Expert Interview #2 I Niek Schreurs from Spinoza
By leading a modern psychedelics brand, Niek gathered learnings on educating a curious audience, connecting people to a community, and building a product that is based on true needs, not assumptions.
We had the pleasure of meeting Niek Schreurs, the Chief Marketing Officer at Spinoza, one of the most interesting e-commerce businesses these days.
By leading a modern psychedelics and wellness brand, Niek has gathered a lot of learnings on how to educate a curious audience, connect people to a community, and build a product that is based on true needs, not assumptions.
In this interview, he has shared:
the way Spinoza manages to produce great content at scale and pace;
the strategy to reduce the risk of failure when launching new products;
how to balance soft and hard conversions throughout the customer journey;
how to introduce neuromarketing into your data & analytics strategy.
Find Niek Schreurs on LinkedIn.
Explore the digital experience of Spinoza.
Watch the interview recording
Table of contents:
The importance of content and community in building a strong brand
Customer discovery & key performance metrics
On building an experience-led brand
The story of Spinoza
Jons: Could you do a bit of an introduction about Spinoza and its value proposition?
Niek: Yeah, that's an interesting story because we were certainly not an e-commerce brand in the beginning. We are a retreat business originally; Spinoza facilitates retreats with natural psilocybin or psychedelics. And what we noticed is that we were having a massive impact on people's lives once in their lives or once in a few years.
But if it's only a single thing you do once every two years, it's very difficult to build a business around that, right? So we started talking more to our customers to understand how are we transforming people’s lives.
But if it's only a single thing you do once every two years, it's very difficult to build a business around that, right? So we started talking more to our customers to understand how are we transforming people’s lives.
We realized that through an e-commerce strategy, introducing product experiences and workshops we were able to be there more for people.
We're sort of forming this pyramid, where the retreat is the top; there are all kinds of layers underneath, which allow people to slowly get introduced to Spinoza. Going on a journey of self-discovery with one of our retreats is quite a leap for the customer; we needed to build trust as a brand.
Today we have a microdosing product, which people buy once or twice a year. Then we have a lot of workshops which they can attend weekly. Finally, we have introduced natural sprays for daily use.
E-commerce helped us to be more present in people’s lives through a familiar channel and format.
The importance of content and community in building a strong brand
Jons: People often speak about customer journeys, product journeys, or order journeys. But in that sense, for Spinoza, it's an actual journey as a human being as well.
Niek: We see that in these times a lot of people due to the internet long for self-education.
Everyone is used to googling things themselves. Therefore, we are very active with SEO; we aim to introduce people to something that they're already exploring on their own.
We also build spaces where people connect on a journey of self-discovery. They are looking for other like-minded individuals.
Connecting with these people, either through a workshop, by seeing other faces, or, for example, through a live Q&A on Instagram delivers a lot of value. This way, you identify yourself with a brand. And once you go to a retreat, you become part of our inner circle, an ambassador. That's where word of mouth happens a lot.
Connecting with these people, either through a workshop, by seeing other faces, or with a live Q&A on Instagram or anything, delivers a lot of value. This way, you identify yourself with a brand. And once you go to a Spinoza retreat, you become part of the inner circle, an ambassador. That's where word of mouth happens a lot.
Jons: You described brilliantly what we often call the 3C flywheel: content, commerce, and community. It’s a smart move that you start with educational content and then build the community. Is there anything you can mention in terms of NPS?
Niek: Yes. Our NPS is above 85 on average. I think that’s quite a good score, which we’re proud of. One of the reasons why it’s so high is these connection points offline and online. People know our faces and who we are. That’s also part of our strategy: people trust people.
Everyone has a story that people can connect to. So I have my story, Liv, my colleague, has a story, and Maarten has a story. Depending on where people are in this journey of self-discovery, they will resonate with someone's path.
Customer discovery & key performance metrics
Jons: Could we briefly discuss the data metrics part? Could you share your KPIs or the North Star metric?
Niek: The North Star is the impact of our products and programs on our customers’ well-being. This also fits our approach in terms of data.
The North Star is the impact of our products and programs on our customers’ well-being. This also fits our approach in terms of data.
We will roll out certain surveys, allowing people to share how they're doing on the journey with us. And (this is more of a visionary plan), we want to create a little personal dashboard based on those surveys so that people can see, like on a Garmin watch, whether their well-being has improved by having a more natural lifestyle.
Jons: In terms of metrics, there’s a quantitative and a qualitative approach, right? I think many companies perceive themselves as very data-driven. That is nice, but sometimes, the best insights come from the qualitative approach.
Niek: I learned that data can also make you quite conservative. When you take a very data-driven approach, you will work in an A/B testing structure where certain tests run for a while, and each test defines a certain significance and then a direction.
But I see that talking to customers and their needs, doing a lot of surveys or quality research can also allow you to take a bit more risks. We’re also in a time when I think being vulnerable and taking risks is not something people dislike as long as you're open and communicative about it.
On neuromarketing
Jons: Is there one software system, which you can't live without or that has had a big impact on the business?
Niek: The first thing that pops up in my mind is Neurons. It's an AI-driven tool, based on neuromarketing. They give 100K or maybe 80K people and let them look at all kinds of visuals, which feed into an algorithm.
It gave us a lot of insights into how to build the website. Also, instead of spending a lot of budget on advertisement or just putting a lot of things out and getting a lot of traffic on our website to see how things are performing, we could already do that before actually spending money.
Jons: Smart and it makes sure your return on investment is also a lot better in that sense because you know that will convert better.
Niek: I also don’t think we should approach a customer journey as a marketing strategy. We really should see it as how we can become a company that is there for people in their lives. It doesn’t mean you enable subscription service and then just get people in; hopefully, they stay on, and the churn rate is low.
No, it means talking to the people, seeing their needs, and building the company towards that.
I also don’t think we should approach a customer journey as a marketing strategy. We really should see it as how we can become a company that is there for people in their lives. It doesn’t mean that you enable subscription service and then just get people in; hopefully, they stay on, and the churn rate is low.
No, it means talking to the people, seeing their needs, and building the company towards that.
That's what Apple has done amazingly, right? So all their hardware tools are now entwined for working together. It just fits a certain lifestyle. The most successful e-commerce brands become lifestyle brands, like Patagonia. And then there’s less marketing effort you have to do because you’re just a part of someone’s identity.
So, you don’t have to think about all these touch points and data layers that much because there's a broader movement happening for your brand.
Building an experience-led brand
Jons: That reminds me of an article by Harvard Business Review that brilliantly describes what a usage brand is. We also call that an experience-led brand.
Niek: Exactly. We are built to experience life, right? As a brand, yes, you can be fast-paced and cheap, but that would be the only connection you would sell through. If you start as a transactional brand solely, it might be very difficult to get out of that.
The other way— the experience-led way —is a lot more fun overall and actually fulfills what people long for.
Jons: For sure. I think that's a beautiful way to close it. Thanks a lot, Niek. I think we learned a lot and I'd love to share many of the insights with our audience.
