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Customer Story How BeautyStat Climbed 135 Skincare EMV Ranks in 5 Months

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Celebrity cosmetic chemist, Ron Robinson, started in the beauty industry over 20 years ago working as a cosmetic chemist where he developed many of Clinique’s best-selling products, before taking on product development roles for other brands like L’Oreal, Revlon and Avon. He felt there needed to be an online community where people could connect with beauty experts and created the BeautyStat blog.

5 years and 5 patents later, BeautyStat was born in 2019 with its star product, the Universal C Skin Refiner, the world’s first serum containing stable 20% L-Ascorbic Acid, the purest form of vitamin c – cracking the code on a gold standard ingredient in beauty. This was guided by the belief that everyone deserves to feel comfortable and confident in their own skin.

At a Glance

Learn how BeautyStat, a skincare brand that approaches influencer marketing by nurturing and cultivating community, was able to:

  • Scale their gifting & seeding program
  • Increase creators retained month over month
  • Grow monthly EMV by 61%
  • Outpace growth and retention of top competitors

Background The Power of EMV

Founded by a core team who spent their careers working in-house at top EMV brands, GateMaker Community understands the power of EMV as a leading indicator of revenue and new customer acquisition, and partners with incredible companies to help them build community and influencer programs at a serious scale with impactful results.

So when L'Occitane en Provence sought to partner with GateMaker Community with the goal of becoming a top 25 skincare brand by EMV, it was the perfect match.

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Vandana Tandon

CMO, L’Occitane North America 

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Vandana Tandon

CMO, L’Occitane North America 

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Vandana Tandon

CMO, L’Occitane North America 

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Vandana Tandon

CMO, L’Occitane North America 

Background Scaling a Gifting & Seeding Program

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Since October 2023, the BeautyStat team has focused on scaling their influencer marketing efforts and in just under 5 months, Rachel Bimonte, Influencer Marketing Manager, Yaso Murray, Chief Marketing Officer, and their team have seen significant results.

With goals of scaling their gifting and seeding program efficiently, helping grow retention alongside net new creator acquisition, and increasing EMV, they utilized competitive insights for their creator discovery and various outreach strategies. This included reaching out to top EMV creators for other skincare brands and utilizing filters to target micro to mid-tier influencers with high engagement.

Month over month, they increased the total number of creators they sent hero products to starting with 300 creators and scaling to 1,000 creators in January 2024. With this strategy, they saw an increase in the total number of creators retained month over month, total number of posts, and were able to test creators in different campaigns such as new product launches and co-branded mailers. Through this gifting and seeding strategy, the BeautyStat team was able to establish select creators to work with on paid opportunities while keeping the focus on organic partnerships; in February 2024, 98% of their creators were unpaid.

"My passion for BeautyStat and the influencer marketing field is what helps me stay focused and motivated in achieving our team’s goals.

My advice for anyone looking to scale their influencer program is to stay kind, stay hungry and don’t forget to stop & reflect on your accomplishments."

Rachel Bimonte Influencer Marketing Manager, BeautyStat

Mission Growing and Retaining a Community

By approaching their influencer marketing strategy with a focus on authentic, non-transactional relationships, the BeautyStat team was able to see an immediate return.

Every mailer that was sent to creators got a result. Rachel emailed the recipient list for every seeding opportunity beforehand with a picture of what was included, tracking information, and she followed up to make sure the package was received. This detailed level of care and check-ins ensured creators opened their mailer, tried the 3-4 products, and, in return, BeautyStat saw an increase in EMV through creator content.

However, the communication did not end there. Rachel and her team responded and engaged with all creator content to say thank you and show their support by highlighting the creator’s content on BeautyStat’s Instagram stories. This no-cost, relationship nurturing tactic was key to their community growth and is something they’ve continued to do with personalized questionnaires and sending personal messages to wish their community members a happy birthday, share how happy they are to have them in their community, and more.

As their community grew, retained creators were the first to receive co-branded mailers that showcased products in a fun, unique way and new products such as BeautyStat’s Peptide Wrinkle Relaxing Moisturizer in January 2024. This product launch shone the spotlight on Gen X creators and centered around their Beauty of Now campaign focusing on embracing how happy you are now. The thoughtful taglines and meaningful copy shared by the BeautyStat team was then reflected in the creator’s content, helping emulate key brand messaging.

Furthermore, their main partner Ulta, the United States’ largest beauty retailer, was proudly included in every mailer sent to their growing seeding list which continued to drive creators and their audiences to their local Ulta store to check out BeautyStat’s products. As a result, the team continued to see growth in their omnichannel strategy.

Challenges Nurturing Relationships

The skincare industry can be a bit more challenging in gifting products especially as a smaller brand with limited budget. BeautyStat was methodical with their gifting and seeding efforts in how they approached creators and gradually increased the number of creators they worked with each month. Their team focused on cultivating community and providing the best experience for creators even before the start of the relationship; everything that was published for their brand’s marketing factored in influencer marketing.

Creators received consistent touch points from the BeautyStat team via email, mailers, products, surprise & delight moments, and direct messages going above and beyond to ensure educational resources, product information, and a trusted source were always available.

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Solutions Building Brand Awareness

The beauty of BeautyStat’s brand awareness success is attributed to their thoughtful 360 marketing across multiple channels including social media, influencer marketing, and retail, providing the ultimate omnichannel experience for creators.

Their intimate and unique in-person events help to create a greater sense of community and brand loyalty. The BeautyStat team took micro-influencers to Times Square in New York City to view the finalized campaign shoot these select creators were part of. They’ve hosted round table meals with millennial and Gen X creators to discuss the “Beauty of Now” and test out new products 1x1 with Ron, BeautyStat’s founder.

These unique, tailored experiences have allowed BeautyStat to scale their incredible relationships and help creators grow with their brand.

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Results

  • Increased 135 skincare EMV ranks in 5 months
  • EMV grew from $257k in October 2023 to $1.3M in February 2024
  • 98% of creator efforts in February 2024 were unpaid
  • Over 2,700 creators were gifted products in 4 months
  • 79% retention rate in January 2024
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Fast Questions with BeautyStat

  • How would you describe your experience with CreatorIQ in three words?Streamlined, rewarding, interactive
  • What would you tell other companies considering using CreatorIQ?Be prepared to see success when using CreatorIQ, especially when you structure your main KPIs around the unique, but also standard metrics that Tribe offers. There’s a specific playbook which will garner results for your program, you just need to drive it.
  • How has it been working with CreatorIQ’s team?Extremely helpful! We work most with Becca and Conor—they have both always been highly responsive, give us answers to any inquiries we have and provide us with different ways to think about our strategy while adding a ton of support and motivation.
  • What would your job be like if you didn't have CreatorIQ? It would be more difficult to prove the success of influencer marketing, as there’s the age old question – does influencer marketing support performance or brand awareness? Tribe makes it possible to bridge the gap between both. We know that an increase in EMV translates to an increase in searches from Google Analytics, but you also get the traditional awareness stats – impressions, reach, engagements, etc. With all my experience on other platforms, Tribe is by far my favorite (there’s no set creator marketplace, cap on creators you can see tagging you, opt-in workaround), it’s just straightforward.

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