Sephora is doubling its marketing budget for new digital initiatives like social media, video, and mobile. It currently uses various touchpoints like stores, its website, Beauty Insider loyalty program, and shops within JCPenney. In 2010, its key marketing mix elements included print ads, direct mail, promotions, animations, email, search/display ads, and social media like Facebook, Beauty Talk, Twitter, and YouTube. It launched a mobile app but it had slow download issues and only supported iPhone. Sephora is exploring new opportunities like aggregators, collaborative relationships, and cross-branding as it seeks to define the optimal marketing mix and KPIs going forward.

1. SEPHORA DIRECT-INVESTING IN SOCIAL MEDIA, VIDEO AND MOBILE

2. OVERVIEW
Sephora is doubling the marketing budget for new digital
initiatives. It needs to define the optimal marketing mix and
KPIs

3. ABOUTSEPHORA Parent Company
1969
1998Started in
Product Range
Cosmetics
Fragrances
Hair
Skin Care
SEPHOS + ZIPPORAH
Pretty + Moses’s Beautiful wife
Brand Name
Origin

4. KEY
TOUCHPOINTS
Sephora Stores Sephora.com
Beauty Insider
Sephora
inside JC
Penney

5. STORES
Vibrant stores that encourage trial and
experimentation

6. SEPHORA.COM

7. BEAUTY INSIDER

8. SEPHORAINSIDEJCPENNEY

9. • 1000 stores in 23 countries
• 288 brands were offered, representing over
20,000 products
• Classic lines such as Clinique and Lancome to
emerging brands such as Urban Decay and
Too Faced (except Chanel and MAC cosmetics)
• Pricing was identical to that of departmental
stores
• Promotions involved offering samples rather
than discounting
• Private label products in nearly every
category
• Target market in 2010 was 25-35 year old
women many of who “grew up” with the
company
SEPHORAUSAIN2010

10. COMPETITION
Department Stores
Single Brand Prestige
Beauty Stores
Multi-brand Specialty
Stores
Large online merchants
Online Companies

11. SEPHORA’S MARKETING PLAN

12. CUSTOMERRELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT- BEAUTY INSIDER
80% sales from Beauty
Insiders

13. KEY ELEMENTS OF THE 2010 MARKETING MIX
Store Window
Merchandising
32 page print catalogs sent to a portion
of Sephora’s beauty insiders three times
a year
Print Ads in Magazines

14. KEY ELEMENTS OF THE 2010 MARKETING MIX
Sephora Direct Mail
Pieces to Beauty Insiders
Two major sales/Promotions
Free gifts for
beauty insiders

15. KEY ELEMENTS OF THE 2010 MARKETING MIX
ANIMATIONS:
For store windows
and Sephora’s
homepage

16. KEY ELEMENTS OF THE 2010 MARKETING MIX
Email Marketing to
Beauty Insiders
Online Search
Advertising and
Online display
advertising

17. Core of Sephora’s Communication
STORE CONNECT
Sephora.com
Social
Media
Mobile app

18. ALL ABOUT SEPHORA.COM
Encouraged site
visitors to purchase
online
• Launched in 1999
• 15-20% of Sephora USA
sales in 2010.
• Benefits- Higher
margins, lower
overhead costs
• Statistics:
• 3 million unique visitors
to site each month
making Sephora one of
the top 50 retail sites in
the U.S
• In 2010, Sephora.com
had 310,000 visits each
day, 11 page views per
visit

19. • Improving site conversion
• Increasing traffic from
online search results
• Keeping clients for longer
durations on the site
• Reducing returns
• Lowering call center visits
• Encouraging repeat visits
FORAYINGINTO SOCIALMEDIA
RATINGSANDREVIEWS

20. • By Late 2009, the consumer
behavior online had shifted,
with 16% of all online time
spent with social media
• Sephora created a Facebook
“fan page” for its clients
who wanted to follow
Sephora and communicate
with the company and each
other online
FORAYINGINTO SOCIALMEDIA
FACEBOOK
• Clients used FB to let Sephora know when they were
out of products or if they had a bad experience at a
store
• Served as a forum for Sephora to do consumer
research and get client feedback
• Contests, sweepstakes, Sephora Claus (Wish list)
PURPOSE

21. • Question and answer forum with strong search
functionality
• Launched as a Beta site in September 2010
• Reasons why this was launched:
• Launched due to a lack of archival capacity on Facebook
• A survey conducted in 2009, found that respondents would be
very interested in a central place to ask beauty questions
• Vision: Safe and Private environment where clients could
anonymously ask personal questions and get quick
responses from Sephora experts or other members of the
Sephora community
• “more organized version of Facebook”
FORAYINGINTO SOCIALMEDIA
BEAUTY
TALK

22. BEAUTY
TALK
• Leaderboard- 35 different levels
• Users who posted frequently
had a symbol identifying them
as a “beauty master” or
“beauty maven”
• New users may have a symbol
labeling them as a “newcomer”
• VIB clients had a VIB symbol
next to their names

23. • Problem of Promotion and blending with the Facebook
site
• Additional work would require more funding
• Early usage of Beauty Talk was not as high as the initial
interest in ratings and reviews
• More in-depth and less well-understood experience
BEAUTY
TALK
PROBLEMS WITH BEAUTY TALK

24. TWITTER
FORAYINGINTO SOCIALMEDIA
#SEPHORA
By September 2010, approx. 100,000 users were “following”
Sephora on Twitter
Purpose:
Spread news about promotions, contests, events and other timely
information
Was used as a communication channel during the Sephora Claus
sweepstakes

25. SEPHORA ON
YOUTUBE
100 videos that generated over 3
million views
CONTENT BUCKETS FOR VIDEO
• “How to”
• Hot Trends
• Short segments by founders of up and
coming cosmetic companies
USER GENERATED CONTENT
Make Up Tutorials, Recent shopping Hauls from Sephora stores

26. PLATFORMS &
SERVICES
Shop
Shopping list
Past purchases
New products
Today’s obsession
Mobile offers
Store locator
Videos
Ratings & reviews
Gift registry
Beauty advice
Beauty Insider

27. BENEFITS
&
COMPLAINTS
A mobile app could
help clients while
shopping in stores
Increase in-store
purchases
Some of the app
features were too
slow to download
Sole Focus on IPhone

28. NEW OPPORTUNITIES
AGGREGATORS COLLABORATIVE
RELATIONSHIP
CROSS BRANDING
OPPORTUNITIES

29. THE QUESTION-WAY FORWARD?