checkout when the customer has a birthday or qualifies for a promotion.
Smith says that DR is an important
element in Sephora’s marketing arsenal.
“The beauty of DR, combined with the
sophistication of our client analytics, is
that we have the ability to view a single
client over time and across different
touch points,” she says. “We have built a
world-class analytics team that is really
strategic in their approach to campaign
evaluation. They provide a quantifiable
and actionable understanding of our client purchase behavior across campaigns,
partnering with us to get smarter with
each campaign and improve the ROI of
our marketing initiatives.”
One of the recent successful direct
response campaigns is Sephora’s birthday
gift program, which offers customers a
Shannon Smith
Vice President, CRM, Sephora
Hometown: Houston
Resides: San Francisco
Education: B.A. in finance from University of
Texas, Austin; MBA from the J.L. Kellogg School
of Management, Northwestern University,
Evanston, Ill.
Career-defining moment: “I have always been
very analytical — majoring in finance as my
undergraduate degree and pursing investment
banking as my first job out of college — but I
wasn’t sure where I’d ultimately find my passion. When I joined Morgan Stanley in New York,
I was fortunate enough to land a coveted spot
in the retail and apparel industry group. As I
worked with various retail clients, including
Tommy Hilfiger and Ann Taylor, I began to learn
about the retail industry and knew I’d found the
right fit. With a retail company, you can always
understand the business from the consumer’s
point of view, because we are all consumers.
When I finished my two-year stint in banking
and landed a position at J. Crew in direct mar-
keting, it all came together, and I would consider this the defining role that shaped my career
path. I loved the financial discipline and measurability of direct marketing, and doing it for a
retail company allowed me to always consider
our marketing campaigns from the perspective
of a customer as well as an employee. I believe
this makes me much more effective as I develop
our client rewards program here at Sephora
— thinking through the question of how I would
like to be rewarded for shopping.”
Greatest career accomplishment: Smith joined
Sephora just months after the launch of the client rewards program. While the basic program
benefits were in place, there was still a need
to evolve the program. “In the year-and-a-half
that I’ve been here, I’m incredibly proud of what
our team has accomplished in such a short
time period,” Smith says. “This was enabled
in large part by Sephora’s innovative and
fast-paced culture. We have tested and rolled
out new program benefits for loyalty program
members, been recognized by the media for our
use of targeted E-mail messaging, implemented
numerous new store protocols across a large
multi-national store base, and partnered with
Sephora’s direct response marketing targets
cross-channel client behavior. E-mails with
promotions and product information drive a
percentage of sales both online and offline.
But some customers are still best reached
in-store. In fact, a majority of Beauty Insider
members only shop in-store, so Sephora
creates printed newsletters and its POS
system targets clients at checkout.
gift within the month surrounding their
birthday each year. The gift can be redeemed in-store or online. Sephora sends
the loyalty member a message about the
gift through numerous channels: she
gets an E-mail or two and then there is a
third reminder that comes in the form of
a prompt when the customer is checking
out online or in-store.
“We have an incredibly high redemption rate on this gift, and we know it
keeps clients coming back to the store
or site,” says Smith. “Clients are not
required to make a purchase if they pick
up the gift in store, but it’s tough to walk
into Sephora and not find something
new and exciting — most clients buy
something when they’re here.”
our analytics team to evaluate cross-channel
campaigns and learn an incredible amount of
information about our clients’ shopping behaviors. We have a vision of where we want the
program to be in five years and we are building
a plan to get there.”
