Executive summary
Shiseido Interactive Beauty uses solutions such as Treasure Data CDP to support the realization of its customer development strategy, aimed at deepening the Shiseido Group’s understanding of its customers and improving brand loyalty. In addition to advancing its existing loyal customer base, the company seeks out and develops potential loyal customers.
Through these activities, it has also achieved significant labor savings in marketing data extraction and analysis. We asked two key figures at Shiseido Interactive Beauty about the aims and results of this initiative, and about their outlook for the future.
Key points of this customer story:
- Introduced OneID to develop a system to provide a beauty experience tailored to each customer and to expand the loyal customer base.
- Uses Treasure Data CDP to visualize the progress of its loyal customer development strategy, thereby deepening its understanding of customers and increasing loyalty.
- Sped up marketing campaign formulation and implementation by enabling marketers to extract data directly.
Shiseido Interactive Beauty is a strategic subsidiary established in July 2021 through a joint venture between Shiseido and Accenture. The company’s mission is “To make everyone’s life healthy and rich. To offer each and every individual beauty experiences of tomorrow by making full use of digital solutions and technology.” In other words, their mission is to accelerate the Shiseido Group’s digital transformation (DX) and reform existing business models. One of the measures they are promoting to achieve this is new digital marketing.
Shiseido was early to digitize, having started its comprehensive beauty site, Watashi Plus, in April 2012. However, its previous marketing efforts presented some challenges. Shiseido’s Michiaki Kato, Group Manager, Data CRM Promotion Group, Digital Strategy Department, DX Headquarters, recalls as follows.
“For example, if we wanted to observe customer behavior based on certain criteria, marketers used to have to ask data engineers to apply coding to SQLs to extract that data. But marketers could not necessarily get all the data they were looking for in one request; once they saw the extracted results, they sometimes wanted to add more criteria. This led to a lot of back and forth between marketers and data engineers, and it took a lot of time and effort to leverage the data that constituted the preparatory stage for the marketing campaign.”
Demand for products fluctuates depending on trends and the season. “When reaching out to customers, timing is important. If we don’t implement marketing activities at the right time, we’ll miss the opportunity,” says Shiseido’s Kazufumi Funada, Data CRM Promotion Group, Digital Strategy Department, DX Headquarters.
The fact that data was broken down by sales channel and brand was also an issue. Funada elaborates, “Even data for the same customer was handled separately depending on whether they bought something in store or online. It was difficult to bring together the disparate data, and it was difficult to understand the customer’s behavior in an integrated way.”
To solve this problem, Shiseido created “Beauty Key,” a membership service that uses OneID to integrate multiple membership services, including Watashi Plus. Kato describes their aim as follows.
“We did this to better understand our customers and provide a better beauty experience. Customers’ makeup preferences and the cosmetics they use will vary depending on their age and lifestyle. By having a deep understanding of what our customers are looking for now, we can deliver the best proposal at the time it is needed. By staying close to our customers, we aim to increase the value of our brand, increase loyalty, and foster repeat purchases.”
Solution: Visualizing customer development paths to support new customer experiences
Shiseido deployed Treasure Data CDP to further improve customer understanding and loyalty. The company uses the Audience Studio feature to access customer data and create refined customer segments. In addition, the Journey Orchestration feature makes it easy to develop marketing campaign scenarios and dashboards in the GUI.
They also implemented a customer development path that visualizes cross-selling progress.
“A customer learns about a product because, for example, it wins a Best Cosmetics Award, and they get it to try it out. From there, they get interested in the brand, and try other products in the same line, such as toners, lotions, serums, and so on. As their loyalty increases, they may buy products from the most high-end range. We don’t just know this process intuitively; we can visualize it with actual numbers,” explains Funada.
The company can understand which products a customer needs to be introduced to, and in which order, to produce the greatest gains in loyalty, and apply that to each campaign. This drives loyalty from base customers, to customers who use multiple products in the same range, to high-end loyalty customers.
Results: Speeding up marketing campaign implementation and visualizing results on a dashboard
Using Treasure Data CDP has already led to changes in the digital marketing domain, particularly in Shiseido’s unique approach to customer engagement..
First, there has been a dramatic reduction in the labor-intensive and time-consuming back and forth between marketers and data engineers. With Audience Studio, Treasure Data’s user interface for marketing teams, marketers can easily create consumer segments through a simple user interface, resulting in a 15% reduction of time to exchange information between marketers and data engineers. Marketers can now check on the status of segments to which they want to make an approach: for instance, they can check what segments are in the market and in what volumes, and whether it is possible to make an approach to a particular segment.
Funada says, “Customer data is integrated under OneID across all sales channels, making it easy to understand the status of customer development paths for each segment, and how they have changed. In addition to knowing the current status, it also helps us visualize potential loyal customers and understand bottlenecks that hinder behavioral change.”
The new system also has significant benefits in terms of improving productivity. “The Treasure Data CDP incorporates a variety of APIs and seamlessly links with a variety of data. This API also links with Shiseido’s master data. In the past, it took about a week to see the full range of data, because we collected disparate data separately and aggregated it in Excel, but now we can visualize it on the dashboard in just one hour,” continues Funada.
The series of initiatives is being carried out with data linked from each brand. Using Treasure Data CDP allows data to be linked seamlessly. “It has stimulated communication between marketers, and we are expecting a synergistic effect,” says Funada.
Moreover, Shiseido’s implementation of Treasure Data CDP has revealed unique strengths in their approach.
From the outset, Shiseido’s strategy wasn’t just about selling items online. Instead, it focused on integrating real and digital experiences. This approach connects Shiseido to consumers and delivers exceptional value by providing rich information about products and beauty services, including personalized counseling and skin measurements. Most of the services offered in-store are now also available in a digital format.
“The integration of real and digital is crucial,” Shiseido Interactive Beauty’s Director of Digital Strategy, Ippei Ogura told the CDP World 2024 audience. “By implementing Treasure Data CDP in 2016, Shiseido has positioned itself as a leader in the beauty e-commerce market in Japan.” The impact is clear from the company’s data, which shows that the CDP has significantly accelerated the growth of Shiseido’s market share to become #1 in its category.
This comprehensive approach, combining online and offline experiences while leveraging advanced data capabilities, has positioned Shiseido at the forefront of customer-centric beauty solutions in the digital age.
Aiming to expand the loyal customer base by developing the right proposals at the right time
Partner company Accenture and Treasure Data support were essential to the realization of this system. Funada says, “Accenture worked alongside us throughout, helping us with everything from integrating customer data with OneID to designing a system to make use of that data. Treasure Data has a deep understanding of our role and operations; whatever we asked for, they would develop a plan with us to make it happen. They actually made adjustments to the UI to make it easier to use. They were aware of our fear of trying new things, and made hands-on changes and provided training in data-driven CRM planning. The support from both companies has allowed us to branch out into new areas.”
One of these new areas is Treasure Data Journey Orchestration for enhanced consumer engagement. Through this framework, Shiseido defines consumer stages and maps out tailored journeys for each stage. They can categorize stages based on the number of items used and visualize the progress of cross-selling. Allowing them to identify the best order for introducing items, maximize consumer loyalty, and enhance our campaigns.
In the future, the company will also use the data integrated under OneID to improve loyalty, based on their visualized customer development paths. They are already considering concrete campaigns and innovative approaches to enhance customer experiences.
Looking to the future, Kato says, “Not only can marketers collect data and implement campaigns themselves, but they can also share it with the organization. We can quickly run the PDCA cycle, from establishing the idea, to implementing the campaign, to assessing the results. We will continue to stay close to our customers and provide them with a better beauty experience that adapts to their changing needs and lifestyles.”
The company has ambitious plans for leveraging their data capabilities. “Audience Studio has not only simplified data extraction but also reduced the turnaround time for message delivery,” shares Ogura. “Treasure Data CDP’s numerous connectors to other marketing tools help integrate consumer data from segments created in Audience Studio.”
While the company has traditionally triggered message delivery based on consumer actions such as website visits or purchases, it is now expanding its approach. “As a new challenge, we’re initiating communication based on our social media engagement,” Ogura continues. “We can now segment existing consumers who may be interested in highly engaging items and approach them immediately.”
The use of customer data has already crossed beyond the digital marketing framework, generating new business and transforming business models. The company aims to provide a new consumer experience that connects install services with digital interactions. “We want to create a better install experience by guiding consumers to the right channels based on their needs,” Ogura adds. “Another example is showing recommendations based on their purchases and counseling history during waiting times.”
To achieve these goals, the company envisions Treasure Data Journey Orchestration and real-time CDP capabilities as key solutions. These tools will enable them to deliver more personalized and timely experiences to their customers.
The use of customer data has already crossed beyond the digital marketing framework, generating new business and transforming business models.
In the future, the company will continue to enhance the value of its brand, provide new beauty experiences, and fully support the realization of beauty for each individual.
