Maureen Kelly, founder and chief executive officer of Tarte Cosmetics, stressed the importance of personalization and customization as key ingredients of the brand’s secret sauce at the fourth annual WWD x FN x Beauty Inc Women in Power event in New York.
“For 25 years, I’ve been very focused on relationships and having those relationships be organic, having them be really customized and personalized,” Kelly said. “Whether it be 25 years ago before social media existed, editors were the influencers, so I would put on a baseball cap, because I couldn’t afford a messenger, and drop off a package at the messenger dock.”
All of those packages she dropped off were customized with details for the editor receiving it — from new Tarte products picked just for the individual to the inclusion of additional items that spoke to the person’s life. (If someone is having a baby, the package might include a breastfeeding pillow or another customized item for the baby.)
And the same practice applies now — even as Tarte has scaled and gotten bigger. It’s been tough, she said, to keep that high touch element, but it’s also her favorite part of the business.
“As business has gotten bigger, we’ve scaled employees and that has helped, but now we’re using AI to help us with that,” Kelly said. “I was resistant to AI a couple of years ago — I was like, AI is robots and all of these weird things, but now, I use ChatGPT probably 20 times a day to tell me details on someone and her family, for example.”
Moreover, she said, AI has helped Tarte’s team customize and segment audiences, enabling deeper personal connections. Kelly joked that the finding has actually been “ironic,” but she has also found that it still comes down to having people understand AI to use it effectively. With email marketing, Tarte has found that when the message is made personal, there is a 60 percent increase of a customer becoming loyal to the brand.
One area that Tarte has seen incredible results from personalization is its infamous influencer trips. Guests invited on the brand’s trips are sent customized pre-travel mailers. The trips are so curated, in fact, that Kelly said a lot of work also goes into creating the guest list with the goal of sending invitations to a group that will become friends. Once they arrive, guests’ rooms are prepared with things that will make them feel special (like a shirt with their dog’s face on it or a framed picture of their children).
While Tarte’s guests have been known to flood social media with content of the trip, Kelly said that no requirements are ever made, citing attention to personalization as the key to making the influencers genuinely want to post.
“Authenticity is so key that when they see a picture next to the bed, they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, look at this, they thought of me,’” Kelly said. “And the content just starts flowing.”
Influencers are just one part of Tarte’s community. This year, celebrating the company’s 25th anniversary, Tarte has been on a “kindness tour,” going to 25 different cities and meeting loyal consumers in each. Already, the brand has seen its consumer community grow during the tour with visitors using redeemable codes given at the events.
Tarte, Kelly said, has “been kind since ’99,” and said it’s important to mindfully create a culture of kindness. “I feel like we all rise together when we lift others up,” Kelly said.
{Categories} _Category: Takes{/Categories}
{URL}https://wwd.com/business-news/business-features/tarte-maureen-kelly-personalization-kindness-1236612592/{/URL}
{Author}Alexandra Pastore{/Author}
{Image}https://wwd.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Maureen-Kelly-Tarte.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1{/Image}
{Keywords}Business Features,beauty,cosmetics,influencer,sales and marketing,Women in Power{/Keywords}
{Source}POV{/Source}
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