Driving certain behaviors to achieve customer loyalty and brand advocacy can be a difficult task for brands. But, at Ulta Beauty, officials always listen to their customers and offer them solutions to their problems.
Eric Messerschmidt, VP of Marketing Strategy, CRM, and Loyalty at Ulta Beauty, talked to Loyalty360 about the company’s approach toward impacting customer behavior. One of the ways Ulta Beauty impacts customer behavior is through its ULTAmate Rewards loyalty program.
“If you run your business with a guest-centric view, it’s not that difficult,” Messerschmidt explained. “It starts with understanding your guest and what really drives them to engage with your brand. Once you know, or even just have a general idea of what their interests are, you can then start testing different approaches and see what drives the desired behaviors. When you find an approach that works, you keep doing it. When one fails, you either stop or adjust it and try again.”
Messerschmidt said that Ulta Beauty constantly tests new ways to provide value to its customers.
“It could be a birthday gift, or a notification of new products that they might like, or even a “how to” video demonstrating a new beauty trend,” he explained. “As we try these things and adapt our approach to what works for our guest, they begin to realize that we really know and appreciate them. And that’s what can drive brand advocacy.”
Historically, Ulta Beauty measured customer loyalty through standard Key Performance Indicators such as:
Number of members with purchases over the past 12 months
Sales/member
Percentage of total sales from members
Member retention rate
Number of new members
Number of reactivated members
Number of Platinum members
Percentage of members with email addresses, mailing addresses, birthdates, etc.…
Percentage of members redeeming rewards
Percentage of members shopping omnichannel
“Over recent years, with better systems and processes, we’ve gotten more refined and exact in these measurements and have been able to share relevant performance information across the enterprise on a more frequent basis,” Messerschmidt said. “For example, we now regularly share loyalty information directly with our store managers, so they can see how each associate is performing relative to signing up new members and capturing customer contact information. We have found that by tracking results at the associate level, it really improves the store manager’s ability to coach their team and improve their store’s loyalty statistics.”
The Ulta Beauty team comprises more than 26,000 associates.
“Whether I’m at headquarters, our distribution centers, or any of the 874-plus stores across the country, I find people who are passionate about our guests and enthusiastic about bringing the fun side of beauty to everyone,” Messerschmidt said. “When it comes down to it, they are the “secret sauce” for making our loyalty program as successful as it is.”