Sephora Direct:

Case Study by: Hannah McArthy

Published by: Harvard Business School
 Assumptions
 Sephora will at least have a minimum $ 1 million budget for social
media, video, and mobile
 Sephora will continue to update social media platforms
 Ulta will continue to be Sephora’s main competitor
 Online search advertising will be minimal, since a heavy amount of
2010’s budget went directly to online search advertising
 Beauty Talk will still be available and maintained
 Facebook and Twitter will still be current (still be heavily used by the
public)
 Sephora is focusing on the other social media sites, such as Pinterest and
Instagram
 Sephora’s target market will not change, it will remain women between
the ages of 25-35
 Sephora’s Problem
Bornstein, senior vice president of Sephora, wants to double her
budget in social media, video, and mobile for 2011.

 Justify Sephora’s need to increase the budget for social media,

video, and mobile
 It is currently less than 5% of the marketing budget

 Allocating the budget to make the biggest impact

 Metrics need to be put in place

 Return on investment needs to be found and calculated
 Recommendations
 Come up with a specific marketing objective for social media, video and
mobile
 Increase focus on non-traditional marketing while integrating it with the
traditional platforms
 60% of online sales are more than $25/month, compared to 40% who do not
shop online

 Survey customers in-store and online after checkout

 Compare Sephora’s social media, video and mobile to its main competitor
to ensure Sephora will not get left behind
 Come up with common metrics that can be taken across multiple
platforms
 ROI
 Conversion Rates
 Implementation
 Implement the social media, video, and mobile objective to focus on extending customer
service and driving sales and leads to Sephora.com
 Help narrow down to see if these platforms are performing

 Survey at in-store and online checkout and ask what marketing mechanism encouraged
them to purchase from Sephora
 Facebook, Twitter, Catalog’s, etc.
 Both in-store and online to get rid of bias

 Integrate social media, video, and mobile with Sephora.com and traditional media
 All social media should be linked to Sephora.com
 Magazines have social media information or QR codes that lead to social media, video
and mobile information

 Benchmark Sephora’s social media, video, and mobile to Ulta

 Number of tweets, posts, uploaded photos on various media platforms, video’s on
YouTube ( Burke)
 Implementation
 Calculate ROI and conversion rates to calculate where to allocate the budget and to
justify non-traditional marketing budget
 ROI – Social Media Value Chain (Exhibit 14)
 Derived Value – Investments/ Investments
1. Measure Engagement (Followers )
2. Measure the Social Media Impact (Benefits)
3. Compare Investments from Derived Benefits
 Conversion rates – see how Sephora’s digital marketing platforms bring visitors
to Sephora.com
 Google Analytics
 Goals and Advanced Traffic Segments
 Goal: Destination (Sephora.com)
 Create a funnel for the goal (path you expect people to take)