內行帶你逛絲芙蘭 看化妝品實體店如何做好數字營銷

When Bridget Dolan breezed into the Sephora store on San Francisco’s Powell Street on a recent Thursday afternoon, her iPhone lit up. This happens a lot—anytime she passes within a few feet of a Sephora store, really, which in her role as the Beauty emporium’s vice president of digital marketing is often.

最近一個週四下午，當布里吉特o多蘭輕盈地走進舊金山鮑威爾街絲芙蘭(Sephora)專賣店的時候，她的iPhone手機突然閃爍了一下。這種情況經常發生——真的，任何時候，只要她邁入一家絲芙蘭店幾英尺，這一幕就會出現。而作爲這家美容用品商場的數字營銷副總裁，她當然是這裏的常客。

A notification on her phone’s screen informed Dolan that she had a Sephora gift card with a bunch of loyalty points—more than 7,000—to spend on goop and glitz. Detecting her proximity to the store, the Sephora app on her iPhone had triggered Passbook, Apple’s coupon and ticket storing app, to remind her. “I like to think of Passbook as a magnet to pull clients into the store,” she said. “Suddenly, I’m like, ‘I have a red-hot gift card at Sephora I forgot about.’”

手機屏幕上出現的一條通知告訴多蘭，她獲得了一張絲芙蘭禮品卡，贈送超過7,000點忠誠積分，可用來購買美容化妝品。監測到多蘭靠近這家店面之後，其iPhone手機上的絲芙蘭應用程序已經啓動Passbook【蘋果公司(Apple)開發的優惠券和門票存儲應用】來提醒她。“我總是認爲Passbook就像是一塊磁石，能夠拉攏客戶進入店面，”她說。“我突然想到，‘我還有一張最新的絲芙蘭禮品卡呢，我都忘記了。’”

It’s one of the many ways the makeup company, which is owned by the luxury goods giant LVMH, is using technology to draw in customers and make them spend more time with it, whether in person or online. “We didn’t want to just put technology in here that’s flashy,” she said, gesturing around a store that was humming with the sounds of pop music and filled with cubicle-dwellers trying out new looks on their lunch breaks. “We want to integrate technology into our shopping experience in a way that’s additive and doesn’t go against the grain of the way someone would want to shop.”

這家隸屬於奢侈品巨頭路威酩軒集團(LVMH)的化妝品公司，正在運用科技手段吸引客戶在其門店駐留更長時間（不論是上實體店，還是網絡商店），上述應用只是衆多方式之一。“我們不想在一個如此光鮮時髦的場所生硬地應用技術手段，”她一邊說，一邊用手指掃了一下店面四周。在這個播放着流行音樂的店面，處處可見利用午餐休息時間來嘗試新形象的寫字樓白領。“我們想把技術整合到購物體驗之中，這是一種附加營銷手段，不會背離客戶對購物體驗的期望。”

Bypassing a battalion of blush, Dolan sidled up to a kiosk and lightly tapped on its display. This is the Sensa kiosk, she said—one of three interactive screens that help Sephora customers pick out the right product for them, with or without the assistance of a “cast member,” the company’s name for its staffers.

繞過一羣正在試妝的紅粉佳人，多蘭悄悄走進一臺設備，輕拍了一下它的顯示屏。她說，這是一臺採用Sensa技術的機器——三個互動屏幕中有一個能夠幫助絲芙蘭客戶挑選合適的產品，不管有沒有一位美容顧問在一旁協助。

Sephora uses Sensa as a tool to select fragrances, the business on which the chain was founded. The kiosk starts with general questions—do you want to smell like flowers or fruit?—and continues refining choices based on your previous answers. Think of it as Amazon’s recommended reading algorithm, but for smelling good. Last year, Sephora installed Sensa in all of their more than 1,700 stores last year, Dolan said. “We love that technology so much that we bought the company,” she said, “and we’ll continue to enhance the experience.”

絲芙蘭使用Sensa作爲一種挑選香水的工具，而香水則是這家連鎖店的立店之本。Sensa會首先詢問一些一般性問題，比如，你想散發花香還是水果香？然後基於客戶此前的答案，對選擇不斷細化。你可以把它視爲亞馬遜網站(Amazon)推薦閱讀算法的另一種版本，但更好聞。去年，絲芙蘭公司在旗下超過1,700家分店中全部安裝了Sensa設備，多蘭說：“我們特別喜歡這項技術，以至於買下了這家公司，我們將繼續提升顧客體驗。”

Dolan strode past the bevy of perfume bottles surrounding Sensa and stopped at another interactive display, this one for skin care products. The device works in a similar way to the fragrance kiosk, but also pulls in reviews of products from users and experts, plus more data mined from Sephora’s website. “It helps to have the best of what’s amazing online—the search and sort filters, what are the best sellers, what’s top rated?” she said. “The whole idea for us is that it’s unbiased. If you picked this product and said, ‘Give me products that work with it,’ the products that work with it aren’t necessarily from that brand.”

她大步穿過一溜擺放在Sensa設備周圍的香水瓶，停留在另一個推介護膚品的互動顯示屏前。這臺設備的運行機理與香水顯示屏類似，但它還彙集了一些來自用戶和專家的評論，還有更多挖掘自絲芙蘭網站的數據。“支持令人讚歎的在線技術，比如搜索和排序過濾器，瞭解到哪些是最暢銷的產品，哪些是最受好評的產品，當然有助於消費者挑選商品，”她說。“我們的整體思路是，推介過程應該是不偏不倚的。如果你挑選了這款產品，說‘給我一些與它配套使用的產品，’那些配套產品不一定來自這個品牌。”

Dolan saved her favorite marriage—of makeup and machinery—for last. She cleared a path to the center of the store, where a third kiosk, smaller than the rest, sat adjacent to a well-lit mirror. This one, which Sephora calls Color IQ, uses a hand-held capture device that calibrates to each client’s visage and maps out their skin color on a range of 1,500 different hues. Every bit the director in the day’s production, Dolan flagged down a cast member to try it out on me. Two swipes over my face and neck—”You have really nice skin,” the young woman said—and Color IQ gave me the designation of 5y05 (“y” as in yellow; there’s also “r” for red) and an array of foundations and concealers that match that code.

多蘭把她最喜歡的化妝品機器設備留到最後介紹。她徑直走向專賣店中心。在那裏，第三臺互動設備擺放在一個光線充足的鏡子旁邊。這臺比其他兩部設備都小，被絲芙蘭公司稱爲“顏色智商”(Color IQ)的機器，使用一個手持拍攝設備對準每位客戶的面部，然後以多達1,500種不同的色調來描繪她們的膚色。作爲當天的“導演”，多蘭招呼一位美容顧問測試一下我的膚色。這位年輕女士刷了兩下我的臉和脖子，“你的皮膚真好，”她說。“顏色智商”隨即確定了我的膚色類型——5y05（“y”代表黃色；還有“R”代表紅色），以及一組與這個代碼相匹配的粉底和遮瑕膏。

The goal of the system is to cut down on a traditionally tedious process. “The average woman buys seven foundations before she finds the right one,” Dolan said. “Not only is she looking for the right color, it might be, ‘Oh I don’t want to spend $65.’ It really is the right product, the right formulation, and the right shade.’”

這套系統的目標是減少傳統上非常繁瑣的挑選過程。“平均而言，一位女士需要買7種粉底，才能找到合適自己膚色的產品，”多蘭說。“她不僅僅是在尋找合適的顏色，或許還有類似‘哦，我可不希望花65美元’這樣的心理。這真的是合適的產品，合適的配方，合適的色度。”

And once you’ve found the perfect scent, skin care products, and shades with which to makeup your face, Sephora has yet another tool it wants you to use: Beauty Board, a feature within its smartphone app and on its website that functions like an in-house Instagram. Dolan scrolled through some of the latest posts: one featured gold glitter eyeliner; another, coral-colored cheeks. With Beauty Board, customers and staffers can upload photos of their freshly-done faces and tag products so others can emulate their look. Selfies, it turns out, are very much Sephora’s friend.

一旦你找到完美的香氛、護膚品和麪部底妝產品，絲芙蘭還有另一種希望你使用的工具：Beauty Board。這是一款在絲芙蘭手機應用和官網上都具備的功能，其運作方式就像是照片分享網站Instagram的內部交流版。多蘭瀏覽了一下最新發布的一些帖子：一張是極富特色的金色閃粉眼線，另一張是珊瑚色腮紅。通過Beauty Board，消費者和員工可以上傳她們剛剛打理過的臉部照片，並附上使用的化妝品名稱，這樣其他人就可以模仿她們的妝容。事實證明，自拍真是絲芙蘭的好朋友。

“Ultimately the idea will be that a cast member will say ‘Hey, do you want me to take a picture of your makeover with your phone?,’” Dolan said, stopping on a photo of a twentysomething woman with turquoise eyeshadow. “Now you can look at that and say, ‘Oh, this is the product I should use to get that look,’ instead of going through all the trial and error.”

“最終的想法是，一位美容顧問會說，‘嘿，你想讓我幫你用手機拍一張化妝後的照片嗎？’”多蘭說。她的目光停留在一位二十出頭，打着藍綠色眼影的女子自拍照上。“現在你可以看着它說，‘哦，這就是我想要的，能達到這種效果的產品，’根本沒必要經歷繁瑣的試錯過程。”

With that, Dolan ducked away to spend some of her 7,000 points, consulting her phone to see what makeup staples she needed to refill. She hadn’t put down her phone the half hour we’d spent in the store, which, it turns out, is behavior Sephora expects and even encourages. “You can use your phone, we want you to take it out in our store,” she said. “It’s an opportunity for us, for sure.”

就這樣，多蘭陸續花掉了一些積分，她不停地通過手機來查看她還需要補充哪些化妝品。在我們一起逛店的半小時內，多蘭一刻也沒有放下她的手機。事實證明，這正是絲芙蘭預期甚至鼓勵的行爲。她說：“你可以使用你的手機，我們希望你在逛店時掏出手機。毫無疑問，對於我們來說這是一個機會。”