Throughout the WWD Beauty CEO Summit last week, one theme repeatedly emerged from several of the sessions: if brands want to raised engage today’s consumer, it is crucial to know their needs and behavior and offer products, solutions and experiences in a meaningful, authentic and personalized way.

All of which require leveraging data and understanding how shoppers shop.

During a NielsenIQ VIP breakfast, Jacqueline Flam Stokes, senior vp of beauty retail at NielsenIQ, said, “it’s critical that brands and retailers understand how consumers are shopping. Forty percent of beauty consumers are shopping each mass and prestige and only one percent of consumers today which are shopping beauty are shopping exclusively prestige. Should you have a look at even a Sephora shopper, 97 percent of Sephora shoppers are also shopping mass.”

This, amongst other trends, reminiscent of viral social media posts, all contribute to understanding today’s beauty shopper, Stokes said, adding that by leveraging data that appears at the client first, reminiscent of with NielsenIQ, brands and retailers will find a way to raised understand the marketplace for the long run.   

One other consumer insight trend that was discussed is a desire by customers to have a more holistic experience with wellness and wonder. For Solésence Beauty Science, the skincare contract manufacturer, a holistic approach is something that Kevin Cureton, chief operating officer of Solésence Beauty Science, said is prime for the corporate, from the way it treats employees and prioritizing inclusion to understanding the world that the buyer resides in.

“It’s essential to take into consideration how we are able to do that together,” said Cureton. “We’re unique in the sweetness industry because we allow people to do that very thing [which is] to be seen, to be loved, to feel heard another way than another industry does.”

Cureton said brands could make profits and still help people and the planet at the identical time. Acquiring more customers means breaching artificial barriers and raising expectations for what is feasible and what solutions are needed. It’s about going beyond checking off a box, said Cureton, and asking questions and “simply retargeting where we’re going and who we’re talking to.”

Except for more sustainable practices, consumers expect brands to supply solutions that work.

During a Dyson VIP lunch, Marthina Sochodolak, vp of selling at Dyson Americas, said the whole lot that the corporate does “looks at the right way to bring an answer to problems while maintaining the health of your hair — so engineering is big.”

Sochodolak said Dyson is investing “a couple of billion kilos a yr in research and technology for hair health. The corporate is absolutely committed at this time limit when those products are clearly extremely high-performance a part of the market.” Expanding on its consumer education and the importance of experiencing its products, Dyson can also be bringing more in-person interactions to shoppers through its beauty labs, soon to open in Latest York City.

Meeting the needs of consumers who wish to experience a product or brand can also be a priority for Kiko Milano. Simone Dominici, chief executive officer, took the stage to share how Kiko Milano evolved from a regional retailer to a world beauty brand. Currently, he said, the brand, which remains to be latest to the U.S. market, is primary in Italy, second within the Middle East and fifth in Western Europe.

To succeed, Dominici said, everyone “has to have a customer-centric approach.” For Kiko Milano, that requires ensuring that its employees are usually not only satisfied but completely happy. To do that, the brand practices ongoing education through unique training, which he described as an investment in the long run.

“Twenty percent of our beauty advisers last yr left us because they were incentivized by us and trained by us to turn out to be an influencer,” said Dominici. “And after all, we imagine that once they are a micro-influencer, they may use numerous our products.” The approach also recognizes Kiko Milano shoppers not as customers but as unique individuals. With more growth in mind, the brand has invested significantly in services and engagement with the buyer each in-person and digitally.

Speaking of digital, presenters on the summit also urged brands to be more strategic with e-commerce. Dana Upshaw, chief growth officer at Recom, discussed considered one of the marketplaces which were an enormous topic of conversation in beauty retail, Amazon, and the right way to use the platform for constructing brands and customer loyalty.

Recom, previously reCommerce Brands, is a strategic Amazon selling partner that helps brands navigate the complexities of e-commerce and find success in Amazon’s massive marketplace. Upshaw described being on Amazon as “a vital component to solving the equation of recent brands, otherwise referred to as growth.” Upshaw said brands should be strategic about managing themselves on Amazon, understanding behaviors that turn into habits and turning that into growth, which is where Recom’s data can assist.

“Irrespective of where you might be and your brand-building efforts, Amazon can connect your products to latest and existing customers with an efficiency you have to simply recognize,” said Upshaw. “It’s becoming an important digital motor skill the brands must master to maximise market capture from initial launch to long-term loyalty, and it’s having a seat on the brand-building table.”

Education and communication may help bolster customer loyalty and lifelong customer value.

Fernando Acosta, CEO of RoC Skincare, took to the rostrum to explain how effective communication plays a key role in consumer behavior through simplifying and trusting science. By the use of context, Acosta said 69 percent of consumers had lost their trust in skincare. Despite the fact that 97 percent of individuals imagine that skincare is vital, only 23 percent of individuals do a morning and night routine. Based on Acosta, this issue comes from the complicated nature of how beauty products are marketed — “the barrier of entry usage just isn’t price, it’s accessibility.”

Through its own simplification of trust and science, RoC has been capable of gain the arrogance of its consumers, which might ultimately result in a change in consumer behavior. Through the values of humility and putting the buyer first, the brand has been capable of educate its customers. One among the critical ways the corporate has gained a customer’s trust is thru showcasing side-by-sides, testimonials, and, most significantly, dermatological doctor endorsements. 

Trust is particularly essential for Generation Z. Authenticity and community can also be essential to this digitally savvy generational cohort. But who exactly is Gen Z, and what do they expect from a beauty brand?

Nina Mishkin, head of name strategy and production within the Americas at Snapchat, said Gen Z is the “first, truly social generation, so that they’re fascinated by social media as a real language for them. They were the generation who actually grew up being digitally native.”

Mishkin said Gen Z is changing “how we have a look at the sweetness and wellness space. With Gen Z, there is no such thing as a single definition of beauty.” For this generation, beauty and wellness are “about letting your true self shine,” Mishkin said. “It’s all about feeling good in and out.” For its part, Snapchat has served as a platform that “inherently fosters their needs for connection and community orientation while making a space that’s truly authentic.”

“Snapchat creates real results for brands because persons are coming to Snapchat to construct communities with individuals who feel a real sense of belonging,” Mishkin said. “They’re real friends, and so they feel happier on the platform. And once they feel happier on the platform, they’re more prone to trust what they’re seeing. And so they’re more prone to concentrate to what they’re seeing, and so they’re more likely to interact.”

There are also other ways to interact.

Brittanie Knezovich, managing director of head of sales and partner success at ShopRunner, sat down for a hearth chat with Serena Chan, vp of e-commerce at Fresh, to talk about how the cosmetics company has been capable of leverage various tactics to extend customer acquisition. Utilizing ShopRunner, Fresh has seen customers convert thrice greater than average. By removing the barriers to conversion by allowing for Klarna, Afterpay, ShopRunner, and other methods, customers pays and checkout with their preferred payment options. 

Chan said that Fresh has also been capable of double its acquisition for the reason that pandemic, partly by harnessing the ability of welcome incentives (when first logging on to the web site, customers provide an email for a reduction). Through gaining access to a customer’s email, the corporate has been capable of optimize by turning prospective customers into first buyers. Loyalty points have also been key drivers for customer retention, with Chan sharing that 85 percent of revenue is coming from loyalty program members within the omnichannel.

Through the years, the corporate has emphasized the importance of first-party data and used it to their advantage. “Once we’ve the info in our first-party data, we own the narrative,” said Chan. “We are able to control the destiny of how we would like to utilize the info and the way we would like to retarget them. We accelerated this as a number-one priority for data collection. If we owned the info by the point Google decided to remove the third-party cookies, we still have the info to do what we want to do.”

Regarding what’s next in beauty and wellness, Andrew Stanleick, president and CEO of BeautyHealth, said the industry goes through a “radical reshaping” in addition to a redefinition of beauty and wellness. Showing attendees a photograph of “the gunk” that’s removed after his company’s skin treatment, Stanleick said today’s consumer just isn’t ashamed of it. The truth is, they share the method on social media.

“We’re heading toward a more transparent, more honest, and more real state, and that is reflected in consumer tastes which are on social media,” Stanleick said, adding that beauty today and into the long run “is rather more in regards to the process because it is in regards to the final result.” The CEO also noted that treatment facilities are also evolving and are changing to supply a greater experience for the client. Hydra-facial treatments at the moment are available at beauty retailers and department shops in addition to in hotels and on the gym.