Global Premium Skincare Case Study:
Winning Over the Pandemic with Data
❝ COVID-19 was totally unexpected, and its effects on our business strategy were something we were not prepared for. Almost overnight, we had to pivot our sales and marketing strategy. ADA is a partner who not only understands our brand but has the ability to comb consumer data to gather insights, then target and convert them effectively. By working together closely, we were able to switch our strategy to e-commerce and even exceed our targets.❞
P.T., Corporate E-Commerce Manager, Global Premium Skincare (Thailand)
The Objective
In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit Asia and by March, almost all countries went into total lockdown. One of the world’s most premium skincare brands was hugely impacted and suffered a massive loss in revenue when the Thai government announced a country-wide lockdown on 25th March 2020.
Unprecedented times called for unprecedented measures. The brand had to pivot from a predominantly offline sales and focus to their e-commerce platform as that was the only channel that could drive revenue to the business.
Almost 80% of the business revenue was attributed to physical retail outlets in high-end departmental stores while only 20% came from the e-commerce channel.
The Challenge
To find, target, and direct prestigious high-end clientele to the e-commerce platform and convince them to make their purchases there. This is quite a drastic change as premium beauty and skincare customers are used to attending physical events and receiving personalised services and hospitality when in-store.
The ADA Approach
The challenge with advertising online is the lack of precision in targeting on most digital and social media platforms. As there isn’t a filter for income levels, occupation, and affluent lifestyle, looking for these individuals was akin to finding a needle in the haystack.
The only way to overcome the challenge was with the help of additional data sources and a well defined target audience segmentation strategy. In that, we found 4 potential audiences who fits our ideal customer profile for targeting:
Existing offline store customers who are regular high-value shoppers and are the brand’s loyalists
Existing e-commerce customers
New customers who are regular users of other premium skincare and beauty brands
New customers who are aspirers of the brand and can afford high entry price point products of USD150 onwards
The Campaign
To reach and target these 4 audiences, we used 3 data sources:
1st party data: The brand’s existing customer data to identify information like demographic, minimum and maximum basket size, purchasing habit, online purchasing behaviour, and places of interests (POI).
2nd party data: We used what we learnt from the 1st party data to develop targeting on various platforms as well as created lookalike audiences based on the segmentation from the 1st party data.
3rd party data: XACT, ADA’s proprietary Data Management Platform (DMP), allowed us to build additional audience segments based on the characteristics of the 1st party data customers.
The Customer Acquisition Funnel:
Upper-Middle Funnel:
Our objective here is to create brand awareness, consideration, and drive traffic to the website. We needed to reach new prospects. So, we utilised 2nd and 3rd party data to reach the right prospects, we ran multiple ad sets, optimised for these different audiences to pique their interest and for them find out more on the brand’s website.
The Core Platform Audience – On Facebook and Google, we utilised native targeting and lookalike audiences to pique interest and get them to find out more about the brand.
XACT Audience – Our team of Data Scientists built custom audiences by stitching together precise POIs, app usage or daily behavioural patterns to unveil likely prospects.
New Users – Those who had watched the brand awareness videos.
Lower Funnel:
Conversion was key here.
We layered on the brand’s 1st party data to our 2nd and 3rd party data. We also built on the audiences from the upper-middle funnel who had been exposed to the brand messaging ads, as these were really potential buyers:
Core Online Platform Audience – On Facebook and Google.
Existing Customers – Those who buy at physical stores and the brand’s e-commerce channel.
XACT Audience – Custom audience built by stitching together precise POIs, app usage, or daily behavioural patterns to unveil likely prospects.
The Outcome
490%
Growth in e-commerce monthly sales vs pre-COVID-19 times
(Average e-commerce monthly sales at USD100K)
275%
Growth vs Promotional months
(E.g. Single’s Day sales on 11.11 and 12.12 in 2019)
500%
Exceeded the e-commerce target by 500%
(Monthly e-commerce target of USD200K.)
24.5x
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
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