Beauty Marketers Must Put Their Best Face Forward
level, and the client is increasingly willing to share and engage with beauty brands."
Tip 4: Connect Through Digital and Physical Channels
The beauty company 100% Pure sells organic products that are vegan and colored with fruit pigments, a market that's becoming more competitive as the natural products movement grows. The product has been distributed a variety of ways in the young company's history. It started out in mall retailer Bath & Body Works, then became an e-commerce company, and also had a run on QVC. Ultimately, though, the company decided to sell direct, so it could "control branding and the customer experience," CEO Ric Kostick explains. "When you work with another company, the buyer thinks they understand your brand better than you do." Once 100% Pure decided to sell its product directly, it turned to technology to better understand is customers.
When the company opened its first store, in Berkeley, CA, its main focus was on its Web business, "which was doubling every year." Executives at the company soon observed, though, that the store's physical location influenced e-commerce sales. "A lot of people who live nearby were ordering on the Web, so we thought maybe opening a location increases Web sales," Kostick says. When it opened a second location in Santana Row in Santa Clara, CA, "that one did phenomenal. Web sales around the area went up, and there was a good synergy. We realized we could capture additional customers and sales by opening a store, and then capture additional customers online on top of that."
The company now has six stores and plans to expand to 50 stores within three years. To evaluate locations, 100% Pure turned to its Web analytics, leading to some counterintuitive findings. "You might think in downtown L.A., [an upscale] mall like The Grove would be really good. Then you look at the data, and not many of our top-tier customers are around there, even though it's a great fit with our brand," Kostick cites.
The company recently implemented AgilOne, which allows for predictive email marketing campaigns. Email is already a big driver of its business, and AgilOne enables additional segmentation. Customers who live within 10 miles of a store, for example, will receive emails with offers for the store. "They'll be immersed in the in-store experience," Kostick says. A customer who spent $600 on the Web before might now spend $1,200, split between the Web and in-store because of the greater exposure to the brand, Kostick predicts. What's more, AgilOne can connect that customer's online and offline personas, enabling even better targeting.
A similar dynamic exists with C.O. Bigelow, which combines a 176-year-old family drugstore with an e-commerce business. The company sells its classic formulas with a nostalgic, natural feel at the original store location in New York City's West Village, Bath & Body Works, online, and through channel partners overseas.
For beauty companies, e-commerce represents a challenge and an opportunity. "It's an experience-driven business: It's hard to make [customers] loyal on the Web, and easier to make them loyal in the store," notes C.O. Bigelow's CEO, Ian Ginsberg. The company's e-commerce marketing focuses less on finding new customers and more on retaining existing customers and making them more loyal. Every order comes with free product samples, which customers choose, replicating the experiential feel of trying products in-store. "People like to try before they buy," Ginsberg states. "If they're on a limited budget, they're less apt to try things because they don't want to risk losing twenty dollars."
Because "people aren't in stores as much as they used to [be]," it brings some of the in-store experience of sampling to the Web customer. Samples can also boost conversion. "Sometimes people fantasy shop; they pretend to shop but don't buy. Dangling the samples becomes a way to get people to close their shopping cart."
To stay in touch with customers, C.O. Bigelow sends targeted emails on replenishment, focusing on making sure a customer always has her favorite product. "Women especially are very loyal to their product, but if they run out and don't replenish it, they lose some of their love for it. Maybe they try another one," Ginsberg says. Replenishment emails take different approaches; emailing a customer who spent over a certain amount 90 days ago but hasn't made an additional purchase would be one example.
Ovation Hair has a replenishment program that runs through NetSuite, which also counts C.O. Bigelow as a customer. "There are frequencies of shipping that can vary from thirty days to 120 days, with benefits including free shipping and double points in our loyalty program." However, it's the customer's choice to enroll in the program, Ovation's Wells notes, and she can call and modify her order if she desires.
Many larger beauty companies may have multiple brands targeted toward different demographics. Gartner's Collins has seen one particularly sophisticated company create campaigns to move customers from its low-priced to high-priced brands. The company's three product lines were targeted toward young adults, teens, and people out of college, who tend to have different levels of disposable income. Using its customer list, it created a marketing program around "recognizing opportunities to move people up to the next brand level," Collins recalls. "It's not just how you market your brand, but also about moving someone up to the next level, and understanding the life cycle and triggers when the information is aggregated across the three brands."
Tip 5: Create Customer Delight
Beauty is a unique industry, with highly engaged customers who enjoy spending time with the brands they shop. Customers are both loyal and fickle: Some may use the same mascara for years, while cycling through dozens of foundations in search of the perfect shade or to follow the latest trends in blemish balms or color-correcting creams. Beauty companies know it's not enough for a customer to be passionate about lipstick: It's about delivering a personalized, value-driven experience to that customer to make sure she's buying lipstick at your store. And telling her friends about it.
"If you think about some of your favorite places to shop, it's not always about what you buy there, it's about how you feel when you're there," Ginsberg states. Whether it's using customer data to match them up with the perfect product, analyzing the perfect place to put up a store, or creating a home for consumers' thoughts and opinions, beauty brands have a lot of information about their customers at hand—it's all about what they do with it.
Associate Editor Sarah Sluis can be reached at ssluis@infotoday.com.