Nederlandse Loterij

In July 2021 I talked to Arno de Jong, CMO of Nederlandse Loterij (Dutch Lottery), about his need for temporary support in the role of Head of CRM in his marketing team prior to contracting a permanent hire. Nederlandse Loterij is the umbrella brand of lottery brands Staatsloterij, Lotto, Eurojackpot, Lucky Day, Krasloten and TOTO. Since October 1st, 2021 they are also active with TOTO sports betting and online casino. He gave me 6 related and strongly intertwined projects to focus on. My assignment started mid-August, parallel to the delivery of my assignment at Stokke.

My job comprised 6 interrelated projects, apart from the day-to-day management of the CRM team (35 FTE) and making the 2022 CRM plan and budget.

Customer contact strategy for the lottery brands

This project had been going on for a while but had not yielded the desired results so far, i.e. customer journey maps and the related customer contact strategy. For reasons of working with a London-based agency, working remote during covid and partly the language difference. I managed to arrange for the workshops taking place on-site at Nederlandse Loterij, which came with a couple of benefits: a much higher productivity, better discussions among stakeholders of the individual lottery brands, and substantially higher energy level.

Implementation Customer Data and Customer Experience Platforms

Within the Steering Committee I was the Lead Product Owner. And found a project that was not in it’s best shape. Because of internal discussion about technology choices that were made earlier and insufficient progress in the delivery of user stories and requirements into the sprint planning by the business. Together with the Steering Committee I got the project back on track through a strong push on delivery of input by the business, data management and resetting priorities. Where we finally presented the program status to the board.

Optimizing the CRM and Marketing organizations

In close cooperation with Dries Poels, Head of Marketing, I defined the ideal structure for both the CRM and Marketing teams, which resulted in a new operating model. With i.a. a more directive role for the CRM marketers in development of campaigns and the execution of project, and a separate role in the CRM team heading the center of excellence around the customer data and customer experience platforms.

Campaign development process redesign

With the implementation of new technology and a changed operating model processes will change as well. That provided a nice opportunity to optimize the campaign development process. To accomplish that I started with 2 things: ask individual stakeholders in the process to list their pain points and opportunities for improvement. And facilitate sessions where the stakeholders discussed these point among them to make them part of the new way of working after concensus.

Definition of a KPI and marketing dashboard structure

A comprehensive reporting and KPI structure was absent. Part of the defined KPIs resulted from the customer journey mapping sessions and related to individual customer journey stages. In parallel we put together a extensive list of reporting requirements with the CRM team, which the Business Intelligence department captured in a project roadmap and sprint planning for execution.

Improving the weekly inspiration sessions

One day per week was reserved for people in CRM and Marketing to gain inspiration and increase their knowlegde in relevent topics. Partly through knowledge session hosted by internal and external speakers. And partly by working in teams on brand transcendent projects. Together with the team leads, I defined the planning for the forthcoming period.

In conclusion, I managed to deliver quite a lot together with my team in the 4.5 month timeframe:

• Customer journey maps, including contact strategy and most important KPIs per customer journey phase for all lottery brands were delivered in a 2.5 month throughput time.
• The customer data and customer experience (marketing automation) platform implementation program were back on track and schedule.
• An operating model for the Marketing and CRM teams that matches the ambition of Nederlandse Loterij.
• Clear overview of pain points and opportunities from improvement for redesign of the campaign development process.
• Backlog with KPI and dashboarding requirements, including a priority list.
• A more substantiated program for the weekly Marketing and CRM inspiration day.