Luxury made personal.
L’Occitane wins customer loyalty by making email and direct mail more personalized with Adobe Campaign.
14%
Response rate
to Black Friday campaigns, increasing website traffic and driving sales
Objectives
Increase customer loyalty by engaging customers with personalized interactions
Differentiate from competitors by telling a powerful brand story
Enable marketers to deploy smarter, targeted email campaigns quickly
Build customer-focused campaigns to support key sales events
Results
14% response rate to Black Friday campaigns, increasing website traffic and driving sales
99% delivery success rate on over 4 million emails sent to its most loyal, high-value customers on Black Friday
Drives customer loyalty through personalization instead of discounts
Accelerates email development and delivery, enabling marketers to spend more time on strategy
A beauty brand gets personal
L’Occitane is well known for its high-quality, luxury items naturally sourced from southern France, including lavender, immortelle, and almond, to name a few. As a premium brand, the company has learned that offering consumers discounts may result in short-term sales, but it does little to win loyalty.
“Running promotions with unqualified customers results in one-time purchases from people looking for discounts,” says Anahita Besson, Director, Customer Loyalty at L’Occitane. “It’s not a successful long-term strategy for a luxury brand, so we shifted our strategy away from aggressive promotions to a more personalized, targeted approach.”
L’Occitane wanted to establish a personal connection with customers and build loyalty by reminding them about everything from its quality, naturally sourced ingredients and sustainable practices to its work with women in Burkina Faso, West Africa. By weaving personalization and storytelling into emails, the company aims to strengthen customer loyalty, drive repeat business, and set itself apart from competitors.
Adobe Campaign, part of Adobe Marketing Cloud, plays an important role in the new strategy, helping L’Occitane bring dynamic content into its email and direct mail campaigns. For example, an email might highlight the top three products a customer viewed on the website the previous day. Or the content could be geography-specific or seasonal, recommending winter beauty routines for a customer in New York.
“Adobe Campaign gives us a competitive edge in the luxury beauty industry,” says Besson. “Other brands may blanket customers with aggressive offers, but we can be more targeted—taking the time to understand who customers are and giving them exactly what they want.”
“Through Adobe Campaign, we can show our customers that we know who they are and that we’re listening, with the goal of strengthening loyalty.”
Anahita Besson
Director, Customer Loyalty, L’Occitane
Taking a fresh approach to campaigns
Consumers are drawn to brands with a story to tell and are delighted by companies that understand their needs. L’Occitane uses Adobe Campaign to do just that—gain a deeper understanding of customers and bring them into the narrative.
“We use Adobe Campaign to view customer purchase history, website behavior, and targeting criteria,” explains Besson. “If we launch a new product, for example, we can see which customers expressed an interest or even made a purchase, as well as the recency and frequency that they engage with content. This sets us up for more focused targeting.”
Since adding personalized content to the mix, L’Occitane has seen a steady uptick in click-through rates to the website. The email marketing team worked closely with the web team to create a seamless experience that moves customers smoothly from email to landing page to purchase.
L’Occitane received a strong response when it launched a new “year in review” email. Customers received a personalized snapshot of their activity over the past 12 months with up to 7 different data points, including purchases and favorite product categories.
“We saw such big returns from this personalized email, with an influx of clicks, visits, and overall engagement,” Besson says. “Through Adobe Campaign, we can show our customers that we know who they are and that we’re listening, with the goal of strengthening loyalty.”
L’Occitane also ran successful holiday campaigns throughout December, incorporating elements such as dynamic first-name personalization, weather-related content, boutique locators, live polls, and countdowns. On Black Friday, the company worked with Adobe to deploy over 4 million emails to customers and prospects, with 99% of them successfully delivered. The team achieved an open rate of 12.85% and a response rate of 13.87%, increasing traffic to the website and driving sales.
Rejuvenating the email marketing team
With limited resources on its email marketing team, L’Occitane needed an efficient way to manage a large number of complex and highly personalized email campaigns. In the past, the team juggled the full scope of tasks—everything from strategy to production, testing, and deployment. Team members were often sidetracked by technical challenges, which kept them from focusing on the crucial work of designing the customer journey.
Now, L’Occitane works with Adobe Customer Solutions and personalization agency Movable Ink to pull it all together, launching complex campaigns in weeks rather than months. Adobe provides the technical expertise to help set up campaigns quickly, establishing the right data connections and target audiences, while Movable Ink designs a cohesive customer experience.
“Having Adobe Customer Solutions on board allowed us to focus on strategy and stop worrying about the technical pieces, which improves operational efficiency and reduces the risk of error,” says Besson.
“With more than 200 locations in the U.S., stores are our top channel for recruiting customers. Using Adobe Campaign, we’re working on a highly competitive loyalty program to attract customers and keep them engaged both in stores and online.”
Anahita Besson
Director, Customer Loyalty, L’Occitane
A healthy glow
Early success with Adobe Campaign has encouraged L’Occitane to think big. For example, the company plans to launch a cross-channel loyalty program that creates a compelling, unbroken customer experience from brick-and-mortar stores to email and direct mail.
Besson says, “With more than 200 locations in the U.S., stores are our top channel for recruiting customers. Using Adobe Campaign, we’re working on a highly competitive loyalty program to attract customers and keep them engaged both in stores and online.”
Across L’Occitane, other email marketing teams have taken notice, planting the seeds for a companywide shift toward greater personalization. “The U.S. team is leading the company in personalization,” says Besson. “Other teams want us to share what we’ve learned, including the efficiencies and successes we’ve had with Adobe Campaign.”