How 5 US beauty brands are using data to grow their revenue
Originally published on Solve’s site here.
At Solve, we’re fortunate to be working with leading modern beauty brands by helping them collect first party data to generate insights about their customers and products. First party data is becoming increasingly important in the beauty industry, as customers continue to demand personalised beauty experiences which can be difficult to execute whilst scaling. Data allows brands to make better decisions across the value chain regarding products, formulas, packaging and better customer targeting. Below we’ve highlighted five key beauty brands that are leading the way in generating insights from direct relationships with their customers to grow their business.
1. Crown Affair
Launched as an extension of the founder’s own hair care routine, Crown Affair is a hair care line which focuses on ritual. In an interview with Nylon, founder Dianna Cohen emphasised the importance of community in building her brand: “a huge part of this brand is being able to bring community together, and [provide] a platform for people to share their experiences”. The company had a focus group of over 50 women with a broad range of hair types prior to the launch. The company fosters community through candid interviews and blog posts highlighting different hair care routines, the importance of slowing down, and ritual.
- Founder quote: “I’ve learned that your first hundred customers are your people. It’s about building that community of customers from an influencer perspective.” — Dianna Cohen
- Insight: Develop customer loyalty in the early stages of brand building. Find your core customers, listen to them, and growth will follow.
- Top product: The Towel
2. Wander Beauty
Wander Beauty is a skincare and makeup company dedicated to multitasking clean beauty essentials for women on the go. Co-founder Divya Gugnani said the brand’s communication tactics have shifted from a “batch and blast” approach to personalisation, by focusing on customer interests, site behaviour and purchase history. The brand is focused on building meaningful relationships with their customers and has even used customer submissions to co-create an eyeshadow palette!
- Founder quote: “Listening to your customers can be a strong way to understand how to speak, when to speak and what to say. [You can] ultimately drive immense revenue by having more tailored, personalized communications with both your team and your community,” — Divya Gugnani
- Insight: Be intelligent about communication and understand how different client groups want to communicate with your brand.
- Top product: On-the-Glow Blush and Illuminator
3. Versed Skin
The skin-care brand Versed Skin has been data-driven since its conception. Prior to launch, Versed leveraged parent company Clique Brand’s private Facebook group to gather information about preferences regarding packaging, price and formula. The brand continues to gather customer data through its ‘Skin Hotline’ where customers can ask questions about different products and better understand client needs and interests. The Versed website also has a ‘Skin Decoder Quiz’ allowing customers to receive personalised skincare recommendations based on their skin type, lifestyle and goals.
- Founder quote: “We looked at the data from over 16 million women across our entire audience, and 7,000 people actively participated in the creation of the brand.” — Katherine Power
- Insight: Develop products by directly asking consumers what they want. If you can, leverage an existing community.
- Top product: Instant Resurfacing Mask
4. Fekkai
Hair care brand Fekkai doubled down on e-commerce sales during the pandemic. The brand has continued to connect with and understand their customers by launching an AI-enabled hair tool on their website. The tool provides personalised product recommendations to users by analysing their hair length, colour and texture, and asking about hair concerns, goals and the user’s location. Beyond personalisation, this tool aids Fekkai in product development as the company has access to data including geography, hair concerns and hair types. The brand can craft customer profiles and continuously provide new recommendations if the individual’s circumstances change, such as moving to a new city or dying their hair.
- Founder quote: “I want to be the Tesla of sustainable luxury haircare” — Frédéric Fekkai
- Insight: Creating data rich customer profiles allows companies to better service customers with changing needs and environments
- Top product: Shampoo Moisturizing Hi-Shine
5. Prose
Prose is a hair care company which provides personalised formulas to each customer. By introducing a post-purchase survey called Review and Refine, the company has been able to better understand which products are working and improve subsequent order recommendations. The online quiz has resulted in an increase in the brand’s net promoter score from 27/100 to 70/100. The Review and Refine questionnaire changes slightly each month, including different or updated questions and suggestions. The brand also launched a new curl cream in January 2020 as a direct result of the questionnaire!
- Founder quote: “We are bringing the network effect to consumer products. The more customers we have, the more feedback we get, and then we can continue to improve customer satisfaction.” — Arnaud Plas
- Insight: Invest in customer feedback loops to drive repeat spend and develop new products
- Top product: Custom Curl Cream
Solve is the first real time data warehouse and CDP platform that is owned by the customer as opposed to 3rd party SaaS. By enabling companies to be the primary collector of their own data, and owning all that data in-house, we’re able to help you collect more data, make smarter decisions and accelerate revenue growth. Please contact us for a demo here.
