Sephora is launching its own integrated affiliate program, called “My Sephora” and launching next month.
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At this week’s Fast Company Innovation Festival, Sephora President and CEO Artemis Patrick officially announced the creation of “My Sephora Storefront,” a new digital program set to launch in October. This initiative marks Sephora’s first step into affiliate programs and reinforces the retailer’s innovative capabilities, especially in regards to the digital consumer experience. With this launch, Sephora is hoping to bypass popular affiliate platforms such as LTK and ShopMy and host its own platform where shoppers and influencers can share beauty product recommendations.
The rise of affiliate marketing programs in the past few years has given content creators and influencers a new opportunity to monetize product recommendations through curated, shoppable storefronts. LTK and ShopMy are the most popular platforms at the moment, with LTK capturing more than 150,000 content creators and 1 million brands, while ShopMy is quickly catching up and gaining solid ground, with a recent $77.5 million Series B funding to expand its functions and verticals beyond fashion and beauty.
Beauty is indeed a major category for these affiliate platforms, with influencers and content creators sharing their beauty routines and the products they use, linking them via affiliate platforms to then be redirected towards various beauty retailers. Sephora is seizing a missed opportunity: enabling creators to join an affiliate program directly, driving traffic and sales to its website rather than other retailers. “The difference between us and other affiliate programs is that it is truly integrated with Sephora.com,” said Patrick at the conference. This integration will give Sephora tighter control over commission structures, brand and creator partnerships as well as more visibility into products in high demand. Just as importantly, the retailer will be able to funnel traffic, content and revenue directly to its own ecosystem.
The Sephora storefront experience is designed to be just as engaging and user-friendly as current platforms, enabling creators to curate storefronts easily: “Whether it’s the app, desktop or mobile, they can just go on, they create it and it’s shoppable, and it’s a very seamless experience, and it’s very, very authentic for both the creator and the consumer,” she added.
With digital commerce now driving 50% of global beauty sales and the rapid growth of affiliate programs, this launch is highly relevant. By building its proprietary affiliate program, the retailer is positioning itself not only as a distributor of beauty products but also as a media platform. Yet success will depend on execution. To pull creators away from current popular networks, Sephora must deliver competitive commissions, intuitive, agile platform features, transparent analytics to help creators optimize content and sales as well as a breadth of brands, justifying why they would use this program for beauty recommendations. If Sephora succeeds, it could really help transform affiliate marketing from a sideline revenue stream into a core engine of beauty retail.
