Mobile is becoming key for consumer brands like L'Oreal, & wearables are next

SAN FRANCISCO — L’Oreal might be an international, $5.5 billion dollar business, but it still has to continue driving in-store sales, and mobile might be the solution.

L’Oreal’s vice president of ecommerce and multichannel business Kelly Solomon and Shopkick’s chief revenue officer Alexis Rask sat down at our MobileBeat conference to share how the two companies are working together to ultimately drive and measure customer engagement and sales.

“The consumer knows the Shopkick app as their shopping companion in the physical world. So for our consumer, they had a better experience with our app if they had lots of interesting content,” said Rask.

“If you can fill the app up with that, that’s piece one of the puzzle. Piece two are ‘kicks,’” she said. Shopkick’s “kicks” are loyalty points shoppers earn by doing certain actions such as visiting stores, going into particular aisles, scanning products, and so on. As part of its partnership with L’Oreal, Shopkick offers kicks when shoppers engage with L’Oreal products and content in certain ways. This in turn is measurable and offers valuable insights to L’Oreal about its products and shoppers.

But it’s also about conversion and measuring it.

“One of the key dialogue points between L’Oreal and their retail partners is foot traffic,” said Rask.

Shopkick helps L’Oreal track its customers’ “couch-to-store” path, and measures every piece of it, from the planning of a shopping trip, to going to the actual store, to ending up in the beauty aisle, scanning products, and purchasing products.

“It actually shows me what products they’re scanning in what doors,” said Solomon.

Solomon also pointed out that not only does partnering with Shopkick mean her company doesn’t have to build out its own loyalty program as Shopkick has its own, but it also means its doesn’t have to give out coupons or discounts, which is very valuable to her and her company.

So what’s next on L’Oreal’s tech roadmap?

Solomon said the company has some “crazy” things it’s looking at, including wearables and the connected home.