Ipsy talks marketing engine launch that drives beauty brand demand

Ipsy has dispatched an end-to-end marketing and sales engine to address the growing pressure on brands to deliver marketing ROI (return on investment) and prove consumer interest. Ipsy Marketing Solutions aims to help brands drive demand, scale retail, and maximize marketing efficiency.

The engine is designed to work alongside retail media strategies, informing brands about consumer preferences and driving engagement across the full marketing lifecycle. 

Jason Kwong, chief business development officer at Ipsy, tells Personal Care Insights about how the company takes a holistic approach to understanding consumer behavior by utilizing a broad set of informational touchpoints to give brands dependable and data-backed consumer insights.

For Ipsy Marketing Solutions, the personalized beauty subscription service company has tapped its social media community base of 16 million and its consumer touch points of over 20 million, alongside first-party data, a product trial ecosystem, and its creator network to develop the engine.

Kwong tells us the company is uniquely positioned to provide beauty insights to partner brands due to its 15 years of expertise in beauty discovery.

Reading beauty data

Ipsy uses consumer insights to drive beauty brand growth.

Ipsy Marketing Solutions is designed to assist beauty brands in bringing attention to their product and supporting consumer demand. The full-funnel marketing and sales acceleration engine works to boost retail growth through a product’s launch cycle.

Galen Smith, CEO of Ipsy, says: “Launching a beauty product today requires more than generating attention; it requires knowing whether consumers actually want it before it reaches retail.”

“Ipsy Marketing Solutions [expands] how brands can partner with Ipsy through creator activations, experiential, paid media, and a unified full-funnel engine that helps brands launch smarter, build stronger consumer connections, and drive measurable retail growth.”

Ahead of a launch, the company helps brands get products to “relevant consumers.” Kwong says it provides users with trusted reviews while gathering early signals around preferences and demand.

Following a product’s launch-to-market, partnering brands can continue to tap these insights to inform creator campaigns, experiential activations, and precision media that reach targeted audiences and drive sales.

“What connects those stages is the ability to learn from how consumers are responding and use those insights to inform marketing. Ultimately, the goal is to help brands understand what’s resonating and translate consumer engagement into measurable business impact.”

He underscores that Ipsy has already seen this kind of translation of insights into impact in its previously-mentioned work with Oliviaumma.

Leveraging history in beauty

Ipsy connects beauty brands with engaged consumers.

According to Kwong, Ipsy is differentiated by its scale and trusted consumer relationships in its position to offer a marketing and sales engine. He emphasizes the company’s multifaceted informational ecosystem comprising its large social community, broad customer touchpoints, as well as first-person data collated through customer reviews and creator partnerships.

“These give us insight into how consumers discover and respond to beauty products — insights that brands can use to build more relevant audiences, generate authentic advocacy, and drive measurable campaigns,” he says.

Kwong tells us that Oliviaumma’s launch at Sephora illustrates how measurable marketing campaigns can translate to a key competitive advantage.

“We leveraged our first-party audience insights and authentic content from Ipsy members who had trialed and reviewed the brand’s products in a paid media campaign designed to drive qualified traffic to Sephora.com,” he explains.

In addition to the ROIs related to the event, the partnership connected Oliviaumma to consumers more directly. “This allows the brand to hear feedback at scale and better understand consumer preferences as it enters retail,” says Kwong.

“It demonstrates how Ipsy can turn product trial, audience insights, and trusted consumer advocacy into measurable retail performance.”

The company also recently used its first-party audience insights, paired with social content from community members who tried the products, to bolster the Sephora debut of K-beauty’s Oliviaumma. The paid campaign exceeded industry benchmark click-through rates by two to threefold, boasts Ipsy. The company is currently working with brands such as ELF Beauty, Rodial, Elemis, and Dew of the Gods.

First-party data helps Ipsy deliver targeted beauty marketing.

Reflecting consumer interest

Kwong explains how Ipsy leverages its expertise in personalizing consumer experiences without relying on it as the sole driver of its insights.

“Platforms working with consumer behavior and personalization need to be thoughtful about how different signals are interpreted, particularly when translating engagement into insights about broader demand.”

“We have a large and highly engaged beauty community generating feedback across product trials, reviews, and other customer touchpoints, which gives us the ability to look at consumer response across a broad set of experiences rather than treating any one exposure as definitive.”

He tells us that Ipsy’s diverse consumer data ecosystem allows the company to evaluate consumer response across more than one type of interaction, rather than conflating a standalone recommendation, trial, or review with broader demand.

“Ultimately, our objective is to give brands a reliable view of genuine consumer interest that can help them make smarter decisions before, during, and after a launch,” Kwong concludes.