The Body Shop is a leading player in the Beauty & Personal Care sector, selling more than 1,000 items across 3,000+ brick-and-mortar retail stores. While the brand has seen substantial success driving online sales through the affiliate channel, increasing foot traffic to its retail locations is an ongoing key objective globally. To test how effective an affiliate partnership could be in driving in-store revenue, The Body Shop decided to trial an online-to-offline campaign for a set demographic (students) across its Canadian affiliate program.
Finding the right partner
Students are a key audience for The Body Shop as they are generally more engaged consumers with beliefs aligned to the brand’s core values. For younger customers, The Body Shop often acts as a familiar starting point for skincare and cosmetics through its strong brand equity and name value. These factors provided The Body Shop with a perfect opportunity to trial the in-store campaign in a controlled sample from a core customer base, and help create long-term brand loyalty within younger demographics.
Student Price Card (SPC), a Canadian student loyalty platform, was selected as the ideal partner for this in-store campaign due to its presence in Canada and by having partnerships with high schools, colleges and universities to garner a userbase of over 1.3m students. SPC is also partnered with the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, a popular provider of student banking products that offers free SPC membership to clients, giving The Body Shop an additional group of students to target who are likely to be financially savvy and deal sensitive.
SPC offers users discounts and deals on fashion, food, shoes, travel and more. Students show their SPC cards at participating brick-and-mortar retailers and receive instant savings on purchases up to 30% for over 450 brands. Additionally, SPC has a popular mobile app that alerts members about the various offers available to them alongside access to special giveaways, cash prizes and more.
Planning the perfect test
The Body Shop created an offer code and made it available exclusively to SPC users through the SPC app. No other communication for the offer was produced either in store or through any digital channel like the brand’s socials. To ensure the code couldn’t be leaked to unintended audiences, SPC users were required to present and activate the code within the app at the point of purchase. The code also included a date and timestamp, preventing users from screenshotting and sharing the offer publicly.
By creating this ideal test environment, The Body Shop could isolate any resulting performance and attribute it to the SPC users incentivized to shop in-store at a retail location. In turn, the brand could confidently and accurately measure the foot traffic generated by the affiliate campaign.
Results
The results for this effort exceeded targets. Across the campaign, SPC drove:
- $70,000+ in incremental retail sales
- 4.9k+ items sold
- 2.6k+ transactions
- $21 AOV for these incremental sales
“Partnering with Student Price Card (SPC) has been an invaluable asset to The Body Shop’s affiliate program. This partnership has allowed us to grow our student reach while simultaneously improving the customer loyalty we have built with our existing students. Furthermore, the team at SPC is great on providing tangible insights and recommendations to strengthen and grow these student relationships both online and in-store.”
Madison White, North America Affiliate & Partnerships Manager, The Body Shop
