Self. Less.

Sephora, Sephora, Sephora! According to Wikipedia, Sephora is owned by luxury conglomerate LVMH as of 1997. The Sephora logo is a white “S”-shaped flame against a black background. The name comes from the Greek spelling of Zipporah (Greek: Σεπφώρα, Sepphōra), wife of Moses.

In November 2018, Sephora and Google released and shared this case study on how they had used Analytics 360, a Google product to analyse and connect data. Here’s where the marketing of cosmetics becomes a science, and data scientists pull overnighters just to figure out the intricacies of reaching YOU. Yes, you.

Founded in 1969, beauty giant Sephora operates 2,300 stores in more than 30 countries around the world, including 17 stores in Singapore and Greater Southeast Asia. The brand’s digital team was confident that its efforts were driving store visits, but it had no way to prove the offline impact of its online ads. Looking to better understand the purchase journeys of its loyal customers, Sephora turned to Analytics 360.

Clarifying the purchase journey with Analytics 360

The key to bridging the gap was Sephora’s customer loyalty program. The brand worked with the Google account team to integrate and analyze data across in-store purchases and online transactions. Using Google Marketing Platform,¹ the team was able to see from a specific Google Ads² campaign level which loyalty members made purchases both on the Sephora website and at brick-and-mortar locations.

Source: Think with Google

So what was so revealing about this case study, was the habits of consumers. Sephora’s digital team was able to hone into an insight that over 4 out of 10 of customers that made a purchase in a Sephora physical store, had visited the website (50% of the visits were on a mobile phone) to check out the product 24 hours before. It’s data like this that helps brands like Sephora stay so fast ahead of its game, and is likely the No. 1 retailer in the Asia Pacific region and no surprise, it’s French! The French truly dominate when it comes to the luxury feel good experience.

From Sephora championing retail, let’s take a sneak peek at one of the reasons why Sephora’s offline retail is doing so well…

It’s tourism!

In a report by World Tourism Organisation (WTO), international tourist arrivals have increased from 25 million globally in 1950 to 278 million in 1980, 674 million in 2000, and 1,235 million in 2016. The Asia Pacific region accounts for 30 per cent of the world’s international tourism receipts. For full article on the WTO report, read it here: The Star

As one of the growing economic sectors across the world, tourism brings in dollars from visitors into a particular destination especially if that destination has popular retail brands and in Malaysia’s case, we understand the top brands include Sephora, SaSa, Vincci shoes etc.

Take a look at this Paris shopping experience vlog by Ericas Girly World:

All of these experiences from the moment an email is pushed to you, helps you make retail decisions so much easier! Their marketers have created such amazing experiences, adding personal touch points via email or text and social media so that there’s hardly any reason to decline that feel good moment, making it effortless and even creating a feeling that you’re benefiting the world while making an impact to humanity in pursuit of a self pampering in-store moment. 

And imagine, all of this was inspired by the biblical Zipphorah, the woman who stood up to God and saved Moses. 

By the way, beauty marketers… Did you know that video makeup tutorials in YouTube are one of the biggest genres with females reportedly primarily watching beauty videos. In 2017 beauty-related content views on YouTube were 88 billion. To understand the rate of growth in the online beauty industry, consider how in 2016 the annual views were 55 billion. While Sephora’s 1 million+ subscribers may seem impressive at first, it must be mentioned that individual make-up artists on YouTube have over 12 million subscribers, have been given opportunities to start their own brands with companies like L’Oreal, and there are over 5,000 different YouTube channels with over 1 million subscribers. A 2016 Refinery29 articlediscussed how the online presence of beauty content, specifically on YouTube, had changed consumer habits. Consumers now look to YouTube beauty gurus to decide which products to buy, often searching for multiple product reviews and tutorials before buying. Sephora knows this and has decided to try to capitalize on it. Adding voice command control so consumers can follow along without having to interrupt their makeup application will only help to grow the brand’s own presence on YouTube. Source: Voicebot.ai