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Executive Summary This is a geo-targeted direct marketing plan for Benefit’s Brow Bar services in
San Francisco.
This campaign will introduce the Brow Bar Gorgeous Rewards mobile
application, which will be developed for this program. It will function as a loyalty card, a
distribution system for offers and a quick and easy way for customers to make beauty
appointments at their preferred Brow Bar location. This direct marketing plan has two
main goals, new customer acquisition and customer retention through the use of house
mailing lists, advertising and guerilla marketing in the city of San Francisco.
The campaign will come in four phases throughout the course of a year. Each
channel will launch during the beginning of the phase. Then, each channel will cycle
through each touch point, from first touch point (communication about the offer) to
second touch point (follow-up about the offer if no response).
The specific channels included in this plan are: direct mail, email, direct response
radio, social media, and flyers. For each media channel, we will provide a 20% discount
for new users and reward points for existing users through the mobile application to
redeem for products and beauty services each time a Gorgeous Rewards customer
gets a brow service at one of our locations. This will continue to drive customers to the
store, keep customer retention, grow customer loyalty, and encourage consumption of
both Benefit’s products and its services.
We will continuously check outcomes and monitor our KPI’s to ensure that our
campaign is performing efficiently and we are getting the highest ROI.
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Executive Summary 2
Introduction
4
Company Background 4
Situation Analysis 4 Marketplace Macro-Environment
4
Competitive Situation 5
Product Situation and Positioning
6
Research Results
6
SWOT Analysis for Brow Bar (See Exhibit 4)
9
Goals and Objectives 9
Marketing Strategy 10 Target Market
10
Positioning
10
Offers 11
Direct Marketing Tactics 12 Media Channels
12
Database Development
15
Testing
15
Fulfillment and Service
16
Coordination and Integration with Other Channels
16
Implementation Timetable of the Program 16
Budgets and Financial Information 18 P&L
19
Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) 20
Evaluation Rules and Methods
21
Conclusion 22
Appendix 22
References 32
3
TABLE OF CONTENT
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Introduction We have been hired as outside consultants to create a direct marketing plan for
Benefit Cosmetics’ six San Francisco, California brow and beauty bar locations. We
analyzed industry trends, found primary and secondary research, and recommended a
direct marketing strategy and tactics that will help promote Benefit’s Brow Bar and
beauty services, increase store traffic, gain new customers, and grow customer loyalty.
Company Background
Benefit Cosmetics LLC is a cosmetics manufacturer, which was established in
1976 in San Francisco, California. The company has various product lines including
makeup, skincare and beauty services. The company provides their services at over2,000 locations in more than 30 countries. After the successful growth in the U.S.
market, the company expanded their brand to London in 1997 and the company was
acquired by LVMH in 1999 (Benefit Cosmetics About Us Page, 2014).
Situation Analysis
Marketplace Macro-Environment
The cosmetic and beauty industry has $52 billion in total revenue and the annual
growth is 4.9 percent each year from 2009 to 2014. It is expected to remain the same
percentage until 2019 (Phillips, 2014). The revenue of the industry decreased 27
percent in 2009 because of the recession. However, the revenue has slowly increased
and it grew to $52.3 billion in 2014. According to the GMID industry report (2014),
Benefit Cosmetics, LLC occupies one percent market share in the U.S. cosmetics
market.
The department store is a common distribution channel in the cosmetics industry.
Many cosmetic products are sold in department stores, though this has been changing
in the last five years (Phillips, 2014). The online platform has become one of the most
popular shopping channels as well because it allows the brand to sell directly to the
consumer rather than going through a distributor. Consumers can not only go to the
physical stores to make the purchase, but can also place their orders online. Online
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cosmetics shoppers generated more than seven billion dollars in 2010 and this group is
estimated to grow steadily in the future (Schulz, n.d.).
Competitive Situation
Benefit Cosmetics uses a unique business strategy in the prestige makeupindustry. Unlike many prestige makeup brands, which distribute products through
department stores such as Nordstrom, Macy’s, or stores like Sephora or Ulta, Benefit
sells directly to the consumer (Phillips, 2014). The Benefit Cosmetics stores sell only
their brand. In addition to their products, they sell beauty services, from eyebrow
waxing, to eyebrow tweezing, to bikini wax, to spray tanning: they offer an array of
options.
Our plan is to promote the Benefit Brow Bar and Boutiques beauty serviceswithin the Benefit stores. These stores are heavily dependent on local traffic, so we
chose to focus our direct marketing analysis and strategy on locations in San Francisco,
California. There are six Benefit Cosmetics store locations in San Francisco offering
Brow Bar or beauty services. One of Benefit’s closest competitors in San Francisco is
Anastasia Beverly Hills, located in Nordstrom’s Market Street location in San Francisco.
Anastasia offers a full brow service complete with brow arching, brow re-shaping and
sculpting as well as facial waxing. Much like Benefit, Anastasia offers a line of brow
products, which are promoted and sold through this beauty service (Tiffany, 2014).
While Anastasia is the closest competitor in the level of service and products,
there are many options to wax, color, or reshape one’s eyebrows in the San Francisco
area. A search for “brow bar” near Sutter Street in San Francisco reveals several
locations for Benefit, Anastasia and Wax Addict, a brow service owned by a former
Benefit Brow Bar expert. The latter company boasts five stars for the service out of 41
reviews.
In addition to these high-end services, independent salons that offer waxing
services present competition for Benefit Cosmetics’ Brow Bar. A search on Yelp using
the keyword phrase “waxing eyebrows” reveals 973 results (including Benefit’s Brow
Bars) in San Francisco, California. The results include day spas, nail salons, hair
salons, and cosmetic and beauty supply shops (Yelp, 2014).
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Another form of competition for brow services is a recent phenomenon called
eyebrow threading. Said to originate from India, threading “involves rolling a twisted
cotton thread over unruly hairs then removing them at the follicle level,” (Starzee, 2009)
and has increased in popularity in the US over the last decade. It works well for
sensitive skin and unlike tweezing, can remove rows of hairs at a time. The Shapes
Brow Bar uses this method in malls in seven states and one of the owners of the
franchise calls it “the McDonalds of the beauty industry,” (Starzee, 2009). While there
are no Shapes Brow Bar locations in San Francisco, this franchise has contributed to
awareness about the threading technique as a result of its prominent locations in the
public areas of malls. A Yelp search with the keyword phrase “brow threading” reveals
234 search results in San Francisco, California. Upon closer inspection, however, it was
difficult to find a location that actually offered the service, but many of the Yelp reviewers
mentioned that they had had the service at one point. In a phone call with a
representative from Urban Beauty Spa, located at 130 Bush St, 4th Fl, San Francisco,
CA 94104 and offering threading services, we found that the threading service costs
$22 and eyebrow waxing costs $18 (See Exhibit 1).
Product Situation and Positioning
Benefit Cosmetics advocates that laughter is the best cosmetic, and that makeup
doesn't have to be serious to look good. Benefit products include makeup for the face,
cheeks, eyes, lips and accessories. The company builds the brand image through
creative packaging, unique product names, and unique services, such as the Brow Bar.
Benefit Cosmetics creates witty, cute and funny taglines for all their products.
Research Results
• Primary Research Results (See Exhibit 5)
Primary research was conducted in the form of a survey about Salon Services
using SurveyMonkey. The main objective of this primary research was to examine
customers’ buying behaviors and direct marketing methods. In total, we obtained 61
respondents who are females and live in San Francisco. Below are our survey results.
• 86.67% respondents use salon services such as: Brow Bars, Nail Salons,
and Waxing.
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• The reasons of respondents use these services instead of doing it
yourself
- Improve your own skills: 3.27%
- Convenience:31.11%
- It makes you feel good: 27.86%
- Prefer professionals: 37.7%
• Age segments
- 18 to 24: 9.9%
- 25 to 34: 88.64%
- 35 to 44: 2.27
• The times of day respondents normally go get salon services
- 10am~12pm: 24.43%
- 12pm~2pm: 14.29%
- 2pm~4pm: 30.95%
- 4pm~6pm:35.71%
- 6pm~8pm: 47.62%
- 8pm~10pm: 7.14%
• Information acquisition channels
- Direct mail: 6.5%
- Email:14.75%
- Catalogs: 4.91%
- Magazines:11.47%
- In-store pick-up:26.22%
- Official website:36%
- Radio or TV:1.63%
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• 54.55% respondents look for promotions related to salon services
• Promotion acquisition channels
- Groupon
- Facebook
- Email
- Online search
- Living Social
- Magazine
• 54.67% respondents know Benefit Cosmetics in San Francisco offers a
Brow Bar service
• Eyebrows service satisfaction evaluation
- Price:44% respondents satisfied
- Service: 55.56% respondents satisfied
- Location: 44.44% respondents strongly satisfied
- Promotion: 77.78 respondents neither dissatisfied nor satisfied
• Secondary Research Results
The personal waxing and nail salons industry has $7.1 billion in revenue with an
annual projected growth of 3.9% from 2013-2018. There are no major players in this
industry and 7.3% of the service segmentation is waxing services.
There are currently an estimated 236,625 nail and waxing salons in the United
States. This figure represents average annual growth of 4.7% compared to five years
ago. The industry is highly fragmented; more than 99.0% of salons have just one
location (Phillips, 2014).
Disposable income and declining unemployment will continue to be the primary
drivers of this industry’s growth. Despite its discretionary nature, the industry grew
strongly in the face of the recession (Phillips, 2014).
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The personal waxing and nail salons industry is in the growth stage of its industry
life cycle. Although the industry’s service offering is well developed, lower price points
have engineered greater growth by expanding the industry’s target market (Phillips,
2014).
Our plan includes introducing a customer loyalty program through a mobile
application. According to the 2013 Research Alert Yearbook, the top motivations for
shopping via mobile include ease of use, seeing a mobile ad, finding the best deal, and
boredom of filling time (Research Alert Yearbook 2013, XII).
According to Javelin Strategy and Research, consumers spent $20.7 billion in
mobile purchases in 2012 and according to Comscore, almost two-thirds of smartphone
owners (65%) engage in shopping-related activities on their phones. (Research AlertYearbook 2013, 159).
SWOT Analysis for Brow Bar (See Exhibit 4)
Based on our SWOT analysis and research, we’d like to propose a customer
loyalty program that will increase the following:
Goals and Objectives
• New Customer Acquisition
• Customer Retention
Since Benefit Cosmetics has a unique business strategy that includes selling
their branded beauty products and services in the same locations, the company has a
great opportunity to use these different offerings to entice customers to come back for
more. The Brow Bar and Beauty Bars in particular offer services that are regular parts of
a woman’s maintenance routine on her appearance. We recommend that Benefit
develop a loyalty program for their beauty services, which would award points for repeat
visits, and which customers could redeem for services or beauty products. The Brow
Bar Gorgeous Rewards mobile application, which will be developed for this program,
functions as the loyalty card, a distribution system for offers and a quick and easy way
for customers to make beauty appointments at their preferred Brow Bar location. This
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direct marketing campaign has two main goals, new customer acquisition and customer
retention through the use of house mailing lists, advertising and guerilla marketing in the
city of San Francisco. Our key performance indicators for this campaign will be based
on new customer conversions to the Brow Bar and repeat visits. For new customer
conversions, our KPI is 1.5% and for repeat visits it’s 85% of the initial conversions.
Marketing Strategy
This campaign will drive traffic to the six Benefit Cosmetics locations, which have
Brow or Beauty Bars (see exhibit 8 for list of locations) using a 20% discount for a
customer’s first eyebrow service. The discount coupon will be awarded to the customer
via each media channel. Once the customer has redeemed the code in store, she will
be encouraged to download the mobile application. The app will then function as a
loyalty program and appointment system, keeping track of past and future appointments
as well as rewards points.
Target Market
Target Group Analysis (See Exhibition 3.)
As of 2012, there are 825,863 people in San Francisco, 405,499 of them women
(49%). 68% of the total population are above 18 and below 65, approximately half of
which are women. The approximate amount of women in this segment is approximately
268,405. Our target market has a high disposable income (yearly salary is over
$60,000)—which narrows our target market even more. The median income in San
Francisco is $73,000 so we are assuming that at least 100,000 women make enough
money to afford Benefit’s salon services (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012).
Positioning
Our target market for this campaign is a large age range, from 18-45, so they’ll
likely be responsive to a range of direct marketing channels including direct mail,
magazines, email, and TV/radio advertising. Benefit targets a more upscale customer—
women that like to look nice and are willing to spend money on products and services.
They are single or married, more affluent, and most likely enjoy things like shopping and
nail services.
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According to a survey of 500 U.S. women ages 18-34 taken by market-research
company Lab42, Beauty store owners and managers note that millennial women are
loyal to their favorite makeup brands. 68% say that they would opt for their preferredbrands over less expensive products. This is strength for Benefit because it’s a large
segment of their target market. This survey also noted that 42% of millennial women
follow beauty brands on social media and nearly half of them received a discount as a
result of following a brand. More followers leads to better customer retention, which is
important for Benefit and their customer loyalty program (Lab 42, 2014).
Offers
For each media channel, we will provide a 20% discount for new users andreward points to redeem for products and beauty services each time a Gorgeous
Rewards customer gets a brow service at one of our locations. This will continue to
drive customers to the store, keep customer retention, grow customer loyalty, and
encourage consumption of both Benefit’s products and its services.
• Creative Approach: Benefit Cosmetics has a very distinct look and feel. They use
different shades of pink, nude, black and white with retro style illustrations. Their
copy is clever, using rhyming and other literary devices, and stays true to theirmission statement that “laughter is the best cosmetic.” For example, on their
website, there are calls to action (CTA’s) such as “See how Benebabes wear their
faves,” and, “Nice Package! Build your own makeup kit.” The product names also
impart a humorous tone. For example, one of their beauty kits is called “Confessions
of a concealoholic” and their body balm is called "take a picture...it lasts longer..."
For each media channel, we will use these branding elements to create a consistent
look and feel for the campaign.
• Strategy: The messaging is based around the concept of “taking a brow break,”
meaning that we are encouraging working professional women in areas near Brow
Bars to take a break from work either during their lunch or after work, to get their
eyebrows shaped. See Exhibit 7 for an example of the direct mail flyer we would use
(See Exhibit 9 for cost breakdown).
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• Pricing: The pricing for the Brow Bar service is $20-$23 for a Brow Wax, $5-$6 for a
Brow Trim, and $12-$26 for a Brow Tweeze. The promotional discount of 20% would
be valid for the brow wax or brow tweeze only, since we’d like to encouragecustomers to get the full service and a trim is just an interim solution between
waxings. The pricing with the promotion would then be $16.67 to $19.17 for a
customer's first brow wax and $10-$21.67 for a customer's first brow tweeze.
Direct Marketing Tactics Media Channels
Direct Mail
The direct mail portion of the campaign will use Benefit’s house mailing list to
encourage current customers of Benefit products to use the Brow Bar services, which
they may not be aware of. The advantage of using the house list is that these customers
are already aware of Benefit as a prestige makeup brand and have indicated an interest
in Benefit’s products and services. They may not be aware of the Brow Bar and direct
mail postcards will drive interest and curiosity about the Brow Bar. Additionally, we
chose direct mail as one media channel option because it offers a potentially high
response rate, it’s a precise form of targeting, where we can personalize the mail
pieces. We will also use rental lists to reach new customers. The rental list we will be
using is called Beauty and Cosmetics Buyers List (See exhibit 9 for breakdown of
channel costs).
Email
Benefit Cosmetics sends product emails every 5-6 days, around the same time
every day, in the early morning. They’ve found this method successful likely because it’s
a weekly reminder about Benefit’s products and it comes in the early morning, when
women come into work or are on their way to work. Their emails have various
promotions as well - e.g. free samples with orders over $50. However, the Brow Bar can
use this method as well. Benefit wants to get customers into their store and the
objective of this campaign is to get them to come in for services during their lunch break
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or right after work. These are busy, young, working women that want an efficient, expert
service for their beauty needs. Also, this campaign is in the San Francisco Bay Area,
where people are fueled by technology and mobile. Everyone is always on their phone,
reading something and forwarding it to their friends. We will be using Benefit’s house list
(which encompasses product and services) to send the promotional emails. For the
house list, the goal is to cross-sell and get people interested in Benefit’s products to try
their Brow Bar services.
Despite the trend of sending these emails in the early morning (between 5 and 7
am on the west coast), we are going to do a split test to see the times that get the most
click-through rates. We want to test the time right before lunch, around 11 am, when
women want to take a break from work and can enjoy this unique and quick service.
The other time we want to look at is right before the work day is over, around 4 pm. This
could also be a quick reminder to women on their way out that they could stop by
Benefit and get their eyebrows done.
• Cost: $300 for the creative and no cost for the house list.
Flyers
Flyers are a traditional marketing strategy, a useful tool to communicate with
people and get them to come into the store. For example, a company can show theirname, logo, promotion and special design in order to attract people’s attention. In order
to communicate with our target audience, Benefit Cosmetics can distribute the flyers in
the financial area and downtown and near the other Benefit locations.
• Cost: The channel will cost $300 for creative and $103.95 per 1000 quantity of
flyers, as well as staff time for distribution.
Social media (Facebook, Twitter and YouTube)
Social media platforms have become an emerging digital channel, which
companies use to advertise their products and services. Among those social media
platforms, people use Facebook the most (66 percent), Youtube (28 percent) and
Twitter (25 percent) (Harland, 2014). Women tend to use social media platforms as their
tools while they research information about cosmetics, expert beauty suggestions,
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reviews and so forth. They also proactively look for a brand’s social media page while
they browse online (Lieberman, 2014).
Facebook
Women tend to use social media more often than men do. Among those socialmedia platforms, Facebook attracts more female users, 81 percent of respondents said
they have a Facebook account and 58 percent of them said they log into their account
more than once a day. Also, women get news from Facebook more than men do.The
company will post their promotion on their cosmetic related fan page in order to
maximize the efficiency of the advertising. The campaign can emphasize our promotion
on the ads “Eyebrow experts” in bold to attract prospects attention (Kaiserman, 2013).
• Cost: The company will run the campaign for 6 months with total cost $1,840($10/day) with potential reach of 176,000 circulation (Facebook, 2014).
Twitter
According to 2013 Social Media Demographics, it indicated that there are 18% of
women who use Twitter. Among those user groups, ages 18 to 29 account for 31% and
ages 30 to 49 account for 19% (Bennett, 2013). In order to maximize the efficiency of
their advertising, Benefit Cosmetics will also post their promotion on their Twitter page.
• Cost: Twitter will cost $2.50 to $4 per follower and $0.75 to 2.50 per click,
favorite, retweet or reply (SmartInsights, 2011).
YouTube
According to a 2014 Google YouTube Demographic Report, females account for
23 percent of YouTube’s most active users. Among those female users, 41% are ages
18 to 24, 26% are 25 to 34 and 11% are 35 to 44.
• Cost: We will advertise our campaign by setting the daily budget of $10 andmaximum cost-per-view (CPV) $0.05. This budget can help Benefit reach the
estimated 500 views a day.
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Direct Response Radio
Similar to other tactics, direct response radio has several advantages, such as
high reach, high targeting, and low cost (Brown L, 2013). The average listening time of
online radio listeners is 10 hours a week. In addition, direct response radio is highlymeasurable (Lowry T, 2009). Since the numbers of traditional radio listeners have
decreased in recent years, we would like to use internet radio, like Pandora as our
media channel. Pandora had more than 200 million registered users and 70 million
activated users in 2013 and 51% are females (Loeb S, 2013). Unlike traditional radio
stations, Pandora advertising can choose a specific target group for Benefit to
broadcast its advertising. However, we still have to make sure that the creative
approach, offers, and communication methods are attractive enough for our target
market. This direct response radio ad will be 15 seconds long and will focus on “taking a
brow break” and downloading the new mobile application, like in our other tactics. This
commercial should be simple and easy to grasp since our audiences will be listening to
music on Pandora and not paying a lot of attention to the short advertisements. First, we
have to identify the problem of not having groomed brows and offer our solution. For
example, we will identify customers’ potential problem, like “Do you have a wedding to
go to this summer?” Then, the commercial will offer a solution of “taking a brow break”
after work. The commercial should also emphasize Benefits Brow Bar’s advantages.
• Cost: According to the digital rate sheet (Pandora Advertising, 2012), we will
use Pandora’s Advertising system to place our advertisement. This costs $36
CPM plus $7 CPM for a select list (which includes :15 Web Audio, tile ad,
companion banner + geo +ZIP.)
Database Development
Testing
Each media channel will require testing to ensure the most impact and highest
response rate. There are numerous factors that we can test including the offer, copy,
design, the call to action, timing and the mailing list. With each new phase of the
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campaign, we’ll use the “beat the champion” rule by using the highest performing
version of the particular media piece and testing some new variation against it.
Benefit should analyze their current database to check if the click through rate of
the advertising in the social media platforms that the company posted their ads werehigh.
Fulfillment and Service
Customer Service: During the campaign phases, store managers will be required
to schedule extra Brow Bar experts and adjust staffing based on the amount of traffic
the store locations get.
Payment: Benefit Boutiques and Brow Bars have several payment options that
provide customers easy and convenient ways to make payments. Payment options
include cash, check or credit card. All the payment information will be saved in Benefit’s
CRM system for the loyalty program.
Customer service feedback: At the end of the service, customers will get a push
notification within the application asking them to rate the Brow Bar experts on a scale
from 1-5 stars, with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest. Benefit store managers
will read these excellent and poor reviews and help monitor staff so that staff is properly
trained and customers are happy.
Coordination and Integration with Other Channels
While sending email reminders to the customers or prospects, we can have our
Facebook and Twitter URL mentioned in the email as well so that customers that are
interested in social media will click on it and have another chance to find out about the
services offered. This strategy can also be applied to direct mail and flyers.
Implementation Timetable of the Program We are launching the campaign in four phases throughout the course of a year.
Each channel will launch during the beginning of the phase. Then, each channel will
cycle through each touch point, from first touch point (communication about the offer) to
second touch point (follow-up about the offer if no response). If a new customer
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schedules a brow appointment and uses the coupon, the customer will be encouraged
to use the loyalty program in the app to earn points. The communication for these
customers then changes to reminder emails, texts or in-app push notifications around
the time they should be scheduling their next appoint, which would be about once every
three weeks. (See Exhibit 6 for a diagram of the channel communication map.)
TABLE 1. IMPLEMENTATION TIMETABLE
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Budgets and Financial Information The budget allocation of this direct marketing campaign is based on response
rate, CPA, cost and analysis of the various media channels. According to our primary
and secondary research, we decided to allocate our marketing budget to direct mail,
email, social media, flyers, and internet radio. After we analyzed the cost breakdown,
we found that the rental lists and COGS affect whether or not our plan is the most
profitable. Since Benefit already has a strong customer base, we will take advantage of
existing client lists in order to reduce the marketing costs. In addition, direct email
generates the lowest CPA, which ultimately allows us to attract more customers.
Although social media has a lower response rate in our campaign, the high impressions
will help Benefit reach more potential customers. Flyers are an excellent channel toattract local clients into our stores. With guerilla marketing, we can explain our
campaign face to face with our target markets. The greatest drawback for using flyers
will be the labor cost because it will increase overhead cost. Therefore, we will hire
temporary workers to distribute half of the flyers, and the rest of flyers will be distributed
by Benefit employees in front of the stores.
Finally, since the numbers of traditional radio listeners have decreased recently,
we would like to use Pandora internet radio as our direct response radio channel. Themost significant advantage of Pandora internet radio is that we are allowed to broadcast
our advertising to our target markets. To sum up, the campaign’s average response rate
will be 1.5%. Based on our assumption of variable and fixed costs, we expect to make a
$35,259 profit in the first year. Our customer lifetime value will increase significantly in
the following year (Second year: $17.67, Third year: $28.49). The P&L and customer
lifetime value are listed below.
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P&L
Unit price: We use the average service price as our unit price which is $21.5 plus 20%
discount for the first year ($17.2).
S&H and COGS: Since our service does not require a shipping and handling fee, the
cost is $0. Our in-store employees are responsible for the Brow Bar service, so we only
estimate 15% of the COGS for the material costs and portion of employees’ salary.
Fulfillment & Bad debt: We used the industry average cost for fulfillment and bad debt.
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Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)
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Retention rate: We assume our loyalty program will retain our customers efficiently. We
expect to reach 85% retention rate in the first year, 90% in the second year, and 95% in
the third year.
Response rate: We will offer the Gorgeous Rewards loyalty program once customersare acquired. We assume that customers who begin the loyalty program will continue to
buy our services. Therefore, the response rate for second and third year will be 100%.
We will remove or change status due to inactivity and non-response in order to increase
the response rate during the first year.
ROMI(Return on Marketing Investment):
ROMI = (Profit-Total Marketing Cost)/Total Marketing Cost*100%
The ROMI of our campaign in the first year will be -49%. When this campaign extends
to 3 three years, the ROMI will increase to 267%
Break-even (Net Sales = Variable Costs + Fixed Costs): Based on the break-even
analysis, we will have to sell 4314 units of Brow Bar service for this campaign in order to
have our revenues covering the cost.
Evaluation Rules and Methods
We will integrate our selected media channels in order to maximize the efficiency
of the campaign for the Brow Bar service. We will continuously check outcomes and
monitor our KPI’s to ensure that our campaign is performing efficiently and we are
getting the highest ROI.
• We will also use several measurement tools in order to find out how our campaign
performs with each media vehicle.
• We can conduct a survey with Benefit’s target audience asking from which
channel they heard about the Brow Bar.
• The company can also evaluate their sales numbers during the radio advertising
period to see if sales figure increase.
• The company will use the following methods in order to find out the value of the
online advertising (Digital Marketing NOW, n.d.).
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• Benefits Cosmetics will measure whether the traffic on their social media
increases.
Conclusion If the Gorgeous Rewards year-long campaign is successful, we will expect
Benefit to continue it to keep growing customer loyalty and increase sales.
Appendix
EXHIBIT 1: PRICE COMPARISON
EXHIBIT 2: INTERVIEW WITH BENEFIT MARKETING MARKETING MANAGER (VIALINKEDIN): JUN 16, 2014
Answer in bold.
RE: Benefit Cosmetics Marketing Plan
Annie Nguyen, Marketing Manager at Benefit Cosmetics
June 16, 2014 5:33 PM
Hi Marianna,
Thank you for reaching out. There is a lot of info that I can't share, but I answered to the
best of my abilities. See comments/answers below. Hope this helps!
On 6/8/14 7:42 PM, Marianna Levyash wrote:
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--------------------
Hi Annie,
I am a graduate student at Golden Gate University and am taking a Direct Marketing
and Database course, where one of our final projects is to do a direct mail marketingplan for a company that we choose to focus on. My group chose Benefit because we
are interested in the cosmetics industry and think the brand is great - we love the fun
creativity and Benefit products. I found you through our mutual LinkedIn connection
Antonina Belorusets and I was wondering if you could help me answer just a few
questions about Benefit, since it is a private company and not all of the information is
available. I will be happy to share everything we do with you and with Benefit Cosmetics
- our final proposal, plan, and presentation.
1. There are many cosmetic brands in the bay area - what makes Benefit Cosmetics
different and unique? Benefit is a brand that truly believes a woman is the prettiest
when she's happy & laughing. All of our products are know to deliver quick,
instant beauty solutions. Unlike all other makeup brands, each of our products
also have a story & personality of our own.
2. Which direct mail marketing campaigns are you currently running? What is working
and what is not? Benefit leverages our retail partners to run our direct mailmarketing. In the US, we no longer mail our print catalog. The catalogs are still
available, but distributed at our points of distribution instead. It's a bit
challenging to track the results from our direct mail pieces as not all our retail
channels are willing to share the information with us as we leverage their
customer database. In the past, anecdotal data has shown that our direct mail
pieces have about a 1.5 - 3% return rate.
3. How does your organization measure campaign outcomes? It depends on thecampaign. KPIs can include: Sales results, social engagement & reach.
4. Is there a set marketing budget for 2015? What is the likely budget allocation? (We
don't need exact numbers - just a range is fine) There are 2 US Marketing Teams. One
team is Retail Marketing (my team) and the other is Brand Marketing. Retail
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Marketing focuses on initiatives that have a strong retail influence (i.e. retail
partnerships, in-store events). Brand Marketing's initiatives have a much wider
reach (i.e. Project Runway presents Under the Gunn partnership. As a result, it's
difficult for me to provide even a budget range for you to reference.
5. How frequently do you communicate with members? We interact with our
customers on a daily basis through our social media channels.
6. Are there annual events you focus your marketing efforts on? Benefit will also do a
strong focus on our Star Products: They're Real & the POREfessional. Annually,
we hold 600+ events in our retail channels. In addition to our Star Product Events,
we also hold events for our new product launches & free brow services as well.
Exhibit 3. San Francisco Demographics
(U.S. Census Bureau, 2012)
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Exhibit 4: SWOT Analysis- Benefit’s Brow Bar
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Exhibit 5: Survey Questions (via SurveyMonkey.com)
1. Do you use salon services such as: Brow Bars, Nail Salons, and Waxing?
Yes
No
2. Why do you use these services instead of doing it yourself?
Improve your own skills
Convenience
It makes you feel good
Prefer professionals
3. What is your age
18 to 24
25 to 34
35 to 44
45 to 54
4. What times of day do you normally go get salon services?
10am~12pm
12pm~2pm
2pm~4pm
4pm~6pm
6pm~8pm
8pm~10pm
5. Where do you get information about salon services?
Direct mail
Email
Catalogs
Magazines
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In-store pick-up
Official website
Radio or TV
6. Do you look for promotions related to salon services?
Yes
No
7. Where do you find these promotions? Please answer below. (Facebook,
Twitter, Email, Direct Mail, Magazines, Etc.)
8. Did you know Benefit Cosmetics in San Francisco offers a Brow Bar
service?
Yes
No
9. If you have gotten your eyebrows done at Benefit's Brow Bar, how would
you rate your experience at the store (From 1-5) (If not, leave blank)
Price
Service
Location
Promotion
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Exhibition 6: Direct Marketing Channel Map
28
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!"#$% '($)*+,"-#.)/ 01%2)%- '($)
3($),(4#)% 2%5,$)",% 6".5)("2$
788%, 1%9(2-%,
:95(6 3(,%.) ;5(6 (K2 T+
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Exhibition 7: Sample Email and Flyers
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Exhibit 8: Benefit Boutique and Brow Bar Locations
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Exhibit 9: Media Plan
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