With an abysmal 2.5 out of 10 on UnDigital’s Unboxing Guidelines, someone on Sephora’s team has a lot of explaining to do. Maybe they’re too big to fail. Maybe they’re not aware of how much revenue the unboxing experience drives in today’s DTC environment.
Either way, this experience is a prime example of how major brands are neglecting a unique physical touchpoint that consumers experience from the comfort of their own homes. It’s also a great example of what not to do in your unboxing experience. So settle in and grab some popcorn, unboxing marketers. We’re about to take a deep dive into Sephora’s packaging.
Sephora's package was reviewed against UnDigital's 10-point Unboxing Experience Guidelines for Brands. This unweighted system is based on research carried out across millions of DTC packages. You can learn more about it here >>
Now let's dive into each of the 10 points and see what we can learn from this beauty brand's approach.
For a brand that claims to be “getting personalization right,” Sephora seems to have completely missed the mark in their most important DTC touchpoint. Sephora collects a massive amount of data from their customers through purchases, quizzes, and a wildly successful loyalty program.
All of this rich information should be used to provide each customer with experience-enhancing personalizations like product tips, loyalty benefits, and product recommendations. Instead, that data is floating peacefully in the cloud while they let these generic packages drive customers to more engaging and modern brands.
Successful beauty brands focus on providing “desired results” to their customers. From creating a youthful glow to matching their skin tones to the perfect blush, every customer is trying to achieve something. Product information—things like instructions and tips—is vital to driving successful outcomes for customers, and you either have it or you don’t. In the case of Sephora’s unboxing experience, they don’t.
Some of the products I received are devoid of any information or in a font so small I’d need to pull out a magnifying glass. This is a huge miss, especially with products people are going to apply to their skin. If they want to help their customers, and ultimately themselves, every product needs to include some of the basics, like: How much? How often? Anything I need to avoid? What’s in this stuff?
Sephora has a loyalty program called Beauty Insider Benefits, and it enables me to get additional samples when I place an order. So someone in their warehouse received data that told them to add my samples to the unboxing experience. While this isn’t a sophisticated level of added relevance, it is still enough to earn the point.
If they wanted to go above and beyond, they should have included my current points balance or made an effort to provide a piece of cross-sell information based on my order.
If you’re reading this, learn from Sephora’s multi-million dollar unboxing marketing mistake and include a CTA in all of your packages.
Why? Because sending an unboxing experience without a CTA is worse than leaving a CTA off of a marketing email. Hear me out…
What would you put in an email if you knew it would have 100% open rate? Start saying that inside your unboxing experiences and watch your engagement explode.
Remember: A package without a CTA is a squandered opportunity to engage your most important audience, your customers.
Look at our (shameless) example below. We know you care about your unboxing experience, so we've provided you something insightful—and free—to pique your interest. We've also indicated the next step you need to take in button format. It's relevant, clear, and immediate value like this that you should be adding to your unboxing experience.
Sephora is a French brand with a rich history spanning multiple decades. They maintain a diverse and inclusive product line. They’re even making solid progress in growing their CSRP and reducing their environmental impact. Do you know what they’re not doing? Telling their customers about their story in the unboxing experience.
Your unboxing marketing strategy needs to include relationship-building moments. Think of every other touchpoint a major brand operates, and I can almost guarantee you there is a thoughtful strategy for maintaining it. Your unboxing experience needs a strategy too, and it needs to stay fresh.
Sephora made the same mistake many brands make, they took great-looking products and tossed them loosely into a generic brown box. They may as well drop ship their products if they aren’t going to put effort into the packaging.
The products arrived generally unharmed, and that’s always a good thing. There were no visible scuffs, and everything was largely intact. This is most likely due to the size of the products, though, because everything was sort of haphazardly tossed into the box.
Sephora makes beautiful products, and they’re a titan in the beauty space. For reasons unknown, they’re taking a meticulously well-branded product and presenting it to their customers by tossing it—at random—into a giant box with brown packing paper. You could do your unboxing experience better in one of two ways:
Use partitioned or molded packages
Put your products in boxes they fit snuggly inside of
Sephora has both a solid return policy and the wisdom to include it in their packaging. They could go a step up and add return labels, but they’re already doing more than most.
At the end of the day, this unboxing experience is slap-dash at best. They’ve taken beautiful products and dumped them on top of some brown paper trash in a generic brown box.
What’s worse, they’ve almost completely neglected their audience data and failed to apply any in-package personalization whatsoever. It’s very apparent that Sephora has yet to develop an unboxing marketing strategy, and this approach won’t remain viable for long.
At UnDigital, we strive to reimagine and revamp unboxing experiences, making them more engaging, informative, and relevant. Brands like Sephora can seize these missed opportunities by introducing in-package personalization and thoughtful presentation to their unboxing marketing strategy. Be sure to check out our unboxing guidelines here if you want to learn how to drive revenue through unboxing marketing.
