The pandemic has changed consumers' relationship with personal care products. To cope with the stress of the health crisis, consumers have adopted or expanded wellness routines. This rise in consumer demand, coupled with the closure of physical stores, has resulted in more consumers than ever before shopping online.
 
Moving forward, there is an opportunity for personal care brands to take a digital-first approach, especially via subscriptions. Below are innovative digital-first strategies brands can adopt to set themselves up for success.

Bring a Consultative Approach to Digital

In-store trials are a tried and true tactic brands use to help consumers discover their products. Unfortunately, this tactic doesn’t work online. The solution is to take a consultative approach to your brand’s online experience.
 
Similar to an in-store associate, your brand’s site can use chat bots, 1-on-1 consultations and guided selling tools to ask customers what they’re looking for and make recommendations. In fact, this can be even more effective online than in-person because you can utilize user data to guide these recommendations.
 
Overall, an online shopping experience gives personal care brands the opportunity to better define their products. For items like toothbrushes, a customer will often walk into a CVS and choose a product without any real brand loyalty. But through an online experience, like quip’s for example, a brand can demonstrate its value proposition, as well as offer shoppers incentives. As such, there’s plenty of white space for personal care brands to build loyalty and reach new customers.

Break Through the Noise with Subscriptions

Today’s competitive landscape makes subscriptions, if executed correctly, extremely lucrative for brands. In the past year, countless brands have moved their business online and started promoting their offerings. This has resulted in more competition for eCommerce dollars. According to a survey by WSL Strategic Retail, 36% of the total U.S. population bought beauty online for the first time during COVID-19, and 73% of that cohort said they will continue to order online after the crisis.
 
Acquiring new customers is expensive and hyper competitive right now. Subscriptions help brands stretch their budget because they don’t have to continuously acquire new customers. What’s more, subscriptions help brands stand out from their competitors.
 
Customers are more loyal to brands they believe understand them, and with which they feel a personal connection. The most successful subscription programs are those that can make customers feel like they’re getting a personalized selection of products and services, specially chosen by experts just for them. For example, a razor company with a website that guides the customer through the purchasing process, recommends the right product for them and offers incentives along the way for repeat orders creates a direct, long-lasting relationship.

Reward Customers for Their Loyalty

Brands should always reward their most loyal customers, but this is even more important after a highly competitive period.
 
Within the personal care space, customer adoption often comes down to convenience, ease of shopping and a rewarding experience. When choosing products, a loyalty program can be a major selling point as it rewards customers for returning to shop your site again and again.
 
Loyalty programs are more effective when coupled with a subscription program. Personal care brands can offer a discount with subscriptions and/or surprise gifts to reward customers. Brands can also scale the rewards a customer receives based on the length of time they’ve kept their subscription. Meanwhile, soft tactics like early access to sales and new products reaffirm brand loyalty. With these perks, customers are less likely to shop with less rewarding brands.

Flip the Script of Online vs. Physical

While physical shopping has traditionally been at the forefront of the personal care space, the shift to digital is turning this upside down. To embrace this change, brands could take an experiential approach to physical retail by embracing popups. These popups would enable shoppers to try products and then drive them toward subscribing online. Once a customer is subscribed, you can offer more incentives for the shopper to visit the physical location with exclusive offers.
 
Brands can also use their subscription program to drive customers to physical locations. For example, you can offer subscribers the ability to buy products online and pick them up at physical stores. This type of cross-channel relationship will be the future of retail.

Make Your Brand Stand Out

Brands must now consider how to use physical retail to prop up the online experience — and vice versa. This will require personal care brands to ask, “What makes my brand stand out?” Standing out will mean rewarding loyalty and utilizing the digital landscape while providing customers with the products they need. One such way to provide a unique digital offering is with subscriptions.
 
Rewarding customer incentives and buying experiences that focus on value and convenience are the best and fastest way to differentiate subscription programs from the sea of competitors in the drug store aisles. By embracing these kinds of loyalty-building tactics, personal care brands can thrive in the post-COVID-19 age.

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Jamie Johns is a strategic client director at Ordergroove, a technology company that builds recurring relationships with customers through subscriptions. At Ordergroove, Johns works with L'Oréal, Unilever Prestige,The Honest Company, BareMinerals, Love Wellness, and many more, building strategies to acquire and retain valuable customer relationships on their direct-to-consumer channels. Balancing market trends with a truly customer-centric approach, Johns works at the intersection of beauty brands and beauty consumers. Prior to joining Ordergroove, she was a director of merchandising at Birchbox, the pioneering beauty subscription box service.