L’Oréal Canada’s Digital Strategy for Shu Uemura

Background: Shu Uemura, a luxury beauty brand under L’Oréal, left U.S. stores in 2010 due to slow sales and has limited distribution in Canada.
Objective: With the release of its Shupette collection (a collaboration with designer Karl Lagerfeld), L’Oréal wanted to increase brand awareness, drive e-commerce sales, and grow Shu Uemura’s email subscriber list in North America.
Primary Target: Younger women (ages 25–30) who purchase luxury beauty products online.

Data Collection: L’Oréal used Google Analytics Premium to gather data on website visitors and organize them into audience segments based on browsing behavior.
Programmatic Buying: With DoubleClick Bid Manager, L’Oréal Canada used the audience data to strategically purchase ads across display and social channels, tailoring ads to different customer journey stages.
Personalized Retargeting: Ads were customized to show relevant products based on user behavior. For instance, people who had viewed the Shupette collection were retargeted with specific product ads or exclusive offers to encourage conversion.

Phase 1 – Awareness & Engagement:
- Goal: Build brand awareness, increase website traffic, and grow the email subscriber list.
- Actions: L’Oréal targeted people who had visited its site or other L’Oréal pages and used lookalike modeling to reach similar audiences.

Phase 2 – Conversion Focus:
- Goal: Drive actual purchases of the Shupette collection.
- Actions: Focused on retargeting website visitors across ad exchanges (like DoubleClick and Facebook), showing specific product ads and incentivizing purchases through special offers.

Revenue Goals Exceeded: The Shupette collection generated nearly twice the revenue originally anticipated.
High Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): The campaign delivered a 2,200% ROAS during the acquisition phase.
Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA) Performance:
- In the U.S., the CPA was 73% better than targeted and closely matched the strong results typically achieved by paid search, L’Oréal’s highest-performing ad channel.

Centralized Ad Platform: DoubleClick Bid Manager allowed L’Oréal to manage all ad buys in one place, eliminating the need for multiple meetings and simplifying the buying process.
Real-Time Adjustments: The integration with Google Analytics allowed L’Oréal to shift strategies mid-campaign. For example, they focused more on the U.S. market after seeing stronger initial results there.
Frequency Capping: With more control over ad frequency, L’Oréal minimized ad fatigue for viewers and increased the effectiveness of their retargeting efforts.

Effective Use of Programmatic Ads: The campaign demonstrated that combining first-party data with programmatic buying can significantly boost customer engagement and sales.
Long-Term Impact: Beyond this campaign, L’Oréal now has a stronger foundation for using data to guide digital advertising, supporting both sales goals and brand growth in North America.