CASE STUDY: L’OREAL PARIS BEAUTY CLUB
The Challenge
L’Oréal Paris operate in a highly competitive category, with a plethora of similar products all communicating their promises via the same media channels. They needed a communication program that enabled them to stand out from the competition.
The Discovery
Research with women revealed several home truths that informed our strategy:
-women crave fashion & beauty advice
-they are enthusiastic trialists of new beauty products
-they are extremely time poor, so are looking for efficient ways to gather information
The confluence of these insights revealed an opportunity. L’Oreal Paris could break through the market clutter by creating a direct communication channel in the form of an e-newsletter.
The Idea
The L’Oreal Beauty Club – the latest fashion and beauty advice & offers delivered directly to your inbox.
The L’Oréal Paris Beauty Club is a fashion & beauty ‘magazine’ delivered in the form of a monthly email newsletter. Members receive product previews, beauty & fashion advice plus exclusive offers & competitions, all for free.
L’Oreal Paris benefits from the programme in several ways:
Unique channel to market – provides direct access to women in a manner that allows them to consume personalised content as and when they see fit and to easily pass it on.
Niche targeting to maximise relevance – extensive profile data on participation in the club plus category purchase behaviour enables us to target offers to specific niche groups.
Cost effective research vehicle – we have run large scale ‘usage & attitude’ (U&A) surveys amongst the members, at a fraction of commercial market research costs.
Advocacy platform – via data interrogation we have identified brand advocates & used them to stimulate word of mouth.
Drive to retail – monthly vouchers drive members to retail and stimulate trial of new products, critical for the category.
The Growth
The LBC was the first brand created content initiative in its category and remains the most successful. Since its inception in December 2001 we have grown membership to over 255,000 active members. In that time we have distributed over 100 eDMs, conducted 3 U&A studies, held 15 physical events attended by over 1,970 members, run over 70 competitions and delivered over 42,000 product samples to happy members.
Our open rates remain above market average, competition participation rates average 24% and churn remains below 3%.
Research has validated the impact of membership on brand loyalty and redemption of member exclusive offers has proven the ability of the club to drive incremental sales.
