Growth and Marketing Automation Lessons with HERMO’s Alfin Teo [Marketer Spotlight]

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Editor’s Note: In our latest edition of Marketer Spotlight, Alfin Teo, Digital Marketer at HERMO, tells us why the beauty industry is still an untapped market in Malaysia and how HERMO has managed to position itself as a market leader through their innovative marketing strategies.

MoEngage’s Marketer Spotlight covers marketing leaders’ and influencers’ opinions and advice on industry challenges, trends, and best practices.

MoEngage: Welcome to Marketer Spotlight, Alfin. Tell us a little about yourself and HERMO.

Alfin: Hi, my name is Alfin. I am the key lead for mobile and digital marketing in HERMO. I manage paid marketing (Facebook and Google) ads, SEO, affiliate marketing, and overall app performance. HERMO is Malaysia’s top online beauty and makeup shop dedicated to women. We have selected and onboarded 300 renowned international brands at great prices. HERMO directly partners with the brand owners and distributors to establish flagship stores on our platforms, thus maximizing benefits for both brands and consumers. Apart from this, we also offer fashion insights and beauty tips across our social media channels.

I read a recent article about beauty retailers in the U.S. outpacing the overall E-commerce market. How’s the market in Malaysia?

The Malaysian market is still in the early growth stage compared to China and the United States, which are considered mature markets. Everyone in China and the United States is habituated to buying online; however, in Malaysia, consumers are still getting used to “online” shopping. We still need a few more years before we see a more mature market where consumers view online buying as not an experience but a way of life, a social norm, and a convenient way of buying things. I would say it’s not too long before we reach that stage. With big players like Lazada, Shopee, and Zalora in the market, the competition is heating up. However, despite the intense competition, we view it positively as they contribute to educating the market and customers together in the E-commerce ecosystem.

In today’s world, when customers are spoilt for choices, how does HERMO ensure a seamless customer experience?

The beauty industry is an enormous untapped market. There are strong online cosmetics brands that leverage digital and social media channels – these are a perfect match with HERMO.

HERMO provides a user-friendly experience to its customers. We provide one to three days of flash shipping. This means it’s easier to order beauty products that are not available in Malaysia. It saves the time and effort of the customer. HERMO’s philosophy is not to expand for the sake of it. If we do expand, we make sure that it is done efficiently. We have adopted a data-driven approach and are using video as our key content asset. With our new shopping app, we strongly emphasize the mobile-first approach to offer a seamless and end-to-end customer experience.

Customer journeys are not linear in the digital world. There are many channels and touchpoints, each customer has a unique purchase cycle. How do you define customer journeys at HERMO?

I agree; each touchpoint is equally essential because it’s an opportunity. Whenever customers come across any of our marketing efforts, they step a little closer to conversion each time they interact with us.

There are three main stages in HERMO’s customer journey: Awareness, Consideration, and Acquisition. We try to be data-driven throughout the customer journey. After all, data is king now.

During the awareness phase, a customer will likely navigate through the homepage, category pages, and product pages. Typically, the longer a customer spends on your site, the further they would go on this journey.

When the customer adds a product to the shopping cart, it is referred to as the consideration phase, where they decide whether to buy. Sometimes the customer may even begin the checkout before deciding if they’ll purchase. As the customer navigates through our checkout flow and customer journey, we observe the customer behavior from the available data to gauge if the customer is high intent or low intent.

Of course, anyone can say they want to make more revenue, but that doesn’t help you to accomplish anything. It would be best to define goals that make sense and are measurable.

What are some ways in which you segment your customers? 

We segment our customers as members based on their buying behavior. The three memberships are – Gold, Platinum, and Normal members. Customers who spend more than RM 1000 in HERMO are Gold members. Platinum is customers who spend more than RM 2000 on our platform. Also, since Malaysia consists of 3 primary races – Chinese, Malay, and Indian origin; we segment our customers based on their races to provide personalized recommendations based on their skin tone and other beauty preferences.

How do you personalize your customer experience?

Firstly, HERMO promises our customers flash shipping within 1-3 days. We all know time is of the essence, and every customer that makes a purchase cannot wait to “unbox” their beauty items.

Secondly, we allow customers to shop with extra HERMO credits. By doing so, they can get a further discount at checkout. There are multiple ways in which a customer can earn HERMO credit.

#1 Referral: Invite a friend to sign up and purchase at HERMO. The customer will receive a gift voucher of RM 15.

#2 Daily attendance check-in: We encourage customers to continuously log in to HERMO app/web for ten days to earn 200 credits.

#3 Product review: Customers will receive 20 credits per approved product review. We highly encourage this action as this improves our organic performance and provides a testimonial to our products and services.

#4 Share purchase on Social Media: When the customer uploads pictures with the hashtag #hermomy, they get 50 credits. However, we carefully monitor the posts to ensure that all social media postings are legit and of good quality.

#5 Offer cashback: If a customer makes a successful purchase on HERMO, they earn one credit for every RM 1 spent. The more you buy, the more credit you receive. This serves as a cash back for our customers and encourages them to revisit the website frequently.

Lastly, we also give out Birthday Vouchers to every customer. I would consider this to be the most helpful personalization hack as it not only helps in retention but also helps in reactivating inactive customers.

How do you leverage automation for your marketing? Which specific areas are tools like MoEngage helping you?

Cart abandonment, for sure. Every E-commerce player will need marketing automation tools for this. The key difference is how you execute your Flow. From our data, we found out that customers respond and react faster via the HERMO app. As a result, we fully utilize the Smart Trigger Campaign on MoEngage to automate Cart Abandonment Reminders. By doing so, we bring back visitors to the website/app, converting them into customers.

I am also looking at ways to personalize our marketing efforts one level deeper, especially the Push Notifications using MoEngage. For example, I would want to personalize notifications triggered by customers’ behavior, such as last order date, last login, and most frequent item purchase, and send clever personalized messages depending on their behavior.

HERMO has achieved many milestones in just seven years. If you had to share three growth marketing ideas that have worked for you in the past – what would those be?

In my opinion, there are three rules to any growth marketing ideas or hacks, if you like to call them – What the customer wants, where the customer is, and how to get the message across. Most importantly, always ask how to “automate” this idea/hack to make it more efficient.

I joined HERMO less than a year ago, so I can share some tips on what has worked out in this duration.

#1 Try to give something away for free.

At HERMO, we give out two pieces of free masks for every new sign-up with purchase. This creates an instant gratification effect, getting a customer to make the first purchase, even at the sign-up stage. From there, we work towards customer retention with daily app push notifications and CRM ads.

#2 It’s hard to grow big alone and partner with another company to share audiences.

Instead, focus on finding a business that complements your own. HERMO works with plenty of business partners, from local banks to telcos. We also work with ShopBack (a cashback startup in SEA) for affiliate marketing. Occasionally, we work with beauty brands for a crossover campaign. An incentivized partner will send you targeted prospects who are highly valuable, i.e., high-quality customers. Create kind of a win-win situation for both parties.

#3 Follow your biggest competitors.

The competition will always be there. We need to embrace it to keep growing. We need to be aware of the changing factors in HERMO’s competitive landscape. It would also help us better understand how our competitors are marketing their services and products and enable us to tailor our marketing strategies and content to get a maximum footprint.

What’s your personal growth goal for the coming year?

This year is going to be tough. However, every adversity is an opportunity, so for HERMO, we are closely observing the overall market behavior to catch the trend at the head. Personally, I will continue to learn and seek more self-improvement this year.

Thank You, Alfin, for sharing your valuable insights on leveraging marketing automation to strategize and implement your innovative marketing solutions. Marketers – Is there someone you’d like us to feature in our Marketer Spotlight series? What topics would you recommend for our next feature? We invite your recommendations and feedback via the Comments section below.