WhatsApp Marketing Masters: Dermalogica shares its advice for other skincare brands

Dermalogica has been pioneering WhatsApp since 2023. Here, Louisa Schiminski, eCommerce Marketing Manager, shares her best practice advice for other skincare brands thinking of adding WhatsApp to the marketing mix.

WhatsApp is proving to be an incredibly successful retention and revenue channel for businesses across the world. With over 2 billion users, it's the most popular messaging app globally, giving businesses access to almost half the world's phones.

And with Meta investing heavily in the WhatsApp Business API, its features grow richer every day. 

With many industries benefitting from the 90% open rates, 20% click-through rates, and little information about how exactly to succeed in WhatsApp, we wanted to share some industry advice from the WhatsApp pioneers.

In this, the second of our WhatsApp Marketing Masters series (after Bears with Benefits), we look at insights from Dermalogica, premium, global skincare brand, beloved by its customers. 

Dermalogica and charles

Dermalogica chose to go into WhatsApp with charles in August 2023 because, according to Martijn Vreys, Head of eCommerce: "No other WhatsApp tool has the range of features that charles offers to create WhatsApp marketing campaigns."

Since then, Dermalogica has had great success with this channel thanks to its pioneering approach of offering 1:1 skincare consultations entirely in WhatsApp. These are complemented with regular marketing campaigns that maintain engagement, keep Dermalogica top-of-mind and generate ongoing revenue.

The WhatsApp channel is managed by Louisa Schiminski, an eCommerce Marketing Manager who has a passion for the brand, deep knowledge of its loyal fanbase and is not afraid to try new ways to engage customers. She shares her learnings and tips for other beauty brands considering taking a step into WhatsApp this year.

See the full Dermalogica x charles success story.

Louisa's WhatsApp marketing advice for skincare brands

I would definitely recommend WhatsApp to other skincare brands.

Because what’s more personal than skincare?

While WhatsApp is a new channel, it can feel like a risk. I don’t know if other companies in the market know customers as well as we do, really focusing on skin expertise, but it's a great way to get in touch with them.

Due to our background in skincare treatments, we've got to know what our customers want. This gives us a huge advantage in using WhatsApp, where we can pull up customer information and shopping history to personalize conversations and skincare advice.

The Klaviyo integration and Shopify connections enable us to keep all our past data, bring it into WhatsApp, share new data and vice versa.

Dermalogica doesn't send discounts, but uses WhatsApp successfully to send monthly offers and seasonal campaigns (with global "opt-out footer) to keep things GDPR compliant

If you know what purpose your brand has and what you want to communicate to potential consumers, WhatsApp is a great way to enhance engagement and awareness. It helps you get personal and stay up to date with what people like or even need – and of course stay top of mind with customers.

And it’s not just skincare. Every company that has the capacity for WhatsApp should get started now.

Though it does involve a lot of A/B testing and work to make it perfect and effective, I suggest that if you're thinking about it (which you should be!) you should consider being part of it right now.

WhatsApp is still on the rise in Europe and hasn't reached its peak yet. So, it’s never too late but I’d say right now is the ideal time to get going.

WhatsApp penetration is high across Europe, making the messaging app a huge potential revenue generator for beauty brands (source: Statista, Q3 2023)

That's why we started so early. As one of the first-timers you have a big competitive advantage – the longer you’re on it, the more loyal people are going to be and the more you know about what does and doesn't work.

WhatsApp is also a quick way to see if a product is performing.

You can test it in campaigns and in personal conversations with customers – get feedback, look at conversion rates.

The analytics in the charles platform are very clear and helpful to gauge performance and make improvements.

The charles analytics dashboard is a firm customer favorite – highlighting top campaigns, WhatsApp tips and showing useful reporting statistics like revenue, conversations and subscriber numbers

Maybe we'll reach a saturation point with WhatsApp in the future just as much as with email marketing – where we all see that people are overloaded nowadays and it’s hard to stand out as a brand.

But somehow, I don't think this will happen in WhatsApp as people are more careful. They choose wisely if they want to get direct messages or not. And companies need to be aware that they shouldn't overdo this personal channel.

Now is the time to try and test WhatsApp, while it's still an open space.

They have us in their pocket now. What could be better? See the Dermalogica x charles story

How Dermalogica builds WhatsApp subscribers

We use a combination of strategies to grow our subscriber base in WhatsApp – an essential part of our potential to make sales and grow loyalty:

• Permanent popup on our website where we defer desktop from mobile. Desktop viewers are sent to subscribe to email while the mobile version leads to WhatsApp. We offer a 10% discount for subscribing to both channels individually.
• Seasonal popup switches for events like Valentine's Day and Black Friday, or for product launches.
• Social media, where we link our WhatsApp welcome flow in the Instagram bio.
• Click-to-chat on our skincare consultation page.
• Converting email subscribers to WhatsApp.
• Offering extra points for WhatsApp subscription in our loyalty program.

We haven't tested WhatsApp with influencers yet. It's part of our testing roadmap as well as pushing the 1:1 skincare consultation on paid media.

Instagram is just 1 way Dermalogica builds new WhatsApp subscribers

Thanks Louisa for joining charles on this journey and being such a strong success story of 1:1 conversations in WhatsApp ❤️ 

Want to see more about Dermalogica x charles?

We've put together the full story of why Dermalogica chose charles' WhatsApp marketing platform and how it uses it to offer personal WhatsApp consultations and campaigns – achieving 40% click-through rates.

See the Dermalogica x charles story.

Want to jump into WhatsApp?

Now's the time to get started, before your competitors do. Get a free 30-minute demo to find out how WhatsApp marketing and the charles platform can best work for your brand and business goals.