Show Notes:

In this episode of the E-commerce Leaders Series, Ciske Smit sits down with Jeroen Nas, Co-Founder and CEO of Vemt, the Amsterdam-based experience and loyalty cloud helping retailers and brands turn customer loyalty into a real growth channel. Jeroen has been building Vemt for more than two decades — a rarity in an industry where most founders move on every three to four years — and was recently named the most influential CEO in Amsterdam's marketing technology scene.

Jeroen shares how a background in banking (including building one of Europe's first internet banks at Rabobank) shaped his obsession with using technology to deepen — not replace — human relationships. He walks through the pitfalls of "superficial KPIs" like likes and quick ad wins, why brands over-rely on paid channels even as customer acquisition costs climb, and how agentic commerce is about to strip away the front end of e-commerce as we know it.

🧠 What You'll Learn In This Episode:

• Why treating customers as a generic label (like "bookers") blinds you to your biggest growth opportunity
• How to spot when a business is optimizing for superficial KPIs instead of long-term customer value
• Why short marketer tenure (1.4 years on average) drives short-term ad spending over relationship-building
• How agentic commerce will change the front end of e-commerce — and why that makes direct customer relationships more valuable, not less
• How to turn a static monthly report into an "action engine" that recommends the next move automatically
• Why GEO (generative engine optimization) is a temporary fix, not a long-term strategy
• A simple budget rule of thumb for splitting spend between advertising and relationship-building

💡 Key Takeaways:

• Ownership beats rented attention. Every dollar spent on ads makes the ad platforms richer; every dollar spent on direct relationships builds an asset you own — the data, the channel, and the ability to reach your customer directly.
• Repeat customers are where the real margin lives. Acquiring a customer for the third or fifth time through the same paid channel often costs more than converting them into a loyal, directly-reachable member.
• AI's biggest near-term value isn't answering questions — it's taking action. Businesses that use AI to auto-generate and launch the next campaign save more time than those using it just for reporting or search.
• Agents don't have relationships — and that's exactly why relationships matter more. As agentic commerce strips away discovery through storefronts and social content, brands with a direct line to their customers will be far more insulated.
• Observation is data too. Many teams chase more dashboards and numbers without ever validating assumptions in the real world — talking to actual users remains one of the highest-leverage (and most skipped) research methods.

🔗 Connect with Jeroen & Vemt:

🌐 Website: vemt.com

💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeroennas/

About Luca

Luca is an AI operating system for e-commerce leaders — connecting marketing, finance, operations and data into a single intelligence layer that helps founders make faster, sharper decisions.

🔗 Connect with Luca here:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ask_luca

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/asklucaai/

Website: https://ask-luca.com/

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