Advertising Case Study

Sephora
Company Background Launched in the U.S. in 1998, Sephora Americas today operates more than 270 stores in the U.S. and Canada as well as the worlds top beauty website, Sephora.com. In 2010, Sephora expanded into Latin America where it operates the Brazilian beauty market leader Sacks.com, and plans to open retail stores in Mexico beginning in 2011. Sephora is well known for its unique retail concept, which is rooted in its distinctive store design, the beauty expertise of its sales consultants and, most importantly, its unparalleled combination of over 200 classic and emerging brands across a broad range of product categories including skincare, color, fragrance, bath & body, smilecare, and haircare, as well as Sephoras own private label. In addition to its North and Latin American business and its initiative with JCPenney, which includes more than 230 Sephora inside JCPenney locations, Sephora today has more than 1,000 stores within 24 countries in Europe and 60 locations in China. Sephora was founded in France in 1969 and acquired in 1997 by Paris-based LVMH Mot Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the worlds leading luxury products group. For further information, please visit www.sephora.com. Objective It was in 2008 that Sephora USA first created a Facebook Page, the free public profile that enables companies to share their business and products with Facebook users on an ongoing basis. But the company didnt get serious about building its fan

Facebook Executive Summary

Client:

facebook.com/Sephora Objective: To increase the number of people who connect to the companys Facebook Page and to foster conversation and engagement with the brands fans Solution: A Facebook Ads campaign featuring premium ads on the Facebook Home Page combined with an active publishing strategy Key Lessons: Building an engaged and passionate fan base on Facebook can lead to increased sales online and in stores as the platform can be easily used to inform clients about new products and special offers Using social plug-ins such as the Facebook Like button can raise awareness of a brands offerings as every time a product or service is liked by a Facebook user, that action is shared with their friends

Weve seen great results. We have both seen an incredible growth in our fan base year over year in the hundreds of percents and then correlated traffic to our site and correlated to that, sales.
Julie Bornstein Senior Vice President, Sephora Direct

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base on the Page until 2009, when about 10,000 people were connected to it. Besides increasing the number of consumers who liked its Page, the company wanted to create a forum where it could have conversations with its clients and engage with them. Obviously, another piece for us is to be able to message our clients about whatever we think is relevant and important, says Julie Bornstein, Senior Vice President of Sephora Direct. The hope was that Sephoras activities on Facebook would help drive sales to the sephora.com e-commerce site as well as to the companys stores. Approach Since 2009, Sephora has run several types of Facebook Ads on the Facebook Home Page, including Premium Page Ads and Premium Event Ads promoting special offers both in-store and on the website. The company has taken advantage of the targeting available on Facebook, including location targeting, which enables it to target people where they live. Sephora says this feature has been particularly useful when it has a regional offer or a new store opening. Sephora has also used age targeting to reach its key demographic. While Sephora appeals to a lot of different types of people, we have certainly a target customer who is a woman age 25 to 45, says Julie, so were able to target that shopper and that Facebook fan when were trying to get new fans.

all part of the mix. Whats more, the company has created an Offers tab on its Page where clients can get information on special deals, some only available to consumers who have connected to the Page by liking it. The company has also installed social plug-ins on its site, allowing customers to click the Facebook Like button to tell their friends about a product they like. This action shows up in the News Feeds of the customers friends, spreading awareness of a product and providing an endorsement from a trusted source.

Results As of late January 2011, more than 1.16 million people had connected to Sephoras Facebook Page. The number of people connected to the Page grows by the thousands pretty much daily, Julie says Sephora says it has seen a definite impact to sales in its stores and on its website from its Facebook fans. We see a lot of comments from our fans about thank you for mentioning this and Im going in store to get this, Julie says The use of the Like button has increased dramatically among Sephora clients, with some products garnering as many as 3,000 likes, a factor that can raise awareness of new products among a Facebook users friends

Sephora has also used the publishing feature on its Facebook Page extensively to engage with its fan base and foster conversations with its clients. The companys social media team created a publishing calendar that included at least three updates a week on the Pages Wall with offers or fun news. We list out new products that were offering and when theres a new hot product, we make sure to tell our Facebook friends first and they love that, says Julie. Quizzes, polls and invitations to weigh in on conversation such as the best beauty advice youve ever received are

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The passionate fan base that Sephora has built on Facebook has led to unique usergenerated programs such as the Traveling Sephora Package, whereby a Facebook fan puts 30 unused cosmetics samples in a box and then ships it to the next user. The next fan in turn takes out what she wants to try and replaces it with other unused samples before shipping it on to the next person. Theres been such a demand for it that they created a second, third and fourth Traveling Sephora Package, Julie says

The Future Julie says that Sephora wants to continue to develop and enhance the experience on the Facebook Page for users. The company is also planning some new applications as well as some new interactions between Facebook and some of the other technology that its developing on its own site. I think whats fascinating about Facebook is for those of us whove been working in the Internet for the last 10 years-plus, weve sort of separated from our customers, says Julie. Were not in the stores day-to-day hearing what theyre saying. But now Facebook takes it to the next level. Not only can we hear what theyre saying, but we hear it in real time. Adds Julie: As other forms of marketing over time decline in terms of their use rate and their open rate and all those other things, we really look to Facebook as a way to offset that.

The ongoing campaigns on Facebook have created an online community of fervent brand evangelists. Among the recent sample comments on Facebook: Im so happy they have stores in Canada!!! I love it soo much!! I buy all my makeup at sephora!!! Soo much to choose from!

I think the numbers continue month over month to amaze us, says Julie, both the organic growth of our fan base and the use of Like on sephora. com and the people that are engaging with that and the sales that this driving.