Individual Academic Report
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Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 3
Creating a Customer Persona ...................................................................................................................... 3
Customer Journey Map ................................................................................................................................. 6
RACE Model .................................................................................................................................................. 8
REACH ................................................................................................................................................... 9
ACT ........................................................................................................................................................ 9
CONVERT ............................................................................................................................................. 10
ENGAGE ............................................................................................................................................... 10
Monitoring and Measuring Key Objectives ................................................................................................ 10
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 12
References .................................................................................................................................................. 13
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Introduction
The influx of the internet and online shopping has made a rapid change in customers' interaction
with businesses and vice versa (Kalbaska et al., 2017). This shift is also reflected in the beauty
industry. Through Social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, YouTube Big brands have
benefited from their strong digital presence. There are many mobile Apps for brands hence the
product can be easily accessed by the public. This has turned these mobile platforms and
applications into a major form of marketing and sales through digital advertising, PR, and organic
reach (Kalbaska et al., 2017).
Sephora is a multinational cosmetics and beauty brand based in France. It has 2,700 retail stores
in 35 countries (Sephora, 2021). The early adaptation of digital marketing strategies and other
digital initiatives has made Sephora a market leader in the highly competitive cosmetics and
beauty industry. The digital adaptation of Sephora includes an e-commerce website, mobile app,
social media sites, and digital initiatives like Color IQ, skincare IQ, etc.
In this report, we analyse the digital marketing attributes by creating a customer persona for the
brand ‘Sephora’ and critically analyse it against a digital marketing strategy based on the RACE
model.
Creating a Customer Persona
In marketing, it is important to better understand your customers how they make purchasing
decisions because it is important that the product produced by the company attract people from
different backgrounds. To this end, we can create a fictitious buyer based on the main segments
and use their information to make marketing decisions. According to Solomon (2019), based on
available data and market research, the customer's personality is used to represent the
company's main customers. The first step made by Neck and Murray in the year 2018 was to
collect real-world data that focus on customer segmentation and key customer demographics.
The Marketing strategies implemented by these people have greater influence and better
promote products to reach target audiences. Social media analytics, online surveys, google
analytics, company online and offline customer database, etc., are some of the methods to
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collect data. A specific group of customers is identified based on the customer segmentation
model.
The main customer segmentation models are:

Demographic Segmentation: Includes attributes such as age, gender, region, income,
educational level, and occupation. For example, a person’s income will give you a better
understanding of what products that person will buy.

Psychological segmentation: It is mainly composed of customer's personality
characteristics, such as attitudes, beliefs, and lifestyles.

Geographical segmentation: This segmentation groups customers based on their
geographic location. It can be defined by country, region, city, etc.

Behavioral segmentation: Data collected through customer engagement on websites,
blogs, and mobile applications. From these data, we can identify customers' buying
habits, consumption habits, brand loyalty, and brand interactions.

Transaction segmentation: Gain Insights from existing customer relationships with
specific brands, such as past purchase history.
Based on the data collected from online and offline customer behavior data and the above
information, we can create a suitable customer profile, which also includes the customer journey
from product discovery to purchase. The main finding is that Sephora’s main customer base is
15-35-year-old women, which is our target market. The key model to consider when establishing
customer personnel is the AIO's interests and opinions, namely activities. On this basis, a
customer personality that reflects ideal customers is formed.
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Background
Name: Alice
Lifestyle
Recently employed
Age: 24
Single
Profession: Junior
Sales Executive
Shops online
frequently
Don't mind spending
money on clothes
and beaty products
Education: MBA
Lives in central
London
Goes on weekend
trips frequently
Challenges
Her new job doen't
allow her to shop
directly in retail
stores
Internet
Usage
Have good
knowledge in
technology and
internet
Prefer Online
shoppping over
shopping directly
through stores
Earns good salary
but London is
expensive
Active Social media
user
From the insights we can gather from the customer persona ‘Alice’, we can understand how
the customer makes a purchase decision. Since Alice prefers shopping online and because she is
an avid user of social media we can use targeted marketing strategies to draw her towards
Sephora and convert her into a valuable customer.
Using social media marketing, online advertisements, and search engine optimization, Alice
discovered the brand Sephora. She found the website and mobile application of Sephora. The
application was user-friendly and easy to navigate as per Chakravarty and Dutta (2019). She
found that shopping online using Sephora’s Skin IQ and Color IQ tools was more convenient than
trying different products directly at the store. All of these factors helped to turn Lucy into a
potential customer. From this data we can identify each digital touchpoints she interacted with
during the whole customer lifecycle. We can represent this information using a customer journey
map.
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Customer Journey Map
A customer journey map can be defined as a visual representation of a customer journey when
making a purchase decision, as said by Vannucci and Pantano (2019). It shows step by step how
they interact with the company through various touchpoints. Digital touchpoints are online
touchpoints, such as search engines, commercial websites, mobile applications, and other
services that customers interact with digitally. For developing better marketing methods,
understanding the customer journey is important. Our customer personality Lucy’s customer
journey can be represented as outlined in the content matrix. The customer journey map can be
divided into four stages: awareness, consideration, buying, after-sales service, and building
loyalty.
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Discovery
Research
•Online Ads
•Social Media posts
•Paid Marketing Content
•Search Engine
•Landing Page
•Blogs
•Third part websites
•ColorIQ and Skin IQ
•Company Website
•Mobile Application
Purchase
Post Sales
Services
•Newsletter subscription
•Community and Socials
•Email and Instant messengers
•Post sales surveys
The first stage is Discovery. At this stage, the customer determines the needs. You learned about
Sephora through various digital touchpoints, such as online advertising, spam, and social media.

Social Networks: It is the easiest and most profitable way to reach a large target audience.
Hence it is the main digital point of contact.

Online Advertising: This is a great way to generate traffic on a brand website. These paid
ads will be displayed on most websites visited by customers.
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
Paid digital marketing content: It including paid articles, blog posts, promotional videos,
etc. published to promote the brand.
Stage two is a consideration. At this stage, customers search for specific products online. Use
search engines, blogs, and other third-party websites to compare and review products.
Stage three is the purchase stage. Here, customers visit the company's website or mobile
application to order products.
Stage four is the after-sales service and customer loyalty stage: At this stage, thank you emails
are sent to customers, and they are added to the mailing list for future offers and discounts. You
can also get in touch with the brand through their social media and built-in chatbots on the
website.
RACE Model
According to Chaffey (2021), the RACE model is a marketing strategy framework to plan, create
and execute targeted marketing strategies. It can be used for online as well as offline marketing.
RACE model covers various stages of a customer life cycle so we can individually target each
phase of the customer purchasing decisions.
The phases in the RACE model are divided as Reach, Act, Convert, and Engage. The primary stage
in the RACE framework is the planning stage. In this stage, a clear marketing plan is created based
on the target customers and the available date. Objectives for each digital touchpoint are
highlighted.
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PLAN
•Search Engine
•Social Media
•Blogs
Reach
Act
Convert
•Company Website
•Mobile Application
•Skin IQ
•Color IQ
•Online Shopping
•Promotions and Discounts
•Customer Advocacy
Engage
REACH
The main objective of this phase is to promote the product to reach the targeted audience. This
is done via various methods such as Social media advertising, Paid content on websites and blogs,
online advertisements, etc. Multiple methods are combined to gain more reach (Chaffey, 2021).
ACT
The act is the short form for ‘React’. The objective of act is to push the customer who has
discovered the product into taking the next step. It persuades the people by converting them
into potential leads for purchasing via various means. The different methods are search engine
optimization, third-party websites, Color IQ, Skin IQ, etc. (Chaffey, 2021).
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CONVERT
The objective of this stage is to convert the visitor who is the potential lead to make the purchase.
This step is completed once the purchase is confirmed on the website or mobile application and
the amount is paid (Chaffey, 2021).
ENGAGE
The objective of this step is to build customer loyalty and convert the one-time customer into a
recurring customer. This focuses on the post-sales experience. This includes E-mail newsletters,
Surveys, Customer engagement on social media and website, and more. This helps to build a
long-term commitment to the brand (Chaffey, 2021).
Monitoring and Measuring Key Objectives
The RACE digital marketing strategy is targeted at our key customer base based on
information acquired through different data sources. These sources include Google Analytics,
Facebook Analytics, data from the company website, and mobile application. Is digital touchpoint
the customer interacts with is measured and monitored using different metrics and indicators.
This is mainly turn using the help of key performance indicators and critical success factors. We
can identify key performance indicators at each stage of the RACE strategy.
KPI's in the Reach stage

Unique Visitors: Unique visitors can be defined by the number of visitor traffic in a fixed
time frame. This metric helps to track and analyze the audience visits and target
marketing according to the increase or decrease in user traffic (google analytics, 2021).

Bounce rate: It is a session where the user does not interact with the website further and
exit without making any other server requests.

Revenue per visit: This metric helps to understand the revenue gained from each website
visitor. It is calculated by dividing the total income of the website in a specific period by
the number of visitors in that time frame (Brebion, 2021).
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KPI's in Act stage

Lead conversion rate: Lead conversion is defined as the conversion of a potential user to
a sale. Lead conversion rate is the rate of lead converted to sale to the total number of
leads according to Calvello (2020).

Time on site: This is used to monitor the duration a visitor spends on the website.

Goal value per visit: This can be defined by the user in google analytics. Later the realtime data can be analysed by setting the user-defined value as the goal to be reached.
KPIs in Convert stage:

Number of sales: This metric is used to monitor the total number of completed sales
on the website.

Revenue: This indicator defines the total revenue obtained via sales on the website.

Average value per Order: Average value per order is an indicator used to analyse the
average amount spent per order by users on purchase.
KPIs in Engage Stage:

Repeat purchase: This metric is used to identify the repurchases of the same
product made by a user. This indicator shows customer loyalty towards the brand.

Brand mentions: This analytical tool is used to monitor the mentions of the brands
on various mediums. This includes social media, blog posts, customer reviews,
YouTube videos, etc. The higher number of brands mention, the farther reach it
gets.

Hurdle rate: This is a key indicator in long-term loyalty building with a customer.
Hurdle rate is the rate of the user’s who sign up for the brand’s community or
email newsletters.
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These key performance indicators help to measure and monitor the primary objectives set in
each stage of the RACE framework defined for the company.
Conclusion
More than half of the sales generated in the beauty industry are currently through online mediums.
Therefore focusing on the online user base is essential for the success of a beauty product company.
Sephora started integrating a good digital marketing strategy as well as integrating more services like
‘COLOR IQ’ and ‘SKIN IQ’ into their website and mobile application and thereby creating a smoother
experience for the online customers. In this report we created a customer persona called Alice, who
reflects the major customer base of Sephora, that is women in the age group 15-35. We mapped the
whole customer life cycle in a customer journey map which also highlighted the major digital touchpoints
the customer interacts with. Then we used RACE digital marketing framework to define appropriate
objectives linked with the digital touchpoints mentioned previously. The important metrics and indicators
used to monitor the progress of these objectives were also elaborated in detail. From the report, we can
conclude that a well-defined digital marketing strategy is vital for any company in the internet era to be
profitable.
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References
Brebion, A., 2021. Revenue Per Visitor: Definition, Formula & Best Practices. [online] AB Tasty. Available
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Chaffey, D., 2021. RACE marketing model definition - What is? | Digital marketing Glossary. [online] Dr
Dave Chaffey : Digital Insights. Available at: <https://www.davechaffey.com/digital-marketingglossary/race-marketing-planning-model/> [Accessed 3 August 2021].
Chakravarty, S. and Dutta, S., 2019. Sephora's Digital Journey - The Case Centre. [online] The Case Centre.
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