Sephora is a beauty empire. With over 2,600 stores in 36 countries [1], it has bucked retail trends by opening over 1,000 new stores and expanded into 12 new countries over the last decade [4].
Starting with a single store in Limoges, France in 1970 [2], it has been an innovator from the outset. It pioneered the concept of ‘try before you buy’ by allowing customers to test products before buying [3].
Owned by the luxury goods conglomerate LVMH since 1997 [3], Sephora is not only a multi-brand retailer but it is a brand in its own right [5]. It sells more than 78,000 products [4] from 300+ brands [1], employing 39,000 staff worldwide [4].
Its success lies in its mastery of bringing offline and online customer journeys together into a holistic shopping experience. A key part of that is its Beauty Insider community. In this deep dive, we break down how it has achieved omnichannel success while its many high street competitors have failed, and the role played by community in this.
✔️ Origin Story: How Sephora and its Beauty Insider community got started.
✔️ Omnichannel Alignment: How community is used as part of its Any Time, Anywhere on Any Device strategy.
✔️ Key Growth Programs: What made its community site the go-to destination for beauty enthusiasts and how this delivers business growth.
✔️ Return on Community: The value created for members and it derives from its community efforts.
It’s going to be fabulous 💅
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Sephora has created a truly world-class omnichannel approach [1]. Its goal is to enable customers to shop without constraints: Any Time, Anywhere on Any Device [4].
From in-depth research into customer needs and behaviors, Sephora has crafted a uniquely customer-centric business model and marketing strategy [1]. Its blend of in-store experience and online platforms has redefined the high-end cosmetic shopping experience [6] and delivered sustained growth [1].
As Sylvie Moreau, President of Europe & Middle East at Sephora says, “The future of the beauty retail experience lies in bringing the best of both worlds together” and 5M people visit its stores, website, or mobile app every day [5].
Sephora’s strategy focuses on four self-proclaimed superpowers: curation, celebration, community, and culture [5].
The place where you can see these superpowers come together is in its stores. Sephora locations are both within stores, like Kohl’s and JCPenney’s, as well as in stand-alone locations. They’re a digital playground - infused with mobile technologies, screens, and augmented reality (AR) to create an interactive experience. Store assistants are armed with iPads to show off an array of product variations, like with its ‘Color IQ’ AR capability, enabling customers to virtually try different colors and shades before they buy [1].
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Sylvie explains that they view its stores as “social hubs… So of course they drive revenues, but they are also driving emotions, experiences, and community as well” [5]. Their beauty advisors curate in-store experiences for customers to try products and they even provide makeup applications [2]. Such experiences have made its stores a destination - its Champs Élysées store attracts over six million people a year, for example [1].
They’ve made its website and mobile apps a similarly appealing destination. The Sephora website gets 60m visitors a month. While its mobile app not only serves up a huge range of products, but also video tutorials, celebrity news, and fashion trends to encourage its customers to return [1].
Many retailers have an omnichannel strategy, yet few have achieved the success that Sephora has seen. In no small part, this is due to its holistic approach. They’ve not only joined its online and offline strategies but they’ve also merged its data and integrated its teams, too.
Using Google Analytics 360 Suite they identified how people go from its online properties to its brick-and-mortar stores [1]. Head of Data for LVMH Adrien Eudes explains [6]:
"We decided to start sending our offline purchases to our Analytics 360 account to connect these purchases to existing journeys… This illuminated which online research pathways finally led to a sale, whether online or offline."
The big takeaway from this effort was that 70% of customers who visited their website before heading to a store to buy something did that within 24 hours. Plus, over half of these visitors did so from a mobile device [6]. So a focus for its mobile app and website became giving customers the support they needed to make confident purchases, whether online or in-store. Something community can help with.
In business, especially in retail, customer loyalty is key. An existing customer has a 60-70% conversion rate for additional purchases [42] and they’re also more likely to spend more [26]. Nobody knows this better than Sephora. Sephora’s loyalty program, Beauty Insider, was first launched in 2007 and now has more than 31M members in the U.S. alone [43]. It enables members to earn points to receive discounts, free products, and other exclusive benefits [25]. Its loyalty program members now account for a massive 80% of its sales [2].
Its loyalty program has gained a cult-like following [44] and enthusiastic members create a ton of content around it in the form of product recommendation videos. For example, KathleenLights regularly posts Beauty Insider sale recommendation videos which get hundreds of thousands of views [44]. From the quality of the products offered to its special Birthday gifts and smart multi-tier reward system, its members love everything about the program.
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Its program has evolved over the years. First, in 2009, they added the Very Important Beauty Insider (VIB) tier [16] - given to customers with a minimum spend of $350 a year [44]. Then in 2013, they added ‘Rouge’ - a higher tier for those spending $1,000+ [16]. The tiers have proven to be an effective way to motivate customers to reach the next milestone and spend more as a result [45]. In 2016, they added the Rewards Bazaar - a single place across its app and website where members can redeem their points. It’s updated every Tuesday and Thursday with new samples, services, and experiences [16]. They’ve been expanding the experiential component of the program in recent years [15] by adding more exclusive in-person events and treatments as rewards.
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Bridget Dolan, VP of Interactive Media at Sephora, says its loyalty program is the key to its success, calling it “One of the smartest things Sephora has done” [44]. Doubling down on its success is what led Sephora to create the Beauty Insider community.
While the Beauty Insider community got started in 2017, Sephora has had some form of owned community platform since 2010 [7]. As Community expert Kerri Willians points out “They were so far ahead of the curve with their vision” - no retailer was going this deep with community back then [11]. Sephora has since built a passionate community of beauty lovers around its platform.
One big part of its community strategy is in driving loyalty so the community is closely integrated with its loyalty program. Allegra Krishnan, then VP of Loyalty programs at Sephora, says [15]:
“Research has found that almost 75% of what drives customer engagement and loyalty are emotional perks. Now more than ever customers, especially the younger generations, decide to engage with brands based on emotional loyalty drivers.”
These emotional drivers are things like happiness, trust, surprise, delight, anticipation, and pride. Community was a natural fit to help stoke and sustain these emotional drivers. To fully engage in the community, members must be part of the Beauty Insider loyalty program [17].
Another key part of its community strategy is education. Sephora has long invested in providing as much relevant information as possible to its customers. From product education tips to full ingredient lists, the goal is to build customer confidence through education [1]. It also hits at a common pain point that shoppers face, especially online, where they buy a cosmetic product that isn't right for them. Sending things back is a frustrating experience for customers and a big cost for Sephora, too. So its content aims to inform customers so they can make better purchase decisions [6]. Community bolsters these education efforts. It does this directly - by providing customers with a place to ask for advice. But also indirectly, too, by adding an ‘Explore this Product’ section to product listings, which adds in community knowledge to its product pages [1].
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A big part of the value its community provides to members is helping them navigate the enormous number of products available to look and feel even more fabulous [8]. This is achieved primarily through user-generated content and social proof, which not only creates engagement but results in trust and credibility [9]. As a multi-brand retailer, Sephora is seen as brand agnostic and a neutral source of information on beauty products [9]. Essentially, its community helps Sephora unlock a sense of authenticity by giving customers direct access to real people’s reviews and opinions rather than only its marketing [10].
“As we learned more about our clients, we saw the opportunity for beauty lovers to come together, ask questions, post inspirational beauty looks, and get product recommendations, not just from us but for them to share with each other,” explains Allegra.
The result is “a real-time, real-talk social forum that has become a great resource for them and for us” [16].
What started it all was its Ratings & Reviews feature, which enabled customers to post reviews of products to be shown on the site. Authentic customer reviews are by itself a key driver for sales, but Sephora asks reviewers to provide details of their eye color, hair color, and skin tone, making their reviews even more powerful [1].
The success of that feature led to the creation of its own Khoros-based online community called “BeautyTalk,” which was later extended to a mobile app, too [12]. This iteration of its community focused on topic-specific discussion forums where beauty fans could learn from each other and Sephora’s own beauty experts. They could ‘Ask a Beauty Question,’ watch video tutorials created by Sephora’s professional makeup artists, and each week they would feature a contributor of the week in its BeautyTalk Spotlight [7].
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The site also included a Beauty Board, which enabled customers to upload pictures of themselves using Sephora products. As Jaime Netzer writes for the Khoros blog, “The nifty part about this is that the website automatically links the products featured in the image to the product page on Sephora’s website” [13].
While the peer-to-peer connection was a hit, a survey of its users found that 65% of respondents wanted beauty advice from experts alongside peers [14]. So in August of 2011, they added an ‘Ask the Experts’ board. This gave community members access to the Sephora PRO team - 6 professional makeup artists who between them answered questions on the site from 6 am and 9 pm every day. This capability differentiated its beauty community from competing sites and immediately took off becoming one of the 3 most visited sections of the community [14].
They also ran a series of live ‘Ask Me Anything’ chats featuring subject-area experts on things like skincare, tattoos, and makeup to answer member questions. Each chat would get over 20,000 views, with hundreds of questions being asked [14].
By the time 2017 came around, BeautyTalk was already a thriving community and had become a core part of how many of its beauty lovers connected with each other. Members like Katie Majersky, known as ‘katie1724,’ had racked up over 4,000 hearts and posted more than 6,000 comments [18].
With the Beauty Insider community, Sephora “set out to take all the things that were working really well across our various digital platforms and combine them for a unified experience,” explains Mary Beth Laughton, then SVP of Digital at Sephora [17]. While it was an evolution, it was still a significant overhaul. It was a completely reorganized and redesigned experience that brought together similar functionality from BeautyTalk, Beauty Board, and Ratings and Reviews, but aggregated them in one place [19]. The new community worked online, both on desktop and mobile, as well as in its iOS and Android apps [17]. It also became more prominent on its web properties, appearing as its own tab on the main navigation bar on the Sephora site, where it remains today [20].
“One of the main reasons we’re doing this is to drive emotional connections with clients and personal connections with them in the long term,” says Mary Beth. “We know our clients crave outlets and experiences… We know they’re increasingly looking to their peers and people like them and this just plays into that” [17].
The Beauty Insider community experience revolves around five different features: live community chat, profiles, groups, the gallery, and conversations. “They all encourage engagement but in different ways, and there are connection points between some of the elements,” explains Mary Beth [17].
Conversations
Discussion is the beating heart of the community. Its conversations section is a forum where people share their opinions on beauty products, discuss application techniques, and get tips and advice. It’s also a key way members discover new products to try and buy [26].
By providing this outlet for customers to express their opinions and experiences, Sephora shows its commitment to openness and true customer satisfaction [10]. Mary Beth says that this is the most popular part of the community [24]. It’s here that real community forms. Members don’t just talk about products, but help each other during troubling times. They advise on almost every subject from financial woes to travel suggestions, and have a lot of fun, too. One example is the popular traveling Sephora box program [29]. This is a box of products that people send from member to member. Each person puts their unwanted products into the box and takes out anything they want before sending the box on to the next person. It’s entirely community-run and members cover the cost of postage. That little box has been traveling around for over 10 years [33].
Groups
The group functionality is a spin on "categories" as a way to both organize posts and enable folks with specific interests or expertise to find their people within the community, whether that’s similar skin types or product types, etc [19]. For example, there’s a “K-Beauty” group for those with an interest in Korean cosmetics, while the “Gift Ideas” group helps those seeking recommendations for presents based on different budgets [21]. Skincare Aware is the most popular group [24], but in general, groups provide a way to prompt members to share specific questions, tips, and advice about products [22].
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Gallery
The gallery looks and functions a lot like Instagram [9]. It’s a place where members can post photos and tag them with the products used to create their look [19]. A member might snap a selfie to share their experience with a particular product, compare how different products look, or inspire other members to create similar looks. Product details are shown below the images, making it easy to buy them to re-create the look [22].
Profiles
Members get a profile page, which they can personalize, and it also features their most recent posts, uploads, and other activities [25]. Jenny Weigle, a community consultant who worked with Sephora for many years, shares a personal anecdote of why profiles are useful: “I posted a question asking for a recommendation for a similar product that could replace it”, says Jenny. “I saw that someone replied to the post with a recommendation, and that person’s profile indicated she was a makeup artist. Knowing that info helped me to trust her suggestion, and I immediately purchased the product” [27]. There’s that t-word again.
Engagement is fostered throughout the community site with gamification. The more active you are, the higher rank you get. Members can achieve different badges, which are shown on their profile page, indicating whether they’re a “fresh face,” a “boss”, and others. There are also 40 ranks across 8 categories to recognize and reward different levels of contribution [22]. Increased engagement often results from those who have made valuable connections within the community. Sephora proactively encourages this with its Beauty Match functionality. It helps to connect members by showing them photos and reviews by people who share similar beauty traits [17].
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Beauty Insider community admins regularly post content on the site, and join in conversations, setting the tone and demonstrating to others how to contribute [26]. Staff involvement is important for many communities, but it’s especially powerful for Sephora. Sephora employs over 25,000 sales associates [5]. That’s 25,000 people who know all about Sephora’s products. It’s like a ready-made source of community champions. So an important part of the rollout of the Beauty Insider community focused on getting their involvement. “We really want their engagement and their product recommendations for clients,” says Mary Beth. “They’re such an amazing source of knowledge… We want them to be involved in the conversations… and be an active member of the community” [24].
Another key member type is ambassadors. These are hand-picked members who are highly engaged and actively participate in the community [22]. This involvement is rewarded with its ambassador program [27]. Community ambassadors get a special badge next to their profile name so it’s clear to other users that they’re a leader in the community [22].
Outside of the Beauty Insider platform, Sephora runs events and programs for members and to nurture its wider customer community.
For example, Sephora ran a three-city tour for community members, inviting them to exclusive events in Chicago, Brooklyn, and San Francisco [34]. 130 people in total were invited to Sephora stores after hours for a live recording of the “Glowing Up” podcast. “We wanted to deepen emotional connections… and build loyalty,” explains Alexa Alioto, then Senior Marketing Manager for Community at Sephora. After the show, members could shop alongside the hosts, brand founders, community team members, and influencers. Each guest took home a gift bag of community-favorite items [34].
Engaged members are also invited to phone calls with staff or to join in-person meetings to connect with them directly, as well as be involved in focus groups and to take surveys to get their feedback [28].
It also hosts an annual convention called Sephoria. Here consumers can explore exclusive content and meet stars in the beauty industry [2]. This year, it had a hybrid format for the first time, with an in-person event in New York City and to help make it more inclusive, they ran virtual experiences around the world, too. These virtual experiences enabled members to create their own avatars, chat live with Sephora Beauty Advisors, and play games to earn Beauty Insider points [35].
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Beyond members, it hosts in-person and online events for women generally, such as hands-on beauty classes targeted at those seeking to rebuild confidence after facing a major life transition [5]. They also try to foster an inclusive and diverse community. For example, they released a documentary film called “The Beauty of Blackness,” chronicling the story behind the brand Fashion Fair.
“Entertainment at its heart is just storytelling, and as community builders, and as brand builders, we’re really interested in creating this inclusive community,” said Candace Payne, Director of Campaigns and Content at Sephora [36].
While its Sephora Sounds initiative is a music collective that supports underrepresented, emerging artists, promoting them on its social platforms [37]. Its Sephora Squad influencer program selects 68 voices covering all races, ethnicities, religions, ages, body types, sexual orientations, follower counts, experience levels, and more. Influencers included in the program are involved in a yearlong paid partnership, which is one of the most sought-after ambassador programs in the industry. In 2023, they received over 16,000 applications, up 43% from 2022 [38].
The Beauty Insider community isn’t just a siloed platform, though, but rather something that’s integrated into the rest of the Sephora eCommerce site. Richard Millington, founder of the community consulting firm FeverBee, explains how they spent a year working with Sephora on its community strategy. “A major plank of this strategy was integrating authentic community content into the product pages,” says Richard. “This includes reviews, photos, etc…” so “if you visit a typical Sephora product page, you now find a page with a lot of community-created content integrated into it” [23]. This gets right to the trust emotional driver Allegra mentioned, as Richard explains:
“Community-generated content isn’t like content created by a marketing team or top influencers. It’s not professionally created and refined. It’s raw, authentic, and breeds trust” [23].
Integrating product and community content throughout the site reduces steps in the purchase process, which improves conversion rates [22]. It also builds trust, which further increases the likelihood of purchasing. It’s “an astonishingly powerful benefit of nurturing a brand community,” highlights Richard [23].
This tactic fits perfectly within its omnichannel approach. “Maybe she wants to learn how to get a smoky eye and she can ask her community and get tips — but maybe she wants to physically try it on. It’s a natural progression into store — and we encourage that,” says Mary Beth.
With the Beauty Insider community, Deborah Yeh SVP of Marketing and Brand at Sephora, says “We have a great listening platform” [28]. Before rolling out changes to its loyalty program, for example, it sought feedback from members on its new offerings. This is an invaluable resource, as its members are passionate about the rewards in its program and they’ve previously gotten changes to the program wrong in the eyes of its consumers. When they ran the Sephora Epic Rewards campaign, for example, they underestimated demand, which left many customers feeling frustrated. Many took to social media to vent this frustration, calling it a Sephora Epic Fail, instead [30]. But Mary Beth explains that the community “does allow us to learn a lot about our clients and help better personalize their experience. We can then tailor our services” [24]. From its community, it can source insights into customer preferences and identify potential innovation opportunities [10].
Community members spend 2.5 times more than a typical customer who doesn’t engage in the community [31]. While its ‘superfans’ who spend an average of 396 minutes in the community a month spend 10x more than an average customer [29].
Rob Tarkoff, former CEO of Khoros, points out the SEO benefit of Sephora’s community-created content, too, saying it “is the number one organic search result across many categories of beauty,” helping it achieve greater awareness. “Customers are exploring new products … they’re trying to figure out how they can validate their purchase with others. All of this content that is created by customers of Sephora… becomes a major asset for them” [32].
Sephora set out to build customer confidence through product education and addressing the needs of its shoppers. Community has been a core way they have delivered that, by helping its members make more qualified purchases online and collectively providing critical information to inform shoppers in-store via its mobile app [6]. Its loyalty program is a key revenue driver, and community has proven to be an effective way to make that program even more successful. For Sephora, the Beauty Insider community is an omnichannel force multiplier.
There you go! That’s how community growth works at Sephora. For the details, check out the sources below. If you found this newsletter useful, please share it with friends and colleagues. And if you haven’t already, subscribe below. ✌️
