?
Then there are goal-based teams set up around these periods in the journey. By the teams to focus on the customer needs and to investigate the needs of the customer, could the dilemmas and difficulties of the customer are uncovered and resolved. That was and is the goal of this team.
Mix local and central
TNT tries to find the right mix between local and central organization. Digital Team TNT is involved in the international strategy of the company and they help determine how the strategy can be deployed in the country. It gives you the advantage while working with partners who understand your strategy and local market, so for example, you quickly on sites like baidu.com can advertise (China's largest search engine) and yandex.com (Russian version).
In order to make the scalable organization, TNT has set up a data management platform and put it in the heart of the ecosystem. Van der Waal: "In this system, all data centralized in any country, so that we can give our partners the right data and adapt our campaigns to the target."
An example of this is that, when someone uses can see the track & trace functionality of TNT, the company whether it is a user or recipient, and whether that person is a customer or not. So get person who is not a customer, and in the recent period flawless experience had (no damage, no delay and has no customer service required) to see a banner to get him / her in as a customer.
What is important for this system, is the team. Therefore, the bar for recruitment should be very high and preferably are assembled an international team.
TNT in all regions "for the coordination and communication of progress in the digital transformation Digital Leader " nomination, a person who reports to the local board. These individuals are trained and enthused and are constantly fed with information on everything that happens within TNT in this area. These ideas then they play by their own team and provide feedback.
organic growth
Landal is a Dutch company and 77 percent of the visitors came from the Netherlands. But also in other countries, they have a growing customer base - first with Germany, followed by Belgium.
Landal focused on foreign countries because of the saturated bungelowmarkt in the Netherlands and omwillen of risk - people from other countries have different holidays, allowing more diversification comes in the occupation. Many of the guests of Landal After all parents with children, who are bound by school holidays.
Youri Harmsen, Landal
The bulk of the international commercial team is in the Dutch Leidschendam and a small part in the German city of Trier. Landal has recently pulled the marketing. A central coordination for all countries and labels to independent regulation in each country and label.
Harmsen: "A challenge for us is that we, while we see opportunities everywhere we want to seize, do not have budgets to exploit these opportunities. So we have to make choices. The question we always ask is this: we are going to settle this central or local "Ultimately, just showed the autonomy of the local team in Germany decisive in the success across the border?.
"The question we always ask: we will arrange it central or local?"
Digital, data-driven marketing and advertising
Landal is now much easier than 10 years ago to gain insight into the foreign market. Harmsen: " We new growth markets can approach much better through data and digital driven marketing & advertising What you always used to come into contact with local parties to use the local media, it is now a lot simpler there.. are already many tools available in the Netherlands which give access to foreign markets, such as AdWords, bGenius, Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, DoubleClick and a company database. "
There are also pitfalls in digital and data-driven marketing and advertising:
Not all markets are the same. When copying the Dutch programmetic-advertising strategy to the Belgian market Landal noticed that all the other factors in Belgium, such as prices, cultural habits and the role of programmetic advertising. Research into this area is therefore of great importance.
At low budgets can be difficult to invest in growth markets. If in another country the ROI is higher than growth in the country, you have to have to be well aware of what you do with your budget and what the investment can mean long term.
Local or central performance?
The mission of Rick Miller at Hello Print Hello Print is to ensure that as soon as possible to increasing international - within the constraints, that is. Hello Print had more volume needed due to scale: it makes the print jobs they process more affordable and adds to the profit margin. go international was therefore a must.
The company has addressed the international expansion in a different way than TNT and Landal. The objective of Hello Vistaprint is to be compared with parties like Airbnb and Uber: it wants to have the largest distributor of printing pressure to a printing press without self.
Hello Print will be the Airbnb or the Uber of printed matter - and therefore do not have printing presses itself
Miller argues that there are two methods to expand an online business to a new country:
the slow, risk-free way: do big market and gradually develop it;
The quick and dirty way: as soon as possible to go live and optimize it.
It is said that one works better than the other, which depends on the situation. "We knew beforehand nor what method would work for us. That is why we have set up a kind of a / b test these two methods, to see if what suits us and works for us. "
Rick Miller, Hello Print
The two countries of this test were the United Kingdom, a strong e-commerce driven country with a huge online market, but also a lot of competition, and Spain, which has a low level of e-commerce and therefore has little competition. In the UK an international team was set up that worked at the Dutch headquarters and was briefed by the Dutch knowledge Hello Print; in Spain, the company used a different strategy to be adopted by a Spanish-speaking team could set up their own strategy from a local establishment.
The result of the test were two things.
The UK could live much earlier (about 5 months). This was because the strategy was ready and could be implemented right. When the Spanish team had to be done at first market research and devised an appropriate strategy. By the time it's in the UK was already a customer base of data to build on, the Spanish team had a 180-page marketing plan off - still lies somewhere on a shelf.
Moreover, the gap in sales between the UK and Spain increased. This was partly because the Spanish team continued aanliept the same errors Hello Printing had already made in the Netherlands. 'Team UK' had the advantage that they sat across the country managers and therefore did not have to make the same mistakes - only other errors, which is precisely the growth accelerated again.
The learnings from this project were:
The international team at the head office in Rotterdam was to launch much more quickly able through time savings obtained because there is no market and no strategy had to be developed.
The international team was able to develop much faster because of the insights that were already there.
The UK team was much easier with the culture of Hello Print and understood the core values of the company better.
Hello Print developed a methodology that allows it in less than three months a shop in a new country intent.
As quickly as possible
From the test Hello Print the company developed a method with which it is able to set up a shop in a new country in less than three months. The model is to provide structure and to ensure that a process is followed which can always be improved.
Within the organization, the marketing is built up in different teams:
Marketing channels to drive traffic to the international shops.
Product growth provides the conversion optimization and shares and implements international learnings between countries.
Country localization performs the specific needs of the country, such as language or payment.
roadmap internationalization
From the learnings from the test Hello Print invented a roadmap for the launch in a new country. The intention of this model is that one team goes through the steps as quickly as possible in order to have a launch in a new country as quickly as possible to be successful in this way.
market research
Hello Print does not provide a detailed market research 180 pages more. In the time it takes to carry out the investigation, may have already changed so much that the investigation already outdated is. Instead Hello Print assumes a data-driven process and uses the internal and external data to determine the country selection.
Examples of this data include:
external data
Market volume: Google's search volume
Competition Level: Googles estimated CPC
internal data
Potential traffic: CTR in the current market
Potential customers: conversion rate in the current market
Step 0: Localized shop
Once decided to focus on a country, Hello Print sets as quickly as possible a localized web shop. This is done in a week in which the focus is on the translation of the website, the localization of the product (what products?), And unique local features (method of payment, labels).
This rapid deployment requires a different mindset . Miller: "Thus, the parts that have done first priority and we stare us blind on smaller decisions. So we focus on the translation example, first on the pages with lots of views; pages with low traffic volume may yet also temporarily with an automated translation "Whatever happens:. After that week comes the next step, ready or not.
Step 1: Customer Feedback
After that week, the shop goes live and traffic sent to the shop. This is primarily done through Google AdWords, because this people come to the site that have a purchase intention and continues to control the investment. The only purpose of this is that feedback can be requested from the customer to see what is really important in the country for that customer.
Step 2: Optimizing Traffic
In the next phase there is a shift from qualitative customer feedback to quantitative data. Here are landing pages, pages behind the landing pages, ads, pricing and product offerings tested to ultimately better connect with customers. The aim is to increase ROI and thus come closer to the target.
Step 3: Scales
In the last phase of the process, the marketing mix is extended by adding the deployment of new acquisition and retention channels, keywords, campaigns and products. It is also optimized again for the desired ROI.
After going through these steps unrolled country is assigned to the portfolio of the Growth-product marketing and channels teams and begin the country localization team again in a new country.
tips
Some tips on the steps of Miller:
Locate not too much, especially in the beginning. For example, translation is not equal to your entire website, but you put time instead of obtaining data. Then let the customer to see for themselves what changes they say, for instance by him / her to create a feedback form or by measuring the customer data and find what does and does not work. This works much more effectively and efficiently.
Feedback is an important stage in a process. Make sure you are doing everything possible to get information from your customer. This should be quite aggressive, for example in the form of a pop-up on the landing page, after calling after an order or displaying a survey on the thank you page. All this in order to gather information on which you can build on and optimize.
