Clarins boosts acquisition and builds loyalty through gamification with Insider

Clarins, a French eco-friendly luxury cosmetics brand founded in 1954, distributes its products through high-end beauty products merchandisers worldwide. The company has an active online presence in addition to its physical locations.

The leading beauty purveyor needed a strategic partner in the beauty and cosmetics industry that could help them drive global growth. The Insider team worked with them on a holistic approach to finding new customers and nurturing existing ones. 

With Insider’s list of top beauty brands as inspiration, Clarins adopted AI-based recommendations (Smart Recommender) and an intelligent onsite search engine (Eureka) to boost customer engagement and loyalty. 

Insider’s Conversion Suite helps Clarins improve its user experience and increase conversions through Predictive Audience (predictive segmentation). 

Insider’s products and collective efforts helped Clarins increase conversions by 4.06% by improving customer journeys and personalizing every touch point. 

The customer journey in Beauty eCommerce

Brands spend the most on acquiring new customers. 96.2% of these new users are anonymous and still haven’t made their first purchase. Insider collects 120+ data points to target these anonymous beauty browsers effectively. 

ECommerce and mobile app advertising have grown exponentially in the past decade, and as a result, users are becoming more savvy and less interested in stifling promotional methods. They are no longer content to “fill out this form” or “add me to your mailing list.” Nor are they inclined to share explicit personal information.

With so much new and changing content available on the internet and through mobile apps, the attention span of users is shortening. As is their tolerance for lengthy marketing copy. The new breed of users wants something to engage them. A recent study published by Epsilon found that “80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences” *

Digital and marketing teams at Clarins recognized the impact that website gamification has on user behavior and the possibility of increased revenue through incentives and discounts offered to users. Insider was engaged by Clarins to develop a gamification strategy to increase leads and their lifetime value (LTV). 

Here we are now, entertain us!

As the eCommerce and mobile app advertising arenas have grown exponentially in the past decade, users are becoming more savvy and less interested in stultifying promotional techniques. They are no longer content to “fill out this form” or “add me to your mailing list.” Nor are they inclined to share explicit personal information.

With so much new and changing content available on the internet and through mobile apps, the attention span of users is shortening. As is their tolerance for lengthy marketing copy. The new breed of users wants something to engage them. A recent study published by Epsilon found that “80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands offer personalized experiences” *

Clarins’ eCommerce and digital teams recognized the potential of website gamification to boost revenue by rewarding and discounting users who are active on the website. In order to increase the lifetime value of users and leads, Clarins sought help from Insider to develop a gamification strategy. 

A new project: “Beauty Wheel”

The objectives of the new campaign were to:

• Increase user engagement
• Personalize the user experience
• Generate new leads
• Maximize conversions

The goals of the Clarins digital team and their ad agency were to create an interactive game that would provide users with discount coupons for products, identify targeted users who would likely engage with the game, and funnel traffic to the webpage to entice those users to participate, producing the desired new leads and sales.

From the many tactics used by the Insider team, the marketing group at Clarins decided on using a roulette-wheel style game quite similar to the “Wheel of Fortune” television game show. The name for Clarins’ game would be “Beauty Wheel”.

Inline roulette game was created based on Insider’s strategy and incentive goals. They also  created on-site redirects that would prompt qualified traffic to the game. It was essential that Insider, Clarins, and their agency worked smoothly to achieve the perfect outcome.

The Clarins team also developed a dedicated landing page for hosting the game. Their ad agency was tasked with creating a visual campaign to generate interest and direct users to the “Beauty Wheel” page offering discounts on their favorite products.

Scores by the numbers

Customer reception always determines the success of a new marketing campaign. The “Beauty Wheel” campaign performed exceptionally well after being launched. 

Engagement levels were high among users directed to the game’s landing page. Gamification was designed to increase traffic and improve customer relationship management.

Among the successful outcomes were:

Over 45% lead/impression ratio

More than 8,500 leads generated and counting

Over 4,000 coupon codes used

These metrics led to an immediate increase in Clarins’ CR. It can’t be overstated how important new users are for CLV, RFM, and customer retention. 

It was the flawless implementation of the game on the website by the Clarins, Insider, and the ad agency teams, combined with a solid marketing plan, that led to the project’s stellar performance.

“Working with Insider has helped us increase our subscriber rate steadily, and run effective campaigns to boost purchase rates. We have had no issues implementing or using the product. Even the Web Push feature had an ROI of 30x in the first quarter of 2021.”

Alice L., Senior Manager eCommerce at Clarins

Clarins was able to create meaningful experiences for their users by using the tools developed by Insider for this joint endeavor. By tailoring coupons, discounts, and offers within the game to the specific person, we were able to strengthen relationships with customers and boost conversions. 

Repeat performance

Clarins transformed what had been meant to be a temporary marketing activity into a regular feature on their website following the remarkable success of the “Beauty Wheel” campaign. 

The development team realized that a static approach can quickly stagnate users’ attention, so they adapted the game to encourage users to return to the site in an effort to engage them for a longer period of time. As a result, sales continue to grow. 

Currently in its third iteration, Clarins looks forward to continued user engagement and loyalty through improved consumer experiences in collaboration with Insider.