How Jurlique is transforming its digital and customer data capabilities

Buying beauty and skincare products is a highly personalised experience, often stretching across offline and online engagement. And thanks to a significant overhaul of its digital platforms, customer data approach and CRM strategy, it’s a personalised experience Jurlique is increasingly confident of delivering.

Global director of digital, data and ecommerce, Fiona Moylan, and global digital product manager, Alexa Anastassi, have been spearheading the 30-year old Australian brand’s digital transformation since late 2015.

“We had challenges with our existing platform in terms of ability to scale, and with ecommerce managers trading their sites effectively,” Moylan explained. “Site structure was very limiting, so we couldn’t take advantage of commercial opportunities. The back-end of Magento was counter-intuitive, and there were big challenges around data.”  

What’s more, Jurlique lacked a comprehensive digital team, and couldn’t tap into customer data to orchestrate personalisation because it was managed offshore by a third party.

So while it’s not the most appealing aspect of transformation, the first focus had to be foundational. Moylan built up a team, and commenced work on elements such as fraud, operations and process to get the business stable.

“It was getting teams up to speed on data and meeting key requirements for ecommerce trading – I call it thinking like ‘shopkeepers’,” Moylan said. “We had a year of stability work and getting our fundamentals right to set up for scale.”

Two major streams of technology-fuelled work were then put in the spotlight. One was building an ecommerce platform and digital website ecosystem that made sense for Jurlique, a global business but with its roots firmly based in Australia. The company opted for Salesforce’s Commerce Cloud.

“We were in our infancy in terms of digital IQ, and we needed to set up for scale in the next three, five, even 10 years,” Moylan said. “So we started the business case there.

“For example, we moved from an ecommerce platform that was fabulous in many ways but too over engineered for a junior ecommerce team. These incremental projects over time started to show the value of digital. Savings could then go into a plan for data and CRM.”  

Moylan said Salesforce was chosen largely for its ability to use data for personalisation. It also presented operational savings including redirecting CapEx costs, while giving Jurlique teams ownership of building new features. This shifts focus culturally from ecommerce management to product innovation.

“We’re talking to engineers now about how to launch new features and services to optimise sales and customer lifetime value, as opposed to managing technology debt,” she said.

“It’s a deeply personal experience buying skincare. You want information that relates to your skin, not an email with product information that’s targeting a 25-year old.”

In all, 15 new technology integrations were led by the digital team. The new-look regional sites went live on 5 March, six months after the business plans were signed off.

But before that, Moylan’s team had to address data, which “wasn’t managed in a way beneficial to the business”. In 2016, all consumer and sales data across Jurlique’s four key markets and sites – Australia, Hong Kong, the US and Europe - was brought into a customer data management platform (CDMP).

The CDMP was developed with partner, Marketsoft. Jurlique has also debuted business intelligence through Tableau, as well as marketing automation.

“We had prefaced the business case with customer interviews and usability testing, pre-UX and design phase of the project,” Anastassi explained. “We’d done lots of consumer testing too, so by the time we got to discovery, we had a clear vision of what our product offering looked like.”  

Jurlique’s four regional sites showcase the brand’s products and heritage, deliver personalised samples and gifts, VIP offers, gift-wrapping and speedy checkout, and offer payment options including We Chat and Alipay.

Notably, sites have personalised product and content recommendations using a combination of transactional and behavioural data sets, regardless of where the consumer made an original purchase. And importantly, sites are designed to capture further customer identification, analysis, management and data sets, helping Jurlique continually improve and optimise how it communicates with customers.

In complement, Jurlique commenced personalised email communications via marketing automation, which it will soon extend to SMS in Hong Kong.

“We took a very gentle approach to using data science to inform personalisation via email. We’re doing the same with ecommerce,” Moylan said.  “There are 70-75 customer attributes, including behavioural and transactional, so the CDMP has a 360-view of the customer. If you were to shop at the Westfield Sydney store, for example, then come online that night, we can identify what you have purchased and present content relevant to you.”

Jurlique also has AI-driven search capabilities, and order data derived via ecommerce is pushed into the CDMP.

“What we’re constantly doing is capturing more data attributes so we can do cross-channel promotions and more personalisation of content,” Moylan said.

The content challenge

While the data and tech was difficult, arguably the bigger challenge for Moylan is content and culture.

“We have data science models that track propensity for a customer to churn, RFM analysis, and we can pinpoint to channel. That’s all well and good, and from an automation point of view, helps us communicate quickly and effectively. But the challenge is still: What do you say? How do you emotionally connect to truly drive lifetime value?” she asked.

“There’s a real change in culture here. We are working with our market teams to understand how we do something with that. That’s a far greater challenge than managing the data. The impact on content requirements is immense. We have had to quadruple content on the site.

What UX research helped identify is how consumers are using content. “There is a faceted search – so refining content, which we’ll start to do by cohorts,” Moylan said.  

“SEO is a big feature in relaunching the sites, so we have to talk to consumers in a way that’s digestible, affordable, and where content is localised.”  

Up next: How Jurlique is building out its customer experience approach

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CRM component

Informing content is Jurlique’s wider customer lifecycle engagement approach. Moylan said Jurlique is in the first phase of its ‘CRM’ journey. The top-line emphasis is on reactivation and retention, with a unique approach for each market.  

“We’re looking at Hong Kong right now and how we start to leverage this data and execute at speed. It’s about helping marketers shift from compiling and understanding data, to using data. For example, identifying audiences that have clicked a button and pushing messages across channels to engage with them,” Moylan said.

 “We need marketers to work smarter, harder and build deeper connections with our consumers. We’re spending a lot of time on trying to deeply understand those consumers to ensure we retain customers who have been loyal to us.”    

For Anastassi, starting the digital transformation journey with foundational elements such as data ensured customers sit at the centre of Jurlique’s approach.

“For example, if we’d started with an email marketing platform, we wouldn’t have our customer data centralised,” she said. “This will give us the ability to connect that customer experience and look at who our most highly valued customers are and how we service them better whatever channel they choose to shop or interact with.”

Using onsite personalisation and the Commerce Cloud’s customer groups functionality, powered by Jurlique’s CDMP, allows the team to craft a more iterative approach to CX, Anastassi continued.

“As each market’s capability improve and they get smarter about the CRM strategy and defining those personas, that then rolls into the onsite experiences and content being delivered,” she said.  

When it comes to metrics, Moylan said site relaunches saw teams working to KPIs around traffic and SEO.

“Our first concern was redirects were accurate so we didn’t lose any traffic. That was seamless. The site is running at one-third the speed it was, which is positively impacting conversion,” she said.  

“We’re ahead of metrics in terms of data collection, which is particularly important in the US, where we don’t have a store and the website needs to be the key acquisition channel. There’s also uptake of new payment methods, like via We Chat and Alipay, and traffic is strong.

“And of course the most important metrics are sales. We’re right on target, which is double-digit growth for ecommerce.”

With the longer-term data and CRM strategy, meanwhile, Jurlique is agnostic about where people want to engage and purchase, Moylan said.

“The main beneficiaries of the CRM work are actually stores, as it’s driving people to stores to engage and experience our Jurlique service,” she said.  

She’s also keen to see messaging online and offline better connected. “We can already see how consumers are engaging with the brand, and we’re starting to overlay that with social activity,” Moylan said.

Anastassi said Jurlique’s future roadmap isn’t about looking at omnichannel engagement, but experience levels.

“That could be for customers looking for treatments and spas – how can we improve that experience whatever the channel is key,” she added.

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