How Retailers Can Effectively Target Fashion and Beauty Consumers

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Fashion and beauty retail stands at a crossroads. While 70 percent of retail sales are now digitally influenced, according to The Business of Fashion and McKinsey & Company’s The State of Fashion 2025 report, physical stores still command 77 percent of actual transactions, according to EY Future Consumer Index 2025.

This dual reality has created what industry experts call the “phygital” experience — where seamless integration between digital and physical touchpoints has become a competitive necessity, yet remains elusive for many brands.

The challenge extends beyond channel integration. Despite widespread loyalty programme membership, over 53 percent of consumers regularly switch brands, according to consultancy Capgemini’s 2024 survey. This behaviour is driven by a constant, complex assessment as shoppers weigh shared values against value pricing.

As consumers increasingly demand tailored interactions across every touchpoint, brands are investing heavily in customer engagement infrastructure, but struggling to convert those investments into lasting relationships.

In October 2025, BoF partnered with customer engagement platform Braze on “Rethinking Fashion and Beauty’s Digital Customer Experience,” a knowledge report which examines how brands can navigate these interconnected challenges through personalisation, omnichannel thinking and adaptable technology.

To further explore the report’s insights and translate them into actionable strategies, BoF content strategist Yasmine Dahlberg was joined by Braze’s head of retail and e-commerce industry marketing Meredith Mitchell, Wharton Business School’s professor of marketing Peter Fader and 111Skin’s chief marketing officer Michael Edelmann for a BoF LIVE discussion.

Below, BoF shares key takeaways and strategic opportunities from the conversation.

Unify Physical and Digital Systems for Seamless Customer Experiences

With customers moving fluidly between channels, the demand for seamless integration has never been higher.

Sixty-one percent of shoppers now expect seamless communication across channels, according to Braze’s 2025 Retail Customer Engagement Review and VML’s 2024 Future Shopper survey — a 5 percent increase from the previous year. Yet brands continue to operate physical and digital channels in silos, creating friction precisely where integration is most needed.

“Consumers don’t think about your brand as in ‘I shopped on your website’ or ‘I shopped in store’,” says Mitchell. “They think about your brand in the same way and the reality is they want a consistent journey when they experience your brand.”

The business case for unification is compelling. When brands operate with unified systems, they can connect customer data across touchpoints, enabling personalisation at an individual level.

“They’re able to optimise for customer preferences, deliver personalised offers and drive customer experiences that are individualised,” says Mitchell. “Ultimately, that’s what leads to revenue, higher conversion rates, repeat purchases, stronger loyalty and retention.”

AI is a means to drive personalisation, drive consistency — and ultimately drive better measurement so you can understand more about your customer.

—  Meredith Mitchell, Head of Retail and E-Commerce Industry Marketing at Braze

The latter is critical when 75 percent of shoppers are likely to spend more after receiving high-quality service from store personnel, according to The State of Fashion 2025. For 111Skin, this integration manifests through experiences designed to move customers seamlessly between digital and physical spaces while building community.

“[Brands] need to create places and locations where the community can assemble around,” says CMO Michael Edelmann. “That sounds easier than it is in reality. But for us as a brand, in terms of activations, we’ve seen a lot of success in [sharing the] founder’s experiences.”

111Skin founder Dr Yannis Alexandrides, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, regularly interacts with the brand community through both in-person meet-and-greets and virtual master classes — creating touchpoints that feel personal regardless of format.

“For [111Skin], activations where [customers] jump back and forth between the digital and physical are really important — and it’s the best tool for building community,” Edelmann adds.

Build Loyalty Through Emotional Connection, Not Just Promotional Tactics

Loyalty programmes tend to rely heavily on transactional benefits rather than emotional connection.

“In too many organisations, the people involved with loyalty programmes are completely disconnected, often at odds with the [people] who are developing the community,” says Fader. “Building the loyalty programme around the emotions of the community is so important.”

According to Edelman’s 2024 Trust Barometer, 84 percent of people globally report needing to share values with a brand to buy from it — a statistic that reflects how consumers now evaluate brands through emotional connection rather than price alone.

“In this day and age, consumers are skeptical, [questioning] what’s in it for them. So it’s really important for [brands] to appeal to them at a very base level, that it’s not just about discounts and so on, it is about connection,” Fader notes.

Edelmann echoes this sentiment, pointing to a fundamental question that shapes how brands should think about retention: “In the knowledge report, Peter asks a great question: ‘Do we define loyalty by purchase behaviour or by emotional connection?’ For me, it’s definitely the latter.”

This approach is particularly critical during economic downturns, when promotional tactics can actually undermine long-term brand relationships by training customers to wait for discounts rather than valuing the brand itself.

“Real loyalty is really rooted in connection and that ties back to experiences and community,” says Edelmann. “It requires a relationship with the customer, it requires personalisation and requires a human touch — that will see us through even in challenging times of economic downturn.”

The challenge, Fader acknowledges, is measurement. “While it’s harder to quantify that, it’s important to build that in, even if [brands] can’t fully attribute how much credit they give to the emotional piece. I’d like to believe that through AI, we’re actually able to quantify the qualitative better than we ever could before, but whether we can or not, we need to start with it.”

Leverage AI to Enhance Human Personalisation at Scale

Consumer expectations for personalisation have reached new heights, with 81

percent of consumers preferring personalised experiences according to The State of Fashion 2025.

AI offers a path forward, but only when built on solid data foundations and balanced with human oversight. “We’re now able to lean into AI to [ask]: ‘What did Gen Z buy last week? What did they want the most?’ Leaning into that targeting, measurement and experimentation — and then using that to make future business decisions — is really the biggest opportunity from a marketing perspective,” Mitchell explains.

Loyalty requires a relationship with the customer, it requires personalisation and it requires a human touch.”

—  Michael Edelmann, CMO of 111Skin

Fader emphasises that AI should be viewed as an enhancement tool rather than a transformation in itself: “AI will take our best practices and make them better. It’s going to enhance what we do in terms of the data we collect, the messages we put out there, even the way we formulate and design our products and experiences.”

“AI is only as good as the data that it has, so unifying customer data is the fastest path to meaningful personalisation and better experiences,” says Mitchell. “It’s able to create a single real-time view of each person at that human level.”

By using AI as an enhancement rather than replacement to human decision-making, brands can process vast amounts of customer data to identify patterns and opportunities that would be challenging to detect manually.

“If you’re looking at a luxury consumer, particularly in beauty, there’s still a lot of opposition when it comes to AI — for example, when it comes to image use or other things,” says Edelmann.

He adds that using AI with human oversight is critical because beauty is deeply personal. “[Consumers] are putting something on their skin, they might even be ingesting something. That’s where our expertise as a doctor-led brand comes in because we treat each customer like a patient that walks into Dr. Yannis’s clinic,” Edelmann says.

Build the Data Infrastructure Today — and the Culture to Support It

Braze’s research reveals that 47 percent of retailers are extremely or very concerned that their messaging isn’t resonating with customers, while 79 percent of marketing executives surveyed in 2025 are not fully confident in understanding user preferences and sentiment.

“I don’t think the biggest barrier [to customer engagement] is technology; I think it’s culture, it’s willingness, it’s retailers saying, ‘Let’s do this, let’s prioritise this,’” says Fader. “It has to be done in a way where it aligns with the brand and the emotional aspects, but [brands need to be] committed to making those investments and assembling the data.”

For brands operating across multiple retail partners, the challenge is compounded by siloed data ownership. “It’s much easier to create a data infrastructure if you’re selling directly-to-consumer through your website or your own stores,” says Edelmann.

“But if you’re working with a lot of retail partners or spa partners like we do at 111Skin, everyone clings on to the bits of data, but it doesn’t serve the bigger purpose. Every single unit would be much better off — including the end consumer — if all of the data were a lot more connected.”

“AI is a means to drive that personalisation, drive that consistency — and ultimately drive better measurement so you can understand more about your customer,” adds Mitchell.

This is a sponsored feature paid for by Braze as part of a BoF partnership.