Amber Turley has been with Sephora for more than nine years, working in various functional roles. Although her Wall Street background gave her a clear advantage in finance, her time working under Mary Beth Laughton — Sephora’s VP of Ecommerce at the time — unlocked new career possibilities. These early days not only immersed her in the Sephora business; they also set her on a path toward her current role: VP of Omni Convenience & Commerce Partnerships.
It’s appropriate that the word “convenience” is part of her title. “I got a view of everything around Sephora; I got to see what it was like to do digital marketing, the ecommerce business, the forecasting and planning business,” Turley said in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “I eventually realized in 2018 that there was a critical opportunity around convenience, and I wanted to advance that strategy. I raised my hand, said I believed there was a role there, and we have been chipping away at our omnichannel experience since.”
Now, Sephora is a clear leader in omnichannel execution — and fulfillment has become a key differentiator in the brand experience. That’s one reason why all touch points — from initial engagement to post-purchase — are owned and operated by the retailer. “We’re always thinking about what the customer does and wants from us, but sometimes the customer doesn’t even know what they want when it isn’t already out there,” Turley explained. “We even have to be ahead of customer trends in that regard.”
To achieve that goal, fulfillment has to be embedded into other functional discussion areas, such as marketing and merchandising. “We want to make sure we know our hottest SKUs and have them available for convenient delivery,” Turley said. “We’ve also made sure our site and in-store inventory are real-time, and that convenience is part of all our marketing stories. It’s been a collective effort across teams to really unify the experience.”
Building the Foundational Groundwork
Like many retailers, Sephora’s first big move into omnichannel fulfillment was in 2020, when it launched buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS). But unlike many retailers that had to cobble together solutions quickly to stay afloat during the pandemic, Sephora already had spent years developing a roadmap and laying the foundational tech groundwork required to do omnichannel fulfillment well. The retailer even ran a flash shipping program as early as 2015.
Curbside pickup soon followed BOPIS. Turley noted that “people don’t talk about [curbside] a lot, but it’s so important. It’s so accessible, and I love the comments we get from our surveys that talk about how they can bring their grandmother or their kids in the car with them and still get what they need from us.”
Since those early days of the pandemic, when flexible fulfillment was a requirement for staying in business, Sephora’s fulfillment ecosystem has expanded and evolved to create new value for consumers. For example, same-day delivery has unlocked “amazing gifting and travel use cases, where you can get something delivered right to your hotel room,” Turley explained.
“I think a lot about human behavior when I think about what we need to do in our business,” Turley said. “Everything is so on-demand today; my son is 14 and he doesn’t even understand the idea of ads on the radio, or that in the past, if you wanted to listen to a song again, you had to wait for it to come on the radio and record it.”
While creating a mix tape isn’t quite the same as assembling the right skincare, hair care and cosmetics, these behavioral and psychological changes motivate Turley to explore new on-demand offerings that align with the wants, needs and expectations of modern consumers — especially younger generations. “We’re all so conditioned for everything to be on-demand, and the impact is that you don’t plan,” she noted. “You don’t need a game plan, because you expect everything to be there and available to you at any given time, whenever, wherever you want.”
The rise of the on-demand economy ultimately inspired the introduction of Same-Day Delivery and eventually Same-Day Unlimited, which launched in 2022. Same-Day Unlimited is a subscription service that gives Beauty Insider members free same-day delivery on all items for $49 per year. In most cases, items are dropped at consumers’ doorsteps within two hours. Sephora runs and manages all same-day delivery operations, because “we really wanted to own that internally and own the customer experience in a more meaningful way. That was a very intentional vision,” said Turley.
Sephora’s Same-Day Delivery and Same-Day Delivery Unlimited are two pieces of a larger “on-demand ecosystem” that now includes marketplace partners like DoorDash and Instacart, which have brought the retailer to “a different cohort of customers who may not be shopping Sephora,” according to Turley.
Using Fulfillment Services to Drive Cross-Sells and Upsells
Since the early successes of its omnichannel fulfillment strategy, Sephora has doubled down on the belief that fulfillment can be a powerful tool for driving retention and loyalty.
Auto-Replenish is the beauty retailer’s latest venture. When customers select “Auto-Replenish” as their delivery method, they can set a schedule for recurring deliveries. For extra motivation, they get 5% off every subscription delivery they register for, plus free shipping. These deliveries can be moved, paused or canceled at any time. Customers need to sign up for the Beauty Insider loyalty program so they can easily update and track their subscription preferences. A new addition to this offering, Auto-Replenish Hot Deals, is creating even more opportunities for Sephora to drive recurring revenue and boost customer lifetime value.
Advertisement
“We work with brands to accelerate their discounts, while also creating an entry point for customers to recognize they can get a deeper discount on that first purchase,” Turley said. “And then they ultimately get into that cycle, so they’re thinking about when that next product shipment will come.”
As for any concerns that Auto-Replenish customers will limit purchases just to what they’ve signed up for, the opposite appears to be the case; Turley and her team have noticed that Auto-Replenish customers shop more often than those who don’t participate in the program. “We also know that when customers engage in Auto-Replenish, they’re also more likely to increase the categories that they’re shopping with us: 40% of them subscribe to products in more than one category,” she said. “This is important when we think about cross-category shopping. It has had some impressive results and a lot of stickiness with our customers.”
In addition to driving customer frequency and boosting basket sizes, Turley also credits Auto-Replenish with driving new customer acquisition — something she didn’t expect. But the program’s convenience seems to streamline shoppers’ movement from trial to recurring purchase. “One would think you wouldn’t auto-replenish something you haven’t purchased before, so it’s likely they’ve purchased the item from somewhere else before, and the program is what initially motivated them to buy it from us; or they tried a sample with us and they decided to buy the full version. Either way, it’s an exciting outcome.”
