Download Interview with Vincent De Dobbeleer

I BELIEVE
IN THE
INTEGRATION
OF MARKETING
AND IT.
Interview with Vincent De Dobbeleer
I BELIEVE IN THE
INTEGRATION OF
MARKETING AND IT.
Interview with Vincent De Dobbeleer
How does Marketer of the Year 2014 Vincent De
Dobbeleer (strategy & marketing manager at energy supplier Eneco) see the evolution of marketing
and the inherent role of (big) data?
Vincent De Dobbeleer has worked at Eneco since 2010.
He joined the energy supplier when it was largely still
a b-to-b-supplier focused mainly on production (project
development and construction of wind and solar parks).
However, the company aimed for further growth in the
b-to-b market, and launch itself in the retail market within
two years.
Eneco is an originally Dutch company that supplies renewable energy. Eneco started in 2005 in
the business-to-business-market and in 2011 also
entered the retail market. At the start of 2015 Eneco had 78 wind farms and 120 solar power stations
in Belgium. The company has 5000 b-to-b-customers and 280,000 private customers.
Vincent De Dobbeleer: “At the time the CEO said: ‘Marketing is in the driver’s seat. Marketing determines the rest
of the organisation’. We were marketing-driven from the
get-go. I started here on my own, everything - the vision,
values, commercial strategy... - still had to be set up.
Now, the marketing department employs fifteen people. It
was a lot of work, but it was also an advantage because
it was relatively easy to get everyone on board with
the vision, the DNA and the perceived value. It is about
touching points with customers and that starts by knowing what Eneco stands for, what the brand values are. It
is very important that every employee is fully aware of
this, which also means that marketing needs to make sure
that the whole company perceives these values and acts
accordingly.”
Eneco entered the retail market a year ahead of schedule. De Dobbeleer: “I started in August 2010. In April
2011 the Board of Directors gave its final approval for the
launch, which we completed in August of that year. We
set everything up in the space of four or five months. A
b-to-b-organisation is very different to one that focuses
on b-to-c. In b-to-c you have mass communication(s),
mass-service and large-scale customer service. This
knowledge was readily available when we started. Within
five months we went from nothing, to ‘ready-to-startselling’. It was a rollercoaster but it gave everyone a lot
of energy. At the start of the first Eneco-tour (a Benelux
cycling race in different stages) we also started with the
commercialisation.”
OUTSIDER
Vincent De Dobbeleer is an outsider in the marketing
world: he is a civil engineer specialised and trained in
computer sciences, a far cry from the marketer branch.
He switched to marketing quite early on in his career.
But his background has probably made him into a prime
example of ‘the new marketer’, the marketer of tomorrow
who more than ever will have to deal with data Eneco also has a lot of data thanks to the direct customer
contact. This requires a lot of effort and knowledge about
IT. Vincent De Dobbeleer: “I believe in the integration of
marketing and IT. We have IT people in our team who are
integration of marketing and IT in one person is an advantage. For instance, I know how to get things done from a
technical point of view.”
BORDER
So can your civil engineer background be seen as a
strength?
Vincent De Dobbeleer: “That is right. I have that mindset;
I have that engineer way of thinking. I understand how IT
works and that it is not always as easy as it seems. Over
the years I have also gained experience on the business
side. In fact, IT plays an important and even a strategic
role.”
able to think in business and marketing terms. I know that
in a lot of companies this is usually the other way round:
that IT is more of a delaying factor and doesn’t always
contribute ideas. Marketing and sales used to be separate, but it was in our advantage to put them together.
Maybe we should now consider putting marketing, sales
and IT together. The creative use of new technologies
allows marketers to achieve a big and cost-efficient
impact. Also, technology is crucial to predict customers’
behaviour. That is why you need to bring IT and marketing closer together. This puts you one step ahead of other
companies. Marketing has to be more IT (and vice versa),
needs to learn and copy from ‘the others’ without losing
its individuality. The link with the customer experience, or
how close you are to the customer, is crucial from a technological perspective. After all, you have ‘big data’, from
which you gain your marketing information.
Actually, I have mixed feelings on ‘big data’. It is important given the information you get from the data, but it is
difficult to distinguish what is important. The advantage
of ‘big data’ is that you can learn a great deal from it. The
disadvantage is that - if you know how to work it - you
can prove the opposite with the same level of credibility.
This is a serious risk. That is why you need people who
are able to make good analyses and know the business
well. In the past I have known business intelligence to be
part of IT. These were very good technical people who
were able to build a good database but did not put much
thought in the interpretation of charts. You were given
a chart and within two seconds you could tell from a
business point of view that something was not right. That
is why here at Eneco, ‘market intelligence’ fell directly
under marketing to reconcile it primarily with business
skills and secondly with technical skills. In this case the
Are you more of a commercial engineer than someone
who studied Applied Economics?
Vincent De Dobbeleer: “The border between technology and marketing will change even more. You have the
evolution of digital TV and ‘second screens’ for instance.
It will be even more technological. We need data, big and
small. It’s what it’s about nowadays. The internet of things
is there. But the question is also whether the customer,
the consumer will want to accept it all so readily. Recently I installed a smart thermostat with Google Nest. Then
I also have the feeling: Google knows when I am home
and when I’m not. Do I really want that?”
But does Eneco have plans to combine this consumer
data with its own data?
Vincent De Dobbeleer: “Certainly, but in the sense that
the goal has to be to get know the customer better. There
are plans to carry out analyses for a more specific service
and a specific offer. I feel we still have a lot of data at our
disposal that we don’t use enough. Some customers call
us. This contact is stored in the CRM system, but we don’t
make any structural use of this for marketing. It is relevant to get to know the customer better. Most marketers
feel the same way but still have a long way to go. “You
can compare it with climbing Mount Everest. You need
to know where you want to go. However, you shouldn’t
focus on the summit, but on the next step. Otherwise
you would give up because the summit still seems so
far away. You need to do it step by step. And yes, I want
to get to know the customer, I want to be able to predict
which customer will leave us within three months. The
first step for this is to keep data and then install predictive
analysis tools, for which we bought SAS. The first analysis
was on our own customers. We now have a model with
more than 75% accuracy. It tells us which customers will
leave us - without them knowing it themselves yet. We
can then launch a promotion and find out who has stayed
with us. This allows us to adapt our system iteratively and
in the end reach more than 95% accuracy. We loaded
this prediction in our customer service system. There are
three indicators of probability that a customer will leave.
The customer service people see that and know how to
react.”
SEGMENTATION
Do you also use this data for other things apart from
your own customers?
Vincent De Dobbeleer: “We make a segmentation analysis on our own customers and apply it to the total market:
who are our customers and how many of these profiles
are still out there? We also use this data on our own
customers to get them to purchase more of our products. The objective is not so much to increase our market
share, but to grow breadthways, in terms of the number
of purchased products and services as part of a more
sustainable society.”
The challenge for the CMO is that marketing has to
become ‘knowledge’, a science.
Vincent De Dobbeleer: “Yes. I think marketing concerns
different aspects. The pure creative side and the communication aren’t very scientific. You need to let the communication agency take care of the creative process. But
there are a lot of aspects in marketing that must and can
be approached more scientifically than in the past. A TV
campaign will easily set you back about half a million
euros. You need to be able to study whether that half a
million also brings in half a million or more. That becomes
easier when it is online, although relatively speaking the
budgets are often much smaller. But it is still strange: if so
much money is spent, there has to be a way to substantiate it. Again, integration of IT and marketing is interesting
in this case.”
How do you deal with social networks?
Vincent De Dobbeleer: “They are just part of the marketing mix. We experimented with it. We tried building our
own community but stopped doing it. We focus on customer approach and let the Facebook page and website
refer to each other. The objective is to get people to visit
the website. It contains far more content about the smart
use of energy. If you keep clicking you end up in a sales
funnel sooner or later. The aim of the dialogue is that it
results in value, in sales.
Facebook gives fun information about Eneco. We have
more than 20,000 fans. That is a good number for our
sector. We use Twitter for lead generation. This concerns
opinion leadership. The use of Twitter in Belgium is overrated. It does not have a massive reach, but you will find
all opinion leaders there.”
You have 280,000 customers and 20,000 fans. How do
the other 260,000 hear about Eneco?
Vincent De Dobbeleer: “Customers receive a newsletter
every two months. We send it online to around 90% of
our customers (whose e-mail addresses we have). What’s
in it? Always something about sustainable achievements
(e.g. a new wind farm) and we always include a competition too.
The newsletter is not segmented yet but it will be in the
future. We check to see how many recipients open it,
which articles they are reading (competitions work best of
all). More than half open the mail. This is a lot and it has
always been like this from the start. The only explanation
is the participation of our customer base. We have always
been very consistent: in terms of content primarily aimed
at sustainability and secondly in terms of pricing. In
addition to the newsletter we also regularly get in touch
pro-actively with customers to find out whether they are
still happy with our services. During special events, such
as a birth, wedding... we also send handwritten cards or
sometimes even a flower bouquet. Every customer who
gets in touch with us is asked to fill out a short questionnaire to give feedback about our services. Based on this
we constantly adjust. Again, IT is always important as
input for marketing.”
How do you approach prospective customers?
Vincent De Dobbeleer: “There is a mix of SEA and SEO
supplemented by traditional media, particularly radio
and TV. Radio is action-driven, television is used for brand
awareness.”
WIIFM
What is the potential and how can you interest people
in your proposition?
Vincent De Dobbeleer: “Our customer base is relatively
stable, 5% of the market in Flanders. In fact, the total market is stable. Consumers are divided among the suppliers,
and Electrabel lost a lot of customer over the past years.
Consumers still switch between suppliers. That is how the
market works. Although I do believe we haven’t sufficiently promoted our sustainable energy story. We have wind
and solar parks, but it goes further than that: we help
people become energy-independent through insulation
and showing them how to produce their own energy. We
need to promote this broader vision and I am convinced
this story still has great potential. It is about working with
customers, offering what they need in the right way.”
What’s in it for me?
Vincent De Dobbeleer: “It is a combination of environment and financial return. It is too restricting if you are
only focused on the environment; price is as important.
We are not the cheapest. If you organise a focus group,
100% of the participants will go to the cheapest, but in
practice this is not the case. Other aspects matter.”
If you consider the customer experience, which brands
do you admire?
Vincent De Dobbeleer: “Not many. Lampiris is one of our
competitors. I also know people there. It keeps you on
your toes. But brands that give me a good customer experience..., I can’t think of one straight away. I can name
a restaurant or a shop, but large companies with a good
customer contact....? Yes, Apple. A couple of years ago
my laptop was stolen and I lost all my music on iTunes.
I didn’t backup my files. I got in touch with them and got
everything back. I also received a follow-up mail. That
was a very positive experience. And yes, I know they are
sent automatically, but still...
I think looking ahead and thinking about customer experience we are going back into the past: people used to go
to the corner store and they knew you, they knew what
you would usually buy, what your preferences were,
etc. Large companies were unable to do that. You can’t
possibly know everyone of your 250,000 customers, but
with current technology this will be possible again and
you will be able to offer an extreme customer experience.
This is partly automated though.”
In this case customers have to be willing to give information about themselves.
Vincent De Dobbeleer: “What moves the customer to
share their details, to give up part of his privacy? You
need to provide an added value for this. And this added
value is different for everyone.”
In 2014, Vincent De Dobbeleer (35) won the ‘Marketer of the Year’, an initiative of STIMA in co-operation with weekly magazine Trends. De Dobbeleer is strategy & marketing manager at energy
supplier Eneco. He is a civil engineer, specialised
and trained in computer sciences. De Dobbeleer
started at Altran in 2004 as an IT consultant. His
job was to develop software for energy company
Nuon’s interaction with the market. He then joined
Nuon to optimise the customer service and was
later appointed as market development manager.
In 2010 he made the switch to Eneco, which was
looking for a strategy & marketing manager. De
Dobbeleer’s job was to make the b-to-b-branch
profitable and to prepare the entrance the retail
market (in 2011). Soon he will take a new path: De
Dobbeleer established Marketing Pirates, his own
company to guide start-ups and accelerate their
market entry. His aim is to stimulate and accelerate entrepreneurship and innovation in Belgium
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