FIVE TIPS from industry experts to help make over your customer engagement efforts 

 

By Sarah Sluis

FIVE TIPS from industry experts to help make over your customer engagement efforts 

 

By Sarah Sluis

Beauty Marketers Must Put Their

BEST FACE FORWARD

FIVE TIPS from industry experts to help make over your customer engagement efforts 

 

By Sarah Sluis

The beauty industry in America is one of the world’s most competitive, with an overwhelming amount of cosmetic products ranging from moisturizing shampoo to mascara to lipstick. Selling to the beauty customer requires skills at once specific and universal, traditional and innovative. “I would say that [this is] a market that doesn’t leave anything behind, but [it’s] also an industry that’s not afraid of trying new things,” notes Kimberly Collins, vice president of Gartner Research. “The competitive nature puts [it] out there at the front edge.”

The industry is also growing rapidly. In 2012, it increased by 6 percent, with e-commerce growing at nearly five times that rate, for a total of 29.1 percent. That growth put it ahead of the apparel, retailing, home care, and packaged food industries, according to a report released last year by Euromonitor International. 

Like all brands, companies in the beauty category strive for relationships with customers. They rely on technology to find customers, engage with them, and even match them with specific products. More than most brands, those in the beauty category rely on passionate advocates to establish trust and authenticity. Testimonials and reviews play a huge part in wooing customers toward a specific brand. All brands can look to successful beauty companies for lessons about how to engage audiences in a competitive marketplace with highly engaged users. Read on to see how you can apply these tips to your organization. 

TIP 1: FIND CONSUMER ADVOCATES

If you believe an engaged customer is a retained customer, then interacting with consumers and clients as often as they want makes sense. Not only does this improve brand loyalty, but the feedback you receive could also benefit the company and other customers. 

To better understand their customers, beauty brands are turning to insight communities to shape product development, test advertising, and gain insights about their products. Women’s magazine Allure formed its own insight community to poll its readers for editorial and advertising purposes. To do so, it turned to Vision Critical, a creator of such communities.

Allure introduced its insight community, called Beauty Enthusiasts, in 2007; it’s now 35,000 members strong. When people join, they answer a detailed survey, providing demographic information and product needs, such as whether they feel they have dry hair or that their skin is aging. Brands can then offer samples to a specific segment of that audience. The feedback combines the precision of quantitative research with the qualitative results of focus groups, as people write their reactions to products in their own words. Some members’ comments have appeared in Allure’s ad copy.

Jennifer Friedman Perez, Allure’s senior director of marketing intelligence, is careful to make sure the community is rewarded for the time they spend on the site. “For a community as large as ours, it’s important to touch each one of them. We do that through newsletters, [letting them know] what we learned from different efforts, and providing that value to them. We have an email address they can use, and I answer [the emails] personally. They see that someone is listening to them, and there is someone behind the wall,” she says. 

“The most successful way to motivate these participants is to share with them,” echoes Andrew Reid, CEO of Vision Critical. When you show them “what you’re doing with the research or [give them] a sneak peek…you earn trust.” Consumers feel less like “lab rats” and more like “stakeholders,” Reid adds.

Members of Allure’s insight community can turn into even more passionate brand advocates by participating. “With millennials, co-creation is important,” Friedman Perez states. “In some cases, we’re sending products to them that aren’t on the market yet. We give them access, and they don’t even know what brand it is,” since many are blind tested. “If they have a great experience, once they find out what the product is, they’re more likely to buy it.”

TIP 2: Highlight SOCIAL MEDIA AND CONTENT MARKETING

Recommendations are key to consumers choosing one brand over another, making it important for brands to weave the voices of experts and users into the shopping experience. Eighty-three percent of beauty and personal-care sites include space for user reviews, according to research by L2 Think Tank. On Sephora.com, consumers leave detailed, multiparagraph reviews about products. It’s not unusual for a product to have hundreds of reviews. To channel this engagement, Sephora recently launched Beauty Board, a Pinterest/Instagram-like mini social network that enables users to upload selfies that are tagged with the products they used to create their look. It’s part of a larger ecosystem within Sephora that includes presences on social networks, as well as Sephora-created videos, a blog called The Glossy, and the online community Beauty Talk. 

Combining editorial with e-commerce is an increasingly popular strategy. The e-commerce start-up Beautylish melds an active online community, blog posts, and boutiques that allow users to buy products from different brands. Cosmetics company Estée Lauder signed a partnership with the blogger behind Cupcakes and Cashmere, Emily Schuman, creating an “Emily’s Picks” section on the Estée Lauder Web site. -Glamour, a magazine put out by Conde Nast, publisher of Allure, has a section on its Web site called “Shop Glamour” that enables people to browse and purchase the editors’ picks within the site.

Ovation Hair, an e-commerce hair-care brand whose Cell Therapy system is designed to improve the health of hair, sees many customers peruse its testimonials section before committing to a purchase. “We’re finding that testimonials are critical. Word of mouth is critical. The more we have of that, the better,” says Bob Wells, Ovation Hair’s chief operating officer and chief financial officer. YouTube videos produced by the brand include people looking to fix hair problems that developed after chemotherapy or a pregnancy. “It’s the avenue for people to talk about their own personal situation…if you listen to those videos, it brings a tear to your eye. It’s stunning the impact [hair] can have on someone’s life,” Wells says.

Beauty brands have long relied on testimonials to develop trust and sell their product; social and editorial content iterates on that time-tested formula. “If you thumb through a magazine and look at the traditional Cover Girl [ads], they almost always have a celebrity wearing the makeup,” Collins offers. Other brands do too. “Think of Aveeno and Jennifer Aniston,” he says. Thanks to the Internet, the number of influencers and mini-celebrities has multiplied. Understanding how to take advantage of these authentic advocates is key to a beauty brand’s success, especially, Collins notes, for smaller brands that don’t have the budget to net a big celebrity. 

TIP 3: PERSONALIZE THE EXPERIENCE

In a Sephora store one afternoon, a beauty consultant swabbed my face clear of any makeup, like a nurse disinfecting a patient. She held up a Color IQ light sensor to my forehead, cheek, and neck, trying to determine which cosmetic products, from creams to powders to cream foundations, would most perfectly match my skin tone.  A list of two dozen products came up on a screen, and the same list was emailed to me for future reference. It’s no surprise that I walked out with a new product. The experience was Sephora + Pantone Color IQ, which matches a Pantone reading of your face with a list of products that should complement your skin tone. This is one of the ways that Sephora is making the retail experience better through a combination of technology and personalization. 

“It really begins with consumer insight,” says Deborah Yeh, marketing vice president at Sephora. “One of the most challenging problems a woman faces in her beauty routine is finding the right foundation. We have seen clients try up to seven foundations before they find the perfect match,” she says. Since introducing the program last year, Sephora has seen improvements in two key metrics. Sales of foundation went up, and measures of customer satisfaction, known as Sephora Love scores, “went up significantly” among people who had tried Color IQ. 

“It really is killer information,” Yeh says. “We now know what skin tones are representative of the Sephora population. We also have a database that has a really good understanding of the foundations available in prestige beauty, which gives us an opportunity to find gaps where we are underserving or overserving clients.” The program is still expanding, as Yeh’s team tries to increase awareness. People can get their Color IQ taken at different times of the year, as their skin tone changes. There’s also talk of extending the Color IQ to different products, such as concealer.

“Beauty is an industry with a lot of rich personal information: skin tone, skin type, and different tastes and preferences,” Yeh notes. “One of the most exciting things for me is seeing how all this information is starting to become something we can track at the client 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,” explains CEO Ric Kostick. “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 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.