Mary Kay Amplifies its Brand Power and Global Reach Through User-Generated Content
For 60 years, Mary Kay has empowered its independent business consultants to serve its customer base around the globe. When stay-at-home mandates went into effect in 2020, the company had to adapt to and find new ways of serving its customers. Mary Kay immediately began working with its sales force to take their unique personal shopping experience online.
“In Mary Kay Europe, we had to double-down on amplifying our online sales model very quickly,” said Monica Haverkamp, Senior Manager, Integrated Marketing Communications – Europe Region at Mary Kay Inc. “We said: ‘Let’s do this.’ We encouraged our business consultants to host virtual parties and make connections online, there was a very concentrated focus on growing our social media presence,” said Haverkamp.
While the company launched new digital offerings, including a new interactive product catalog and its “Mirror Me” virtual try-on app, it focused on achieving a hybrid online and offline customer journey that married channels seamlessly.
Maximum Impact
A key element was user generated content (UGC), Haverkamp explained. “We collected a lot of great UGC, and we believed we had the opportunity to optimize its use.” To remedy this, Mary Kay is working with PowerReviews to help its markets maximize the impact of UGC by infusing it across all its channels.
“We know that people want to see and hear how other people use products, especially when it comes to beauty. So sharing product testimonials and UGC throughout all of our online and offline channels is key to our strategy.”
The company has collected 118,000 reviews, achieving over 86 percent product coverage, with a 4.6 average star rating, with some countries, such as Poland, growing review volume by 325%.
"A Truly Seamless Transition"
Mary Kay Europe made the leap to the PowerReviews platform seamlessly! It was a wonderful partnership with the Power Reviews Team, Marketing and IST teams at Mary Kay.
Mary Kay was able to take review content from its previous vendor’s platform and infuse it into the PowerReviews platform without much work needed by internal staff. “This was big for us. We wanted to make the change as easy as possible, and it has been a truly seamless transition. We signed the contract on Dec 16 and by Jan 23 we were launched in 12 markets, in multiple languages! The PowerReviews team was onsite, working all hours of the night.”
Beyond the streamlined PowerReviews deployment process, Mary Kay customers also enjoy a level of simplicity. “It’s super easy to complete a review,” says Haverkamp. “The submission form is easy to complete from a mobile phone, where many of our customers are by default.”
“We liked the PowerReviews all-in-one pricing model, where there isn’t an upcharge for add-ons. As a bonus, PowerReviews was able to weave social curation into our package.” Haverkamp said she also found another added value – PowerReviews team members with a like-minded company culture who were “super service oriented.”
“We consider the partnership a huge win,” she said.
Capturing More Through Social Media
Leveraging PowerSocial – a PowerReviews offering for seamless social media image curation – Mary Kay curates visual media from Instagram, within reviews or submitted directly to the company’s website. The tool enables Mary Kay to locate, request and gain permission to use customer photos and videos directly and with ease. With PowerSocial, brands and retailers are able to capture 221% more images and videos.
To date, Mary Kay Europe has collected 201,898 images from social media – an effort that is being handsomely rewarded with killer conversion rates. Analysis shows Mary Kay customers and prospects that interact with the brand’s visual UGC have 3.19x higher conversion rates over the brand’s average site visitors.
Customers and prospects that interact with Mary Kay visual UGC have 3.19x higher conversion rates over the brand’s average site visitors.
UGC Matters Because "Stories Matter"
Moving forward Mary Kay Europe has an exciting future in the digital arena. As Mary Kay celebrated its 60th anniversary, they planned a major initiative to leverage UGC to tell the tale of Mary Kay today and its empowering history, “because stories matter,” says Haverkamp, underscoring the famous beauty brand’s currency and connection with women all around the world for six decades and counting.
Results
ROI Delivered
