Email Marketing-- Cult Cosmetics

A company that I regularly receive email updates from is Cult Cosmetics. Cult Cosmetics is a pure play business that exists solely on the Internet, which sells nail polish. Consumers are able to purchase individual bottles of nail polish, sets of 3 nail polishes or sign up for their monthly subscription service called Blackbox, which includes 3 on-trend nail polish colors and a nail art tool. The point of the Blackbox is to try a new nail art trends every month with tutorials available through Cult Cosmetics.

Cult Cosmetics sends out emails to its subscribers every 2-3 days and in these emails they not only advertise their polishes that you can purchase on the website but they also include photos to give you inspiration for your own nail art. Occasionally an email will also contain a how-to guide to create trendy nails. Lastly, the emails are used as a tool to encourage people to subscribe for the Blackbox service. They even offer 50% off your first month of Blackbox (which means your first month cost only $10 instead of $20) to encourage you to sign up.

An example of an email from Cult Cosmetics--
including inspiration, a tutorial as well as advertisements

The target audience of their email campaign is females who are approximately 18-25 and interested in nail art trends. These are women who often read fashion magazines and are interested in recreating the nail trends that they see in magazines and one the red carpet but might not know how. This target audience is probably highly involved on Pinterest, particularly in the nail polish and makeup section.

I would say that Cult Cosmetics’ email marketing is highly successful for several reasons. First of all is that, compared to many other companies, Cult Cosmetics sends out very few emails. This likely increases the open rate of their emails since readers do not experience as much of a fatigue with their communications. Secondly, this company does an excellent job of providing engaging, valuable content to their audience so consumers will be interested in opening the email since they know there will be content that they will want to read instead of just a promotional information. Lastly, all communications from Cult Cosmetics look very professional and are visually appealing which makes it more enjoyable to look at.

In my experience, Cult Cosmetics is very persuasive with their email marketing. I actually subscribed to their email list because I saw the company on Facebook and read about Blackbox but wasn’t quite ready to sign up. After I gave them my email, Cult Cosmetics kept me engaged and actually persuaded me to try their service. I since have cancelled Blackbox after one month for customer service reasons but I continue to receive their emails and might consider purchasing individual nail polish sets in the future.