Until recently, e-commerce had left the beauty industry in the
dust. Women need precise color matches
for their makeup, and they like to smell, touch, and try products before buying
them (Griffith, 2014). Enter Birchbox’s
sampling program, which brings the in-store experience to women and men’s
homes. Through this program, Birchbox
has created awareness and demand for beauty brands that you would normally know
nothing about.
Brief History on Birchbox
Birchbox was founded by two
friends, Katia Beauchamp and Hayley Barna, who both agreed on one thing:
Shopping for products was frustrating, inefficient, and confusing. How were customers supposed to navigate the
vast range of options? And in the growing online market, how could they try
products without buying them all? (Birchbox, n.d.) The first shipment of
Birchboxes went out in September 2010, and soon realized that men needed a
better way to shop too. Birchbox Man
launched in April 2012, to bring guys tailored shipments of grooming and
lifestyle products (Birchbox, n.d.). For
a new customer, you can sign-up at birchbox.com, and fill out your “beauty
profile.” The cost is $10/month for the female box and $20/month, for the man’s
box. Each month Birchbox well send you a
box of sample products that are curated based off your profile.
How Birchbox Uses Web Analytics to Monitor Visitor Traffic and Customers
While Birchbox has done a
phenomenal job in content and social media marketing, they have also done an
excellent job with implementing and analyzing customer data and web
traffic. Web analytics is always
intriguing, since it gives a tangible shape to visitor behavior and can play an
important role in determining online success (Nagpal, 2013). In the beginning, the effectiveness (or the
ROI) of the content Birchbox produces depends by channel. For their videos, it’s views. For their blog, which is on Tumblr, it’s
followers, unique views, and how many reblogs they get. For the website, they use Google Analytics to
track page-views, time on page, and bounce rate – there was a lot more they
would like to do, but at the time, it was a work in progress (Snow, 2011). Today, Birchbox has put a major emphasis on
analytics with their traffic and customers, with an entire group dedicated to
analyzing data. Birchbox now employs
people with job titles of brand campaign analyst, statistical analyst, and
Director of analytics.
From February 2013, Birchbox saw 111,917 monthly visitors, now compare
that to February 2014 where they saw a jump to 334,357 monthly visitors. This indicates that initial visitors are
returning each month, and these visitors are also talking about the site amongst
their social networks which is drawing in even more new visitors monthly (Boyd,
2014).
Birchbox started off as only available online and was focused on
tailoring a box to various complexions, hair types, and looks, but Birchbox’s
utilization of data goes far beyond these physical traits. “From
the beginning, data has been an essential part of Birchbox’s growth and
strategy …we use it to make important company decisions, and use it to guide us
towards creating the best possible new products for our customers,”
explained Deena Bahri, VP of Marketing at Birchbox (Adobe, 2013). Birchbox has used big data when launching a
new service or product offering, and for Birchbox Man they used both behavioral
and survey data (Adobe, 2013). Their
surveys and behavioral data, Birchbox has continued to improve their product
offerings and deliver what the customer wants and stay relevant.
Conversion rates have been another one of their main measurers of
success. For example, Stila Cosmetics
sent a sample of one of their products to 7% of Birchbox subscribers based on
their beauty profiles. The product saw
an 11.2% conversion rate into a full-sized purchased, a number that seems
small, but in the beauty industry is strong for a SKU (Sultana, 2014).
Tools Birchbox Uses to Stay Relevant
Birchbox takes data seriously and uses multiple tools to track that data
from visitors and their Birchbox subscribers, because a “one size fits all”
approach no longer works. One of those
tools is Custora, a predictive analytics platform for e-commerce marketing
teams (n.d.). Custora’s software
analyzes data to predict how customers will behave in the future – the things
they’re likely to buy, how much they’ll spend, even how often they’ll shop
(n.d.). For Birchbox, one of the areas
of focus was driving their subscriber-base to make purchases in the Birchbox
Shop, which features full-size versions of sample products, as well as
additional beauty and lifestyle products hand-picked by the editorial team
(n.d.). Using Custora’s platform,
Birchbox was able to discover activation strategies that increased profit per
customer, by over 70%. Additionally,
Birchbox learned which types of customers do not respond to certain types of
email marketing (Custora, n.d.).
According to Deena Bahri, VP of Marketing at Birchbox, “Custora goes beyond reporting, helping to uncover true
insights about our customers – then they make it easy to test and refine
marketing strategies.” (Custora, n.d.). Another
tool that Birchbox uses, is Tealium, for tag management and analytics. Tealium (n.d.) provides web analytics
managers with an hourly feed of all their rich, correlated, event-level data,
which can be integrated into any data warehouse or visualization solution. Lastly, Birchbox uses Google Analytics and
DoubleClick Floodlight. Google’s DoubleClick
Floodlight Counter tag allows Birchbox to count the number of times that users
have visited a particular page after seeing or clicking one of their ads
(n.d.).
Other tools that Birchbox uses for website tracking tools are:
- § Advertising – AdExtent, Google AdWords, Google Dynamic Remarketing, and MediaMath
- § Beacons – Chango, DoubleClick Floodlight, and Proclivity
- § Social – Facebook Connect and Facebook Social Plugins
For those customers that are browsing/ shopping, but leave items in
their cart, they have a way to get you back! Birchbox uses strategically timed
emails for their abandoned cart nurturing (Burke, 2014).
As you can see, Birchbox uses a light-hearted approach and tells you
exactly what you forgot in your cart, price included (Burke, 2014). Within that email you have two CTAs,
instantly checkout or edit your cart options.
It removes the friction and allows customers to go straight to their
carts without having to navigate around the site (Burke, 2014). Birchbox
follows up the next day, reiterating a sense of urgency.
Something to note about Birchbox, the famed online retailer of cosmetics
will be opening its first brick-and-mortar store in New York City. The company has attracted more than 800,000
users since launching in 2010, but only around 30% of its revenue comes from
full-product online sales from Birchbox.com (Groth, 2014). Its new store is an attempt to figure out why
that percentage isn’t higher. Birchbox
co-founder Katia Beauchamp describes the Soho store as a “laboratory.” The
store is designed to reflect its online presence with iPads that showcase
product reviews and a beauty bar where customers can test out different looks
similar to the makeup and hairstyling tutorials on their website (Groth, 2014). The SOHO store will use in-store analytics,
by using cameras and heat sensors to track customers as they make their way
around the store, seeing which products they’re attracted to and how they use
the iPads (Groth, 2014). Birchbox is
also looking to add WiFi analytics and want to make the Birchbox app “a
companion to the store.” When connected to WiFi, the app would be enabled to
send push advertisements and collect customer data, like how many times the
user has visited Birchbox and what products she’s purchased (Groth, 2014).
Another way Birchbox is gaining data, is straight from their box
subscribers. Each month, after you
receive a Birchbox, subscribers can gain 10 points per item reviewed from their
box. On average, a subscriber receives 5
items for a possible 50 points. For
every 100 points, Birchbox gives you $10 off to use in their online store and
can be redeemed in that year. The
product surveys are a mix of quantitative and qualitative data for the product,
which helps gauge interest in the product, as well as possible purchase of the
item.
How Birchbox Uses the Data They Collect
With their trove of data on trends and demographics, which is used to
help brands develop and launch their products, Birchbox is considering
developing its own line of products (Griffith, 2014). With their customer data, Birchbox will also
be experimenting with more categories targeted at women. The company is looking to explore
project-based boxes like craft projects, cooking projects or party themes, as
well as home décor and work supplies (Griffith, 2012).
Birchbox For the Future
Navigating Birchbox’s web and social presence, you can understand why
they are at the top. So what could
Birchbox implement to keep moving them forward? Offering customer service
chats, a large number of websites have a chat feature to interact with their
visitors. This allows them to offer
real-time assistance and advice, promote a service/product to the visitor, and
some chat applications offer integration with web analytics tools (Team
Position 2, 2010). It would be
recommended that Birchbox install a ‘virtual pageview’ code linked to the ‘on
click’ event of the “Chat Now” button.
“Virtual pagview” was suggested instead of “event tracking” as Birchbox
would want to carry out a funnel analysis on the conversations (Team Position
2, 2010). A funnel would be set up in
GA, which would track clicks on the chat button – from initiating a chat
conversation to signing up for monthly subscription, as one example.
Birchbox has set the bar high in the world of e-commerce. For anyone looking to start an e-commerce
business, Birchbox is a great brand to mimic in every aspect!
References
Adobe. (2013,
May 6). 8 Marketers doing big data right. Retrieved from
http://mashable.com/2013/05/06/cmo-data/
Birchbox.
(n.d.). What is Birchbox? | Birchbox. Retrieved December 8, 2014, from
https://www.birchbox.com/about/birchbox
Boyd, M. (2014,
April 21). Best eCommerce websites: Birchbox skyrockets with subscription
retail. Retrieved from
http://ecommerceinsiders.com/ecommerce-websites-birchbox-skyrockets-subscription-retail-1798/
Burke, M.
(2014, September 25). 3 Reasons people abandoned your shopping carts, and how
to solve it [Web log post]. Retrieved from
http://blog.klaviyo.com/2014/09/25/3-reasons-people-abandoned-your-shopping-carts-and-how-to-solve-it/
Custora.
(n.d.). Birchbox & Custora: 70% Increase in repeat buyer conversion.
Retrieved December 8, 2014, from https://www.custora.com/customer_results/birchbox_custora_customer_analytics_retention_marketing
Google.
(2014). DoubleClick Floodlight counter tags - Tag manager help.
Retrieved December 8, 2014, from
https://support.google.com/tagmanager/answer/3281074?hl=en
Griffith, E.
(2012, October 19). The beauty of Birchbox: it’s not subscription commerce,
it’s marketing that women actually pay for. Retrieved from
http://pando.com/2012/10/19/the-beauty-of-birchbox-its-not-subscription-commerce-its-marketing-that-women-actually-pay-for/
Griffith, E.
(2014, April 21). Exclusive: Birchbox banks $60 million. Retrieved from
http://fortune.com/2014/04/21/exclusive-birchbox-banks-60-million/
Groth, A.
(2014, July 23). Birchbox is using its retail space to track customers offline.
Retrieved from
http://qz.com/237400/birchbox-is-using-a-retail-space-to-track-customers-offline/
Hartjen, R.
(2014, July 31). Birchbox: A laboratory for shopper behavior | RetailNext [Web
log post]. Retrieved from http://retailnext.net/blog/birchbox-a-laboratory-for-shopper-behavior/
Hayes, M.
(2013, February 21). 32 Key performance indicators (KPIs) for ecommerce - KPI
examples [Web log post]. Retrieved from
http://www.shopify.com/blog/7365564-32-key-performance-indicators-kpis-for-ecommerce
Nagpal, M.
(2013, October 25). 2013 Top ecommerce websites analytics benchmarks. Retrieved
from https://vwo.com/blog/2013-top-ecommerce-websites-analytics-benchmarks/
Snow, S. (2011,
August 1). How startup Birchbox uses content To sell tons of beauty supplies.
Retrieved from
http://contently.com/strategist/2011/08/01/how-startup-birchbox-uses-content-to-sell-tons-of-beauty-supplies/
Sultana, R.
(2014, July 10). Big data series: Birchbox is all about the conversion… and its
working [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://rumi03.com/2014/07/10/big-data-series-birchbox-is-all-about-the-conversion-and-its-working/
Team
Position 2. (2010, September 2). Analyzing "chat quality" using
Google Analytics - Funnel analysis - Position² [Web log post]. Retrieved from
http://blogs.position2.com/analyzing-chat-quality-using-google-analytics-funnel-analysis