Adore Beauty boosts customer engagement by 400%

Challenge:
Adore Beauty needed to replicate the in-store experience as closely as possible without compromising on customer satisfaction. To optimise the purchasing journey, Adore Beauty would have to collate and activate real-time user browsing data and offer a personalised experience unattainable on the high-street.

Solution:
Using a combination of Tealium iQ™ Tag Management, EventStream™ and AudienceStream™, Adore Beauty was able to gather and optimise customer data to increase engagement, average order values and, ultimately, revenue.

Results:
Adore Beauty has increased its engagement rate by 400%, boosted its conversion rate by 17% and grown its revenue by 249% since launch.

Optimal customer service would require optimised data

Adore Beauty is Australia’s leading online beauty retailer with a catalogue of over 15,000 products across over 200 cosmetics brands, serving more than a million transactions a year. Adore Beauty has a unique market proposition in providing beauty consultation services in a subtle and seamless way across its digital channels, aimed at avoiding the traditionally intimidating cosmetics floor.

This ethos has been built into company communications from day one, but Adore Beauty sought to extend this into its lifecycle marketing by analysing real-time customer behaviours.

Dan Ferguson, Chief Marketing Officer at Adore Beauty shared, “We understood from very early on that the golden ticket to a fully personalised customer journey would be data. We needed a tool which could gather hyper-relevant data, translate that into tailor-made advice and recommendations and blow our bricks and mortar competitors out of the water.”

Adore Beauty’s Founder, Kate Morris, wanted to replicate the in-store experience as closely as possible and was adamant the company would not compromise on the end result. But, without the ability to read body language to help deliver product advice, Adore Beauty sought a way to convert these soft signals into something that could be read online.

Using real-time browsing data to activate customer purchasing power
In 2017, Adore Beauty called on Tealium to help collect and activate data which would help them get to know their customers, deliver personalised advice, and ultimately convert to sales.

Leveraging real-time data collated by a combination of Tealium iQ and Tealium EventStream, Adore Beauty rolled out the nurture campaign, Guided Solutions – Concern Areas . The campaign’s focus was to deliver advice to customers with skin and hair concerns by harnessing recent browsing behaviour data.

The quality data sets gathered by Tealium iQ and EventStream were then optimised through AudienceStream, providing Adore Beauty with an optimal data supply chain from collection to engagement. This newly optimised data meant that Adore Beauty could identify browsing activity that demonstrated intent signals for these skin and hair concern areas. If so, customers were then served with targeted and relevant email communications to encourage further consideration and purchases.

The nurture campaign was extremely effective as a real-time marketing tactic because it allowed customers to decide what’s best for them by delivering beauty facts and not opinions. With customers more willing to go on a journey of discovery completely online vs finding the best deal, it took an insightled approach – informed by real-time user browsing data – to put the power back into the customer hands during their purchase journey. 

To fully bring this initiative to life, collaboration across several stakeholders including email marketing and IT teams was required, as well as strategic partners and technology vendors. By starting with the skin and hair concern areas that were driving the most revenue by themselves, the opportunity was seized to determine how much more could be driven incrementally by prioritising these categories into nurture track communications.

Driven by the success of the nurture campaign, Adore Beauty identified additional opportunities and is building out content to support additional targeted, triggered communications.

Ferguson shared “Being able to harness data in this way opens up several channels of communication we previously didn’t have. This means being able to connect with our customers on a more personal level and meet their needs and expectations as a customer.”

For example, when a product is in low supply or even out of stock, Adore Beauty can use this information to activate email or social targeting using Tealium’s AudienceStream solution. On the other hand, if a customer leaves items in their cart or adds a product to their wish list, Tealium is able to use this data to elevate this information to a real life representative through the website’s live chat function. Then, as personal as the in-store experience, the Adore Beauty representative can offer advice and assistance without the customer having to wait in line.

Tealium was also able to leverage data to interpret behavioural signals and convert them to product recommendations, by using AudienceStream to connect the dots. “What really wowed us was Tealium’s ability to translate body language to digital signals that could be interpreted online,” shared Ferguson. “Our customers expect a fully personalised experience but the fact that we can now deliver a service recommending specific acne treatments based purely on our customer’s recent searches is game-changing for us.”

Blowing the high street out of the water with unprecedented engagement and revenue figures

Since partnering with Tealium, Adore Beauty has seen an unprecedented rise not only in revenue, but customer engagement, too. Adore Beauty prides itself on prioritising the shopping experience of its customers but considers this leap in revenue a welcome biproduct of its newly revolutionised bespoke service offering.

In terms of campaign optimisation, the Guided Solutions campaign alone drives both incremental revenue and additional consideration across Adore Beauty’s anti-ageing, blackhead treatment and hair care products. There are currently seven Guided Solutions campaigns running in-market, triggered by real-time product interest, which accounts for an average 27% increase in revenue month-on-month, and a 249% increase in revenue since launch.

What’s more, Adore Beauty’s email engagement rates are performing stronger than ever. Since the establishment of triggered communications based on customer behaviour patterns, the open-rate is now 109% higher than it was, the click-rate is an incredible 400% higher and the click-through rate is 136% higher than before the Tealium partnership.

“Through the partnership with Tealium, Adore Beauty has surpassed its engagement goals exponentially. Our average order value is up 9% than before the implementation of AudienceStream, and our conversion rates have rocketed by 17%.”

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