From offering soothing facial oils to helping manage major skin concerns, the relationship between beauty retailers and their customers goes far beyond surface level. In fact, it can be a very personal connection, where retailers like Adore Beauty are offering products to help customers take time out for themselves or treat delicate skin issues. 

In a traditional brick-and-mortar store, a customer would be able to receive product recommendations specifically catered to their needs from a helpful sales assistant. 

But in an e-commerce environment, it can be tricky offering that same in-depth, personalised experience – unless you know how to leverage your customer data. This is the challenge online retailer Adore was faced with three years ago.

“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,” said Dan Ferguson, chief marketing officer at Adore Beauty. 

So Adore teamed up with expert customer data platform Tealium to work on a skincare campaign, which focused on delivering advice to customers with skin and hair concerns by harnessing recent browsing behaviour data. With the help of the in-depth datasets gathered by Tealium, Adore could then identify if customers were searching for skin and hair products, then serve them targeted EDMs to help them on their buying journey.

“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,” said Ferguson. “With customers more willing to go on a journey of discovery completely online versus finding the best deal, it took an insight-led approach – informed by real-time user browsing data – to put the power back into the customer’s hands during their purchase journey.” 

As a result of its work with Tealium, Adore Beauty increased its engagement rate by 400 per cent, boosted its conversion rate by 17 per cent and grew its revenue by 249 per cent.

“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,” said Ferguson.

Why data is the answer

It’s no secret that e-commerce has skyrocketed since Covid hit and even when physical stores open again, it’s clear that online shopping behaviour won’t return to pre-pandemic levels. Customers expect more from retailers than ever before, from offering personalised experiences to understanding their shopping behaviour. Leveraging data analytics is the key to getting cut-through in a modern retail environment.

Hyper-personalisation has been a major trend in retail for several years, but retailers still struggle to offer the right message at the right time to consumers, said Marie Dalton, VP Marketing APJ at Tealium.

“Retailers are under enormous pressure and the competition is fierce. Data sets are often fragmented and sit within different departments and data points continue to grow at an exponential rate. This presents enormous challenges to retailers,” she observed.

“To deliver shopping experiences that stand out, brands must understand customers through their data and put that understanding at the heart of every experience they create. Retailers are looking to provide personalisation at scale in order to form long-term, meaningful relationships with customers across multiple channels and brand identities.” 

The benefits of choosing a customer data platform

Now more than ever, it is critical for retailers to have the ability to implement a first party data strategy. We have all heard the phrase that data is now more valuable than oil, but this is only true if there is data orchestration and the ability to access it in a timely fashion across the organisation to derive that value. Here are some of the ways that a customer data platform can boost your business:

1. Single customer view: To use data, the first step is collecting it, then resolving the identity behind it to understand it. Even common offline data, like POS or loyalty data, contains valuable insights for digitally-enabled shopping experiences. 
2. Audience suppression: Understand the full customer journey and reduce wasted ad spend by removing in-store shoppers from digital campaigns and offers, removing non-converters from campaigns, and much more. 
3. Cart abandonment improvement: With real-time event data and complete customer profiles, marketers can improve cart abandonment campaigns by acting on that event in real-time and ultimately getting customers to complete their purchase
4. Personalisation: Personalise the omnichannel shopping experience before, during, and after purchases are made using segments like VIPs, cart abandoners, loyalty club members etc.
5. Predictive audiences and insights: Quickly predict high and low value customers, then take appropriate action. Predict high value customers and provide them a tailored experience to better convert, or predict low value customers and exclude them from certain efforts to optimise budget. 

With a CDP in place to unify customer data across channels in real-time, retailers of any size have a more in-depth understanding of their customers to enhance the customer experience and deliver in-the-moment marketing across every channel.

If you’d like to find out how Tealium can  help your business connect its data, click here.