How Kiehl’s Deploys Adaptive Customer Experiences [Case Study]

Kiehl’s is a cosmetics brand retailer specializing in premium hair, skin, and body care products. Founded as a homeopathic pharmacy in Manhattan in 1851 by John Kiehl, the brand was later purchased by L’Oreal and now has more than 1,250 points of sale.

Many of Kiehl’s skin care and body products are specially formulated to complement one another as part of a total solution–together, these products comprise the perfect routine for healthy-looking skin. However, many of Kiehl’s best customers were unaware of the benefits of bundling the individual products that they love.

Challenge

In order to align shoppers with the skincare routines and product collections that mattered most to them, the eCommerce team at Kiehl’s partnered with HiConversion to run a personalization campaign that would: 

• Allow visitors to shape their own shopping experiences by presenting them with offers and incentives to purchase related products. 
• Tease out the best-performing offers from a bank of options, allowing Kiehl’s to identify the most impactful product routines. 

This personalization campaign was one of three optimization campaigns running in parallel. Two other campaigns–one targeting men with a special offer, and another supporting Kiehl’s annual LifeRide on the West Coast–were already driving results for the brand. 

“Partnering with HiConversion enabled Kiehl’s to combine visitor segmentation and onsite behavior to experiment with a broad spectrum of customer consideration paths. The end result was a better understanding of the decision-making process and a significant improvement in desired outcomes.”

– Sean Reynolds, AVP, eCommerce & Digital Marketing, Kiehl’s Since 1851

With dynamic optimization strategies, retailers can launch multiple concurrent campaigns, allowing eCommerce and marketing teams to support multiple dimensions of digital marketing simultaneously. 

Strategy

The Kiehl’s team knew that a high level of customer empowerment required a solution that was capable of handling multiple variables, pages, and goals simultaneously. In order to achieve their objectives, the brand turned to targeting and site personalization.  

First, Kiehl’s split shoppers into groups based on their status (new or returning) and interest in either Product Line A or Product Line B. For new visitors, interests were implied based on search engine keywords. For registered customers, Kiehl’s used profile data to measure alignment toward either product category.

Visitors in each of the four segments were targeted with one banner on the home page. Their experiences were then further shaped by their response to each offer: 

• If they clicked on the banner, that offer remained persistent throughout the shopping experience. 

• If they didn’t click, they were presented with another banner until the offer bank was exhausted or until they completed a transaction. 

Results

By segmenting their audience into smaller groups then targeting each shopper with banners based on personal interests and online behavior, Kiehl’s empowered their visitors with choices that could drive their experiences along the consideration path. This two-dimensional approach allowed Kiehl’s to identify the most relevant offer for each customer class, resulting in an overall RPV lift of 11.59% relative to the baseline.

By Segment 

Segmenting their audience into distinct groups gave Kiehl’s a clear view of the impact that each customer type has on bottom-line revenue, allowing them to identify the most valuable audiences.

By Consideration Path 

With HiConversion, Kiehl’s has the technical prowess to handle multiple possible outcomes based on visitors’ reactions to different offers. Each of these reactions constitute a consideration path. 

Each consideration path is tracked, allowing Kiehl’s to identify which overall web experience resulted in the highest overall revenue lift. 

HiConversion’s in-depth campaign reporting goes well beyond simply describing which banner won. These results detail the performance of each consideration path, highlighting the significant impact of shaping the customer journey across the entire sales funnel.