How Sally Beauty and CosmoProf turned data and personalization into more opt-ins and higher app revenue

11

%

average increase in app revenue across both brands

16

%

boost in active users

Sally Beauty Holdings operates 5,000 stores across North America, Latin America, Europe, and the UK. In the U.S., they operate under the brands Sally Beauty and CosmoProf.

Industry

Overview

Today’s beauty shoppers browse, compare, buy, and leave product feedback in mobile apps. To meet customers where and when they’re most engaged, Sally Beauty Holdings recognized the importance of investing in its mobile app for its Sally Beauty and CosmoProf brands in the U.S. The beauty giant set out to enhance in-app experiences and deliver more tailored content across the customer lifecycle. Their team’s goal was to drive opt-ins and deepen engagement, creating clear value for customers to leverage the Sally Beauty and CosmoProf apps.

Challenge

The team had a big vision for its apps but faced several major hurdles, including limited bandwidth, competing roadmap priorities, resource constraints, and data accessibility challenges. They needed to reduce reliance on their development and creative resources while empowering a small but mighty team to operate with speed and agility.

Results

The team’s methodical approach transformed the mobile shopping experience, delivering greater value to app customers. Below is a snapshot of the campaign’s impressive results:

Active users

  • Sally Beauty up 7% YOY
  • CosmoProf up 16.6% YOY

Opted-in customers

  • Sally Beauty up 15.46% YOY
  • CosmoProf up 21.47% YOY

App revenue

  • Sally Beauty grew from 12% to 22% of total ecommerce revenue
  • CosmoProf grew from 20% to 32% of total ecommerce revenue

With Airship’s capabilities and support, our team was able to develop and implement a robust cross-channel roadmap that transformed the browsing and shopping experience for Sally Beauty and CosmoProf app customers — all without overextending our resources. We are very excited about the future and look forward to driving more agile innovation together.

CRM Team
Sally Beauty Holdings

Solution

Optimizing the end-to-end mobile experience transforms shopping and boosts active users by 16%

Airship’s flexible and hyperpersonalized platform offered a seamless, phased rollout

The Sally Beauty and Cosmoprof teams tackled their challenges with a “crawl, walk, jog, run” strategy, progressively advancing their mobile app experience to achieve their business goals. To start, the brand established a foundational cadence of messaging app users to gather benchmarks while refining customer engagement strategies across push notifications, message center, and in-app messaging.

Personalization and segmentation drove tailored experiences

Sally Beauty and Cosmoprof leveraged first-party data — from names and in-app behavior to shipping preferences and purchase thresholds — to segment customers and deliver targeted, exclusive offers in the Sally Beauty and CosmoProf apps. The team then implemented automated customer journeys across the lifecycle and abandoned cart campaigns, while optimizing performance with copy and image testing. New App Store events aligned app store promotions with exclusive experiences to reinforce the value of in-app shopping and drive customer loyalty.

End-to-end measurement fueled refinement and expansion

Sally Beauty and Cosmoprof embraced continuous measurement to identify optimization opportunities. This paved the way for an extensive future roadmap, including adding Embedded Content and Scenes to advance key lifecycle goals and gain customer data, to drive more responsive customer journeys and effective campaigns to advance goals.