Avon: home of the original influencers

How did Avon’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion play a part in its 2020 mar­ket share growth, dur­ing a time when oth­er indus­try play­ers strug­gled?

We’ve been inno­vat­ing to pro­vide con­ve­nient dig­i­tal tools for our rep­re­sen­ta­tives to run their busi­ness­es com­plete­ly online as social sell­ers. Our dig­i­tal brochure, for exam­ple, can be shared via social and is ful­ly shop­pable.

For rep­re­sen­ta­tives that weren’t already lever­ag­ing our dig­i­tal tools, we’ve pro­vid­ed thor­ough train­ing and incen­tives. We wel­comed tens of thou­sands of new rep­re­sen­ta­tives in 2020, with the num­ber sell­ing dig­i­tal­ly sky­rock­et­ing. This enabled us not only to remain open, but be rel­e­vant to a new gen­er­a­tion of rep­re­sen­ta­tives and cus­tomers.

Con­sumer access to prod­ucts is often a chal­lenge for Avon. How does per­son­al­i­sa­tion help?
Our social sell­ing busi­ness mod­el is more rel­e­vant than ever. Avon rep­re­sen­ta­tives can be con­sid­ered the orig­i­nal ‘influ­encers’, shar­ing beau­ty advice, tips and tricks with their com­mu­ni­ties and rec­om­mend­ing prod­ucts they love. Many brands are launch­ing online con­sul­ta­tions, often pow­ered by arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) and chat­bots, and while we see a role for this, noth­ing beats the tru­ly per­son­al rec­om­men­da­tion.

What beau­ty buy­ing behav­iours have changed?

The envi­ron­ment for the beau­ty sec­tor was incred­i­bly chal­leng­ing in 2020, how­ev­er Avon UK moved from 10th to third place in cos­met­ics, with growth across colour, skin­care and fra­grance. Many con­sumers no longer have the dis­pos­able spend to buy high-priced brands, but they still want qual­i­ty. That’s when they dis­cov­er Avon.

Hybrid (mul­ti-use) prod­ucts have grown in pop­u­lar­i­ty, with peo­ple look­ing to get more from their mon­ey. For exam­ple our Revival Serum Lip­stick and Serum Foun­da­tion are make-up and skin­care hybrids.

The talk of a repeat of the ‘Roar­ing 20s’ is real. We’re see­ing fra­grance and make-up rebound, and lip colour is back on the rise.

What are the chal­lenges of sell­ing beau­ty prod­ucts online?

Get­ting prod­ucts into people’s hands. For prod­ucts like fra­grance or foun­da­tion, tri­alling is essen­tial. Our trust­ed beau­ty advi­sors offer sam­ples and demo prod­ucts to their cus­tomers to try before shop­ping the full-size prod­uct. Cus­tomers can also pur­chase sam­ples direct­ly from Avon online. As it’s not pos­si­ble to try make-up in stores right now, we see our range of sam­ples as a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage.

Cus­tomers can also return or exchange a prod­uct free with­in 90 days. We find many cus­tomers will shop a full size and a sam­ple, so they can return the full size if they try the sam­ple and it isn’t right. But with the per­son­alised ser­vice from our rep­re­sen­ta­tives, that doesn’t hap­pen often.

What will be next for Avon in terms of dig­i­tal inno­va­tion?

We are con­tin­u­al­ly rolling out new tools to help with per­son­alised rec­om­men­da­tions, such as our online Foun­da­tion Find­er. We are invest­ing mil­lions to help our rep­re­sen­ta­tives become true dig­i­tal entre­pre­neurs to reach more peo­ple in their com­mu­ni­ties. Whilst we’ll always be devel­op­ing our dig­i­tal tools, we’ll con­tin­ue to do the same for our much-loved brochure.

The importance of personalisation in beauty — and how online brands can grow their owned audiences

Wul­fric Light-Wilkin­son, EMEA gen­er­al man­ag­er for per­for­mance mar­ket­ing engine Wun­derkind, shares his insights

“Per­son­al­i­sa­tion is huge­ly impor­tant for the beau­ty sec­tor, giv­en the lev­el of indi­vid­ual con­sid­er­a­tion that goes into pur­chas­es and the strong affin­i­ty con­sumers often have with their favourite brands and prod­ucts. It’s bril­liant to see brands like Avon putting a per­son­alised approach at the heart of their dig­i­tal strat­e­gy through inno­va­tions like the online Foun­da­tion Find­er tool.

“Offer­ing a gen­uine val­ue exchange like this is a real­ly effec­tive way of not only enhanc­ing the online pur­chase jour­ney for the con­sumer, but also for brands to cap­ture new prospects and grow their first-par­ty, owned audi­ences – an urgent pri­or­i­ty ahead of 2023’s move from Google to phase out third-par­ty cook­ies. By scal­ing up their remar­ketable data­bas­es, brands can build engaged, loy­al audi­ences for the future and lay the foun­da­tions for sus­tain­able growth.”

To learn more about how scal­ing first-par­ty data can grow dig­i­tal rev­enues, vis­it wunderkind.co

Pro­mot­ed by Wun­derkind