How Sephora Decreased Basket Drop Rate by 20% while Increasing Conversion Rate by 51% with VTO?

To improve the online experience, we decided to offer the virtual make-up technology solution developed by PulpoAR in our digital platforms. We thank the PulpoAR team for running with us!
Ayça Kaya
Marketing & E-Commerce Director at SEPHORA Turkey

The Goal : Building a quality experience for each individual shopper whether on the web, mobile or in-store

Sephora, which has a unique range of 250 brands and 16 thousand product options, offers its consumers the opportunity to reach both luxury and accessible brands in its stores where it is free to touch, feel and test. They bring innovative beauty trends to cosmetics enthusiasts. Sephora encourages its consumers about their philosophy of life with the slogan “The Heartbeat of Beauty” and guides them to make assertive choices in beauty.

The Solution : Creating a personalized customer journey

In line with this philosophy, Sephora Turkey partnered with PulpoAR and deployed AR&AI technology into all its platforms to enable their consumers to experience the product they want as before the pandemic, to test the products that are only sold online, and allow them to discover the products without going to the store.

In this process, a total of 1.500 products of 22 brands admired by cosmetics enthusiasts, such as Rare Beauty, Benefit, Shiseido, Clarins, Bobbi Brown, Make Up For Ever, were digitalized. In digitalization, which includes all product groups that might be necessary for make-up, from blush to foundation, from mascara to lipstick, product color controls were made one by one with Sephora executives and make-up experts to capture the same reality.

Facial micro-feature tracking technology has been used to provide Sephora customers the best experience.  This technology identifies all facial features aligning with facial movement. Formed the basis of technology using Augmented Reality to provide a high level of accuracy with virtual objects superimposed on the real image when changing textures and shadows. To customize the appearance of the products, we used machine learning. It processes thousands of data for each user’s face, thus providing the most realistic appearance. 

Measuring Impact: We measure the impact by comparing visitors who went through VTO and those who didn’t

PulpoAR integrated an Iframe into the Sephora website on both the landing page and the product detail page. Google Tag Manager (GTM) integration has been made to track the user behavior on the Iframe, such as the performance of product/service sales and the data of user actions over Google Analytics (GA). The brand will create events that it wants to measure on the VTO page with GTM. The event will be triggered as soon as the user on the site clicks on a product or adds the product to the cart. In this way, they will be keeping track of the transactions.

In-store integration is important!

In addition to the online make-up solution, we also made in-store integration, taking advantage of the reopening of physical stores. Sephora customers can quickly access the virtual try-on solutions from their own devices by scanning QR codes inside the stores. It allows them to try the products they like and save time before purchasing.

The holistic marketing approach has been created with the integration through various platforms. Every platform has its unique value creation for Sephora and how it delivers the brand message to customers. Diverse platform integration enables Sephora to target different customer segments across channels.

Marketing Strategy : 360-degree marketing approach has let Sephora achieve maximum benefit!

Marketing Activities:

  • Celebrity Instagram make-up filter
  • Social media planning (post/story/reels/TikTok)
  • Press day launch
  • VTO Movie
  • In-store branding (Wobblers, name tags, stand branding/ beauty hub mirror)
  • Digital Plan (Main page banner, in-site navigation bar positioning, product listing & App-specific setups, badge on product pages)
  • Mobile Application

 

 Campaign Brand Face: Merve Özkaynak

sephora-merve özkaynak

Top make-up influencer Merve Özkaynak is the campaign brand face. Sephora collaborated with her for a special collection.
Instagram filters for collection products were created.

The Results: 1 month after the launch, Sephora achieved outstanding results!

20% Decrease in Basket Drop Rate*
51% Higher Conversion Rates*         
  • Total Number of Unique Visitors:  67k
  • Total Number of VTO: 103k
  • Total Number of Sessions: 88k
  • Average Screen Time: 2.3 min

*1st-week results

Selected as the best solution among Sephora countries in global!

VTO is the most sophisticated AR commerce technology for beauty brands. It brings a new perspective to the sector and also provides a competitive advantage in the market. Therefore, using this technology will be a must for brands that want to step further and be a game-changer.

Are you inspired by Sephora? Would you like to be a beauty pioneer in customer experience, too? Contact us!
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