Digital-first make-up brand, ICONIC London has partnered with Wunderkind to grow its Direct-To-Consumer (DTC) capabilities and drive online revenue growth.
Founded in 2015, ICONIC London is known for its hugely popular ‘glowy’ make-up products, designed to help wearers feel as good as they look with instant, ‘Instagrammable’ effects. The digital-first make-up brand was born on social media and is a favourite among celebrities, including Beyoncé and Khloe Kardashian, celebrity make-up artists and social influencers. It has already amassed over 1.7million followers on Instagram and more than 288k followers on TikTok. With its strategy to always launch a ‘look’ with a product, ICONIC London regularly goes viral on social media, as was the case with its Illuminator, which sold > 1 million units worldwide and racked up over 700 reviews in December 2023, having being hailed as the Kardashians’ ‘secret’ to glowing party season skin.
ICONIC London’s growth has historically been propelled forward partly by key partnerships, including with LookFantastic in the UK and with beauty giants Sephora and ULTA Beauty in the U.S. However, since the pandemic, when the brand saw enormous growth of its Direct-To-Consumer (DTC) business, there’s been an increased drive to develop the DTC channel further through greater ownership of customer data and first-party audiences. This has become an even greater priority in the context of increased competition as other beauty brands also increasingly seek to pivot to DTC models using social media engagement.
Additionally, because ICONIC London’s products and campaigns go viral so frequently on social media, this generates high volumes of traffic to the brand’s website – the majority of which is anonymous. Whilst this is ostensibly a great problem to have, the challenge is that anonymous visitors can’t be re-engaged and retargeted directly. For ICONIC London, it was therefore critical to be able to capture all that demand, ensuring new website visitors are opted into the brand’s marketing communications while also accurately identifying anonymised return customers to better re-target and convert them in future campaigns. ICONIC London partnered with Wunderkind to help address this challenge.
Wunderkind is a performance marketing solution, powered purely by AI, first party data and identity. Wunderkind drives – and guarantees – new digital revenue for retailers by identifying more anonymous website traffic. By matching user devices back to an email address in real-time (without relying on cookies), Wunderkind’s technology can dramatically scale the reach of 1-to-1 retargeting via personalised, triggered email and SMS, reaching audiences that no retailer or brand can do on their own.
By leveraging Wunderkind’s proprietary Identity Network, ICONIC London was able to identify a greater proportion of non-logged-in or anonymous website traffic – unlocking untapped retargeting potential and driving increased conversions and revenues.
Kathleen Loftus, global digital director at ICONIC London, commented: “When we capture emails, that is like gold to us, because we can then speak one-to-one with customers in a way you can’t with channels such as paid media or TikTok videos. So, for us to know that someone’s interested – based on where they have shown interest in various places on our website – and then speak directly to them, is crucial, giving us segments and levers for these customers to pull when needed.”
By de-anonymising ICONIC London’s website traffic, Wunderkind was able to deliver a 4x uplift in marketable contact opt-ins, while elevating submit rates (email captures) to 9.9 per cent. And, by helping the brand optimise engagement with its ‘owned’ audiences through personalisation, Wunderkind boosted conversion rates to 7.4 per cent, driving a 6x uplift in last-click revenue from email.
“Before we implemented Wunderkind, we were leaving a lot of money on the table,” Loftus continued. “Customers were coming to us from various sources, but unless they were logged into their Shopify account, we weren’t able to know who was there to even speak to them. Now, we’re able to know who’s coming to the site and then be proactive with marketing to them. We’ve had amazing success with Wunderkind, who didn’t just help reach our goals; we’ve surpassed them!”
Wulfic Light-Wilkinson, international general manager of Wunderkind, commented: “It’s been a privilege to help ICONIC London build on their already formidable success and contribute towards the sustainable growth of their DTC channel. We were delighted to see our joint efforts recognised recently with the ‘Retail Partnership of the Year’ prize at the 2024 Retail Systems Awards – and we look forward to continuing to build on the partnership in the future. ”
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