In one of his rare public appearances, Rocket Internet CEO Florian Heinemann gave a very insightful presentation on Business Intelligence at the Next Conference. The presentation on this aspect of the Rocket Internet strategy is a very worthwhile view (“Towards a Better Understanding of Marketing Performance Across Multiple Channels”):
As opposed to other companies where the marketing budget is still calculated in traditional ways, startups funded by the German Samwer brothers take a very precise view on the measurability and controllability of their marketing activities. Rocket Internet has built up an enormous amount of in-house expertise in the course of marketing such companies as Zalando, eDarling or Groupon using a combination of TV spots, display ads and other traditional performance marketing methods:
"At a company like Zalando we don't have a marketing budget. We just say: We are willing to acquire a customer for price x."
In Florian Heinemann’s presentation, he illustrated the marketing approaches used by Rocket Internet as well as the fundamental models for forecasting and quantification of results. He gives an insider peek into the evolution of Rocket Internet with its various startups, which now encompasses thousands of employees. And by reading a bit between the lines, one can glean a little about the relationship with companies such as Google, StudiVZ, Web.de and others.
After seeing the video, you might have a new assessment of the financial reports of Groupon which were not long ago made public. A parallel between the Groupon and overall Rocket Internet strategy is clear.
In his talk, Florian Heinemann also touches on some comments on the Exciting Commerce German blog, which protend the management of Zalando and the like to be much more naïve than they actually are:
"If you look at the comments you see on exciting commerce, everybody says: "Well, these stupid idiots, you know, they are spending so much money. Zalando cannot be worth the money. They are just throwing out all their marketing budgets." I can assure you: This is definitely not happening. We know exactly what we're doing there."
This is the fallacy here: Just because the Samwer brothers tend to re-use ideas from other international companies, it would be wrong to believe that they cannot turnaround and execute in a very professional way. Besides the sales talent that they have, their analytic and measurement-driven models are surely their most undervalued competency.
Related posts:
- Groupon IPO: The Best Analyses of the Public Offering
- Groupon IPO: Groupon Reveals Financial Performance Figures
- Samwer Report: Kinnevik Holds 12% of Rocket Internet
Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.
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