Nancy Schuurmans (DELA): “It’s not about what DELA wants to say, but about what people want to know”
DELA is the overall winner of the online orientation study of life insurance policies, conducted by WUA! in January 2016. Nancy Schuurmans is online marketing manager at DELA. A conversation about direct push marketing and content marketing, being relevant in the customer journey at the right time, cultural changes, and letting branding and online performance go hand in hand.
Congratulations, Nancy Schuurmans of DELA. You are the winner of this orientation study that focused on taking out a life insurance policy in the eyes of potential customers. How important is it for you to be the best with DELA?
“When it comes to the evaluation from the consumer’s perspective, I find it really important. Consumers think that we have the best product that matches their needs, in this case covering the risk of death, often with the aim of getting a mortgage, which I think is great to see.”
Is the huge focus on customer focus and customer satisfaction see in marketing departments these days actually something new: what is it like at DELA?
“Essentially, marketing should be marketing: working with the needs of the customer in mind, focusing on the customer, and meeting the customer’s needs. We now see a clear change from product push to customer-oriented marketing. At DELA we’re working very actively on this. Digitalisation has increased the possibilities of being in contact with your customer. And from a consumer’s perspective, the customer has infinite possibilities to get in touch with organisations and to seek the best fitting product or the best service. The challenge is to build a consistent brand experience in the digital playing field. The separation between offline and online marketing simply does not help you be customer-oriented. You have to put the customer first, both offline and online. It is about the customer’s question and context specific answer: as a customer, if you ask a question on Facebook, you’ll get a different answer than via e-mail.”
With a WPS score of 78, DELA is 10 points ahead of the number two CentraalBeheer.nl in this study. What is going so well for you?
“I find it difficult to say. I know the organisations in the WUA! list, but I do not know how customers experience these companies. What I can say, more generally, is that we at DELA know better than anyone how annoying it is when things are not sufficiently organized in case of a (sudden) death. We are also funeral directors and take care of 40,000 funerals a year. At DELA, it’s about arranging things for when you are no longer around. That’s what funeral insurance, but also life insurance is for. Service about how to put things in a will, the things that have to do with inheritance and custody of children. Every day we realise how precious life is. Because it ends. And because it is passed on. In daily practice, our funeral caregivers and consultants for relatives encounter all kinds of situations where things have been arranged well, or rather poorly. Our experience shows how important it is to already start thinking about later. And we help people do that.”
How do you view service in relation to sales? Could service eventually become the new sales in the insurance sector?
“We’re moving from a product-oriented approach to a content-driven approach. We’re working more and more from a content strategy which is nourished through brand positioning and customer insights. We determine themes for groups of people, and based on these themes we create narratives that allow us to provide relevant implementation of various touchpoints. We do this by examining in advance, to the best of our abilities, what information people need and how and when they use it. That seems simple, but for DELA this is a significant change within marketing. DELA was a direct marketing organisation that pushes the market with insurance products. But now we ask ourselves: When is it relevant to say something, at what time do we have something to offer? Can we provide service? At what point would it be better to just stay quiet for a while?”
“Because: we aren’t always relevant, that’s just how it is. We’re perceived as a brand linked to death. An example. When you are young, say, 18 years old, you’re much less occupied with subjects like funerals. It is a challenge for DELA to already engage with young people, so they will know about the products and services DELA have to offer, and have a good feeling about us, should the subject become relevant at a later stage in their lives. Another example. If you have children, it is relevant to discuss custody at some point, or adding your child to your funeral insurance policy. But do you think that women who are pregnant want a conversation with DELA at that point? Does that fit within their journey at that exact time? Of course it doesn’t. They are occupied with living, and new life. In that case, perhaps we are more relevant at a later point in time.”
“We’re shaping the marketing organisation based on this example. Offline and online marketing integrate. In addition to the performance marketing campaigns, online branding for example is gaining more substance using content marketing. The challenge now is to bring together offline branding and online performance, and this we want to do in a content-driven fashion. The way you let people go down the sales funnel is always a combination of marketing and branding. E-commerce sits at the bottom of the funnel and plays a major role, but you need to connect these tactics without pushing a product. Three years ago we needed a social strategy, which is already being dropped. We need a context-specific approach for various touchpoints. But there has to be consistency.”
What is the role of customer research and customer focus in your daily work?
“It plays a huge role. At website level, we’ve been doing usability research for years. We participated in the WUA! study, we are working with Vals Plat for usability. We recently started with reviews on DELA.nl, and we also use Usabilla. Everything we do that has to do with the process of arranging a funeral is subjected to a customer satisfaction survey afterwards, so we also check the NPS. So we have a lot of sources, marketing also listens to the call centre, and we carry out regular panel studies. DELA has a cooperation panel for members, and we have frequent chats with customers.”
“Furthermore, we’re more occupied with focusing on the customer on a project basis. We have an intern who is doing an analysis of the youth segment. This segment doesn’t even know us, and doesn’t want anything to do with us. That only really happens when they are faced with a death, close to them. We are now looking at how we can enter into a relationship with this group, without talking about our products. On Instagram, for example, we are now looking at what we could do there from the DELA brand.”
What is your biggest digital challenge?
“The integration of online and offline. This is an organisational challenge, but also with relation to the implementation of marketing. You should always think and act from journeys, not from resources. When it comes to online marketing specifically, it’s my biggest challenge to combine offline and online branding performance. How do you do that from a customer journey perspective with a logical connection from funnel thinking, with relevant content.
“A very concrete part of that is creating and rendering from your own content hub. Dela.nl is mainly an informative website. Here, people should be able to find particular information, and be able to arrange things like taking out an insurance policy. The WatJeMeegeeft.nl platform offers much more inspiration. We want to provide consumers with a softer landing through pull content. People are then invited, from that environment, to talk to others on the forum about topics around life and death that they are dealing with. Another challenge is the distribution of content; I see quite a lot of opportunities to put down content in a relevant fashion through partners. At the moment, for example, we are cooperating with Gezondheidsplein. There we offer content about wills and guardianship. Giving valuable information at a relevant moment in a customer journey, that’s what we’re looking for. Other platforms in addition to our own channels may play an important role in that.”
Are there any cool things in the making, what digital innovations are you working on?
“We are working on digitalising the funeral arrangement process. That way, people have more control over the process, they can arrange and share more things remotely. Actually, that’s what people want: an online environment to organise everything themselves as much as possible. Furthermore, a few months ago we went live with a forum where we facilitate people to engage with each other on issues concerning life and death. Suicide is a subject there, natural burial, organ donation, donating your body to science, everything is on the table. This forum is not only for members, it is open to everyone. Come check it out.”
Recent WUA! winner interviews
- Angela Havenaar (Customer Journey Expert, ING) – Read the interview here
- Edouard Rekko (CCO Fietsenwinkel.nl) – Read the interview here
- Rob van Beers (Online Manager DAS) – Read the interview here
- Martin de Boer (CMO Corendon.nl) – Read the interview here
- Jeroen Oosterbaan (CMO Simyo) – Read the interview here
- Peter Sonke (Director Online Sales KPN) – Read the interview here
- Ivonne Doornebos (CCO ANWB) – Read the interview here
- Nils Vergeer (Head Online CZ) – Read the interview here
