Clarins turns to real-time marketing solution


Clarins turns to real-time marketing solution

Skincare and makeup brand, Clarins, has driven online performance and grown email revenue with a solution from Wunderkind (formerly BounceX).

Clarins has been a household name in skincare and beauty since its creation by Jacques Courtin in 1954. In striking a balance between its heritage and its emphasis on ingredient innovation, Clarins continues to develop and optimise a high-quality product selection that is beloved by customers around the world. Despite its strong brand equity, in recent years Clarins has faced many of the challenges experienced by other beauty and luxury retailers. Consumers have moved away from buying and sampling products on the High Street, choosing instead to browse and buy online. The beauty and skincare space continues to fragment due to the entrance of newer niche brands, as consumers also move to online marketplaces for label variety and convenience.

This shift to digital has been accelerated by COVID-19, with many shoppers having to turn to eCommerce channels for their beauty buys while non-essential retail remained closed: Kantar reported that in May online beauty sales soared 100 per cent, with online sales overtaking beauty buys made on the High Street for the first time.

Faced with the rising cost of customer acquisition, Clarins sought to build a high-quality, engaged CRM program by deploying a more effective and efficient retargeting strategy that would increase the value of customers on that list. Partnering with Wunderkind, Clarins leveraged the behavioural marketing solution’s real-time identity network and technology to better recognise a larger portion of their site traffic down to an email. Importantly, this wasn’t just about growing database volume, but also increasing the quality of acquired customers and adding engaged shoppers to Clarins’ list who had demonstrated purchase intent by showing interest on-site, as Emilie Maunoury, Digital, eCommerce and CRM director at Clarins, explained:

“Everyone I met with gave me ideas for quickly acquiring customers, but I knew I wasn’t getting the quality I wanted. When Wunderkind was presented to me, I thought, ‘Oh my god, this is brilliant.’ Now, I’m adding people to my list who have been showing interest in my site and intent to buy; it just makes sense. To me, that was the biggest Wunderkind selling point—quality growth.”

With an increased database, which grew five-fold in six months, Clarins then turned its attention to finding ways to leverage this data and create new ways to optimise each visitor that landed on its homepage.  Working with Wunderkind, they were able to adopt a dynamic remarketing and triggered email strategy, which mirrored how consumers were behaving on-site. The Clarins site provides consumers with a wealth of information and product education, and Wunderkind triggered emails provided a consistent, brand-right way of nurturing customers, which saw opens, clicks, and conversions double the rate of the brand’s previous program.

This enabled the skincare brand to grow its revenue from triggered email by 13X, while fitting in with the rest of Clarins’ channel strategy.

“When I look at the investments in acquisition channels, I can easily say that Wunderkind is the most efficient medium I have. It’s the biggest return of all channels and the best investment I’ve made this year,” Maunoury added.

Jacqueline Abernathy, AVP  customer success at Wunderkind (formerly BounceX), commented: “While many eCommerce brands have seen the digital shift accelerate during lockdown, online spending has remained buoyed even as stores have re-opened.  The online beauty industry has seen a seismic change in how shoppers want to buy—what was once an in-store purchase has become the preserve of digital beauty buys.

“This shift places extra emphasis on creating online experiences that support the brand personality, all while giving consumers the confidence to convert. As we have seen, having a personalised, relevant shopping experience is critical to achieving that.  By working with Clarins to better identify customers on-site, we have enabled the brand to grow their quality lists and create personal interactions that support the shopper from first-look to discovery, and even right through to the checkout,” she concluded.

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