The beauty industry is one of the largest retail sectors, raking in $62.46 billion in 2016. While the beauty and skincare industry seems to be impervious to downturns in the market, beauty retailers need to be cognizant of flagging brand loyalty and competition. With the advent of subscription services, like birchbox, consumers have the ability to easily test new products.  In fact, a study by TABS Analytics, found that in cosmetics alone, millennials (ages 18 – 34) are the heaviest buyers. Yet, that willingness to buy doesn’t always translate into

 brand loyalty with 44% of millennials stating they’re more likely to permanently disengage with brands if they receive high volumes of mass, generic email communications. Here’s the good news, while millennials, a valuable market to the beauty and skincare world, can be scared away by a non-personalized, bombardment of emails, they can also be won over with a personalized touch – 62% of millennials stated that they are more likely to become a loyal customer if a brand engages with them on social media.

As social media becomes a larger part of the consumer landscape, retailers need to be in a position to create a social media strategy that targets customers with the right message based on interests and buying patterns rather than generic posts based on the “flavor of the month.” To help retailers on this journey, we’ve put together a list of 5 key campaigns beauty and skincare retailers can create on Facebook and Instagram to get ahead of the game and standout.

01. Product Replenishment

The beautiful thing about the beauty and skincare world is that products are consumable. As your customers use and enjoy their products, they’re going to need to repurchase or risk running out of their favorite face cream, mascara, or hair serum. Set up an automated replenishment campaign to remind your customers when it’s time to repurchase.  If you use a solution like Windsor Circle, where you can automatically sync segments to Facebook Ads Manager to power ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Audience Networks, setting up your campaign is as easy building your segment, creating the ad, and letting it run. If you’re manually uploading lists or using a solution where you need to rebuild the segment, make sure to do so on a relatively frequent basis, to ensure you’re not targeting customers who have already repurchased.

Here’s what this would look like in Windsor Circle’s App:

Pro tip: Create ads for your top selling replenishable goods or group your products by category to cover more ground while still showing relevant products. 

02. Product Launches/Cross-Sell/Upsell 

Whether you have a new line coming out or you’re just trying to push a certain product, you can create more opportunities for cross-sells and upsells by using your purchase data to target customers who have purchased one product or set of products, but haven’t purchased the product(s) you’re pushing. You can also use product launches as an opportunity to target big spenders.

Pro tip: You can use “most recent order date” to target customers who have purchased in a certain time frame.

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03. Predicted Gender

The beauty and skincare industry is still predominantly geared towards female consumers; however, men’s grooming is a burgeoning market, estimated to reach $60.7 billion by 2020 (note: valued at $17.5 billion in 2015). If you’re a retailer who sells products for both men and women, using predicted gender can be very beneficial for creating relevancy and keeping your ad spend in check.

There are two ways you can use predicted gender: retention and acquisition.

 01. Acquisition

Create a segment of your best customers using predicted gender (male or female) as a custom audience. Below I’ve segmented out my best male customers using RFM scoring. Create a lookalike audience using your newly created custom audience as the source. You can also layer in Facebook data, such as location, gender, and interests to further hone in on viable new customers.