The perfume industry has grown steadily owing to the trend of personal grooming and the need for luxury and exotic fragrances.
To maintain competitiveness, brands need to have a solid digital marketing strategy.
It is important to realize that selling fragrances online is more difficult than selling any other products, given that perfumes are not visual products, but rather rely on sensations, which cannot come across through a screen.
How can you promote perfume products that are completely subjective? How can you describe the smell of a perfume and convince people to buy it?
Today, we’ll be sharing insights on how the above challenges can be overcome through email marketing and harnessing its effectiveness as an acquisition channel.
1. Communicate your value proposition
2. Guide your customers through personalization
- Help them create their signature scent
- Help them personalize their purchase using a questionnaire
3. Share the story behind the scents
4. Send seasonal recommendations
5. Harness reviews from your happy customers
6. Give your bestsellers a boost
7. Recommend your team's top picks
1. Communicate your value proposition
To build a unique and compelling identity, brands need to articulate their value proposition in such a way that it appeals to their audiences’ strongest decision-making drivers.
Therefore, it is important in your emails to emphasize the factors that motivate people to purchase. In the case of perfume brands, individuality and emotion are two of the main reasons people buy perfume.
WTF IS LAYERING?
We can’t help but notice this newsletter from DedCool. The intriguing subject line “WTF IS LAYERING”, triggers curiosity. It turns attention to the concept of layering by sounding negative but fun—it’s clever!
In the email, they use an FAQ-type copy featuring 3 questions with their corresponding answers.
If you notice, the Q&As strategically convey their brand’s value proposition. This is where they clearly explain how their perfumes fill a need, the benefits of their collection, and why they’re better than other products in the market.
The CTA they use “Ready to start layering?” is parallel with the copy as it is in a question format too.
Given the points above, this email is a great example of expressing your brand’s mission in a simple, and easy-to-understand way.
Vyrao Is Wellbeing Fragrance
Because perfumes are normally chosen depending on the feelings they evoke, it is crucial to describe the scent’s notes well, as Vyrao does here. This way, people will be assured they’re picking the right perfume.
The email copy is well-aligned with the brand’s mission of creating fragrances that inspire positive emotion.
It starts with a trivia “Did you know 75% of the emotions we feel everyday are inspired by smell?” to prime the audience towards the concept they’re pointing to.
Then they present the 5 fragrances in a quick, straightforward way. They mention the name of each scent, its main ingredients and aromatic notes, and the mood associated with them.
Since each scent is well-defined, it helps the customers choose the right fragrance to meet their preferences.
2. Guide your customers through personalization
Perfume is one of the cosmetic products that heavily relies on someone’s individual preference.
Choosing a fragrance is a very subjective decision because only the person wearing or buying the perfume can determine if it’s the perfect scent for them.
Because of the subjective quality of fragrance, perfume companies should be able to offer their customers the opportunity to customize their selection.
However, the challenge to marketers is how they can convince their target audience to take the steps to personalization. Remember, the goal of personalization is to match your customers with the perfect product for them.
The following two brands pave the way by crafting emails that serve as a helpful guide throughout the shopping process.
Help them create their signature scent
START YOUR SCENT JOURNEY
True to its brand mission, DedCool embraces individuality as shown in this email.
The email copy is sweet and thoughtful as it shows inclusivity by covering the whole spectrum of their audience, both fanatics and total newbies.
Additionally, they put emphasis on the word “EVERYONE” spelled in bold letters. Though this may seem simple, this approach widens their audience base.
As DedCool ****breaks down the basics here, they create a positive customer experience. The 5-step process shown in the email encourages customers to try out their fragrances.
On top of that, DedCool is able to promote its sample pack from start to finish. They’re not doing a pushy sale here but giving assistance where needed.
This email simply serves its purpose of personalization (and promotion in disguise).
Help them personalize their purchase using a questionnaire
Open to find your perfect match 💕
Dossier understands that it’s difficult to find a fragrance that’s a perfect match. It’s exhausting to try several perfumes that you won’t use up when you realize it’s not a good fit for you.
Given Dossier’s wide range of scents, it is a smart move on their part to offer personalized products.
It is even better to use a fun game or a quiz, as they do in this email. They devise a short questionnaire to determine the right perfume for their audience.
However, with this approach, the difficulty lies in convincing your audience to take the time to answer the quiz.
Dossier persuades the reader by using emoticons to make the quiz more engaging. It captures their audiences’ attention and helps persuade them to take the quiz for themselves.
3. Share the story behind the scents
The story behind the creation of your product is a unique selling point.
People love stories, which is why brand storytelling is effective in building a deeper connection with your audience.
Brand storytelling is a narrative you create that weaves together the brand’s history and challenges and the emotions that your brand or product evokes.
Always keep in mind that no one can copy your story — you own it, so be confident in telling it to the public no matter how weird, funny, or unconventional it is.
We recommend using this strategy as much as you can because it humanizes your brand. It’s a good way to engage with your customers, who are, after all, humans!
Snif’s collaboration with a fragrance fanatic gives a personal touch and human angle to the scent’s creation story.
In this email, they feature the story highlighting how the perfume enthusiast wanted to invent her one unique scent. Sharing a story in this way makes you more relatable to your audience.
With just a few short paragraphs, the perfume brand was able to tell the story and subtly showcase the product itself (this is actually part of their product launch email campaign).
4. Send seasonal recommendations
People normally choose perfumes according to the season because weather changes how a perfume is perceived and how it performs on the skin.
To ensure that your marketing stays sharp throughout the year, you can send out emails sharing your top recommendations for the season.
Seasonality is a great opportunity to sell more fragrances. Here’s an excellent example from **Scentbird**.
What to wear for hot girl summer!
Scentbird stirs interest in their fragrances by picking the perfect scent for top summer travel destinations.
What makes this email hyper-engaging?
Aside from the fact that seasonal emails are timely and helpful, Scentbird highlights popular dream vacation spots to capture the feeling of wanting to get away during the summer. They also describe each destination and relate it to scent characteristics.
They showcase their expertise when they matched a bottle with each place. As a result, customers don’t have to agonize over browsing several scents to find the perfect one for the season; they just have to explore the brand’s recommendations.
They also used a powerful CTA, “CLICK TO REVEAL”, which sounds intriguing, another plus point for engagement.
5. Harness reviews from your happy customers
When customers shop online, they want to look at reviews and examples of how others have used the product. Some use other customers’ experiences as the go signal to finally purchase the product.
That’s why social proof such as customer reviews, testimonials, and press & TV mentions are a must-have for each brand.
For perfume brands, social proof is a gift.
Why? Because you can’t see a scent. Only people who have experience using it can attest to how it smells, how it feels, and pretty much anything related to the product usage and benefits.
So for new customers to have a glimpse of the product (without actually buying it), reviews from happy customers are very precious.
The Best of Allure...
Henry Rose has employed this strategy by showing what a customer is saying about their product. They take it a step further by sharing their accomplishment of being recognized by Allure magazine for its Clean Beauty Awards.
In this email, they featured a testimonial from a customer who used sensory words to describe her experience when smelling a particular note. Sensory words are ideal when speaking about a very personal fragrance description, providing more value to the reader.
To draw in more sales, select and feature your best customer reviews, as Henry Rose does here.
6. Give your bestsellers a boost
It’s common for brands to have an email campaign that gives a spotlight on their bestselling products. This could be a single email or an email sequence, as long as the focus is on the brand’s most popular items.
OUR BESTSELLER FOR A REASON 🥛
This email from DedCool focuses on their bestseller product, Milk. They present it in bold banner text and used huge heart icons, which goes well with the context.
They go on to explain why this product is popular and also include feedback from people who testify to the product’s quality.
They use a clean and organized layout as well, starting from the main product to an upsell, to a cross-sell. All aligned perfectly so you won’t miss an offer.
Be extra creative when presenting your bestseller items as DedCool does here. Bestsellers are your evergreen weapon for conversion and you should capitalize on their enduring popularity.
7. Recommend your team's top picks
Don’t forget to show that there are real humans behind your company.
Again, humanizing your brand allows you to connect with both existing and future customers. You can create content around topics like the team’s favorite products in your collection, meet a team member, meet the founder, etc.
Emails containing product recommendations from the team serve multiple purposes.
They carry a special impact because the team knows the products well and their endorsement is based on firsthand experience. It’s also a form of social proof that puts the faces of the company forward.
Meet The Snif Team: Alli!
Let’s take a look at this email from Snif.
This email features their social media manager. Her hobbies, pets, her kind of scent, and her favorite Snif product were discussed using a question-and-answer format that’s easy to read and understand. They include a photo related to each topic for increased engagement.
As mentioned in the email, Snif loves to introduce their team as a way of interacting with the community. So, they’re hitting two birds with one stone here — promoting their product and showing how they work as a team.
See which fragrances our team loves 💕
In this email, Dossier shows social proof using reviews from their own team members.
They display three sweet statements from team members about their fave items.
It proves that the team patronizes its own products, which boosts the brand's reputation.
Are you making the most of your email campaigns? This curated list can give you more ideas for your campaign and bring you closer to the sweet smell of success!
