Case Study
The strategy that turned Blondesister into a makeup leader in Italy
Blondesister, an emerging makeup brand, had the goal of positioning itself as a leader in the Italian market by increasing brand visibility and recognition.
Consistent communication and a sustainable growth strategy were essential to support its journey from startup to large-scale distribution.
To reach this goal, we developed a multichannel strategy focused on strengthening the brand’s identity and optimizing marketing performance. The plan included:
Defining a clear brand identity to set Blondesister apart from its competitors.
Innovative social campaigns focused on Instagram and TikTok, adapting creative content to different target audiences with the help of influencers and creators.
Rolling out advertising campaigns on Meta and Google, tapping both latent and aware audiences to acquire new users.
Email marketing automation to retain the audience and encourage repeat purchases (raising customer lifetime value to lower acquisition cost).
We ran market analyses and continuous research into industry trends, creating effective content that improved ER.
Blondesister achieved a significant increase, establishing itself as a reference makeup brand in Italy. Among the results:
These milestones helped consolidate the brand’s market position and build a solid base of loyal customers, even winning Cosmoprof 2024. Having created the demand, we gained visibility and received B2B requests. We are now distributed across Italy by the country’s largest perfumery chains.
Results of individual clients, not guaranteed. Shopify total sales include shipping and taxes.
From startup to a makeup brand distributed across Italy
Cosmoprof 2024 winners
From 0 to +€500,000 in 26 months.
Results of individual clients, not guaranteed. Shopify total sales include shipping and taxes.
A makeup startup with 2 products on the market.
An owner willing to work on a personal brand component.
A niche with extremely high competition, aggressive competitors and big budgets. The need to work on the user experience before and after purchase with the goal of building a community.
A very low AOV, also driven by a shipping-cost threshold of €27
Very little control over the e-commerce numbers on the client’s side.
We identified the real differentiating message - multi-purpose, easy-to-use makeup - and weighed the pros and cons, mapping every single expense to understand the hypothetical breakeven point, in order to make the business sustainable over time.
The client assumed the target was Gen Z, but only through careful market analysis did we bring data-driven evidence that the products were generally used by a slightly older age group.
So, for a good start, we had to focus our efforts on the META ecosystem.
The overall approach has always been Advertising + Automation, where the first part also has to build awareness and the second has to add value as well as convert.
The first challenge was consulting-led: identifying which products could become bestsellers and how to bundle them into boxes/kits to raise the average cart and margins.
Only after about a year of work, with revenue growing steadily, were we able to run a detailed econometric analysis. It allowed us to map out, with a good degree of confidence:
Minimum advertising spend
Break-even point
Target ROAS to keep cash flow stable
Target ROAS past break-even to scale knowing how much to spend
At first we focused mainly on Meta, aiming to increase frequency and brand recall.
Having built a large audience, we could analyze its behavior and needs, optimizing:
The evidence gathered over the first year and a half led us to develop the strategy along three core directions:
This approach involved the brand’s entire ecosystem, increasing interaction with organic channels.
It let us trigger specific communications for users who take meaningful actions close to conversion, fostering relationships and guiding the user along the whole purchase journey through to conversion.
It also allowed us to run surveys to assess and validate products, develop new initiatives, and collect zero-party data and interests to make our communications ever more relevant.
We focused on conversion rate, AOV and returning customers to bring acquisition costs down. In an increasingly expensive and competitive market, this business’s profit can only come from these metrics.
Results of individual clients, not guaranteed. Shopify total sales include shipping and taxes.
DETAILS
Through constant, targeted communication on social media, we made the most of the content with engagement and conversion campaigns. This approach allowed us to build, over time, a loyal audience that is perfectly on target, with the goal of retargeting it to increase LTV and lower acquisition costs.
During the most important launches, working with influencers relevant to the beauty sector let us grow the business through advertising.
This allowed us to invest significant budgets over short periods profitably, while ensuring long-term account stability.
Since January 2023, we started actively managing Google, significantly increasing the budget invested.
At the beginning, with only Brand Protection campaigns and low spend, the tracked ROAS (conv. value/cost) was very high, but it did not reflect the brand’s real ability to convert through those placements.
In the first phase, we focused on launching campaigns and collecting data on keywords, competitors and the most viewed products, and then developed tailored strategies that followed the brand’s commercial calendar.
Today we work effectively both in evergreen mode and during launches, alternating catalog segmentation with more semantic and display approaches.
We began structuring YouTube not just as an awareness channel, but as a platform to convert directly.
So far, the signals are promising.
We worked on acquisition with different sign-up forms targeted by page, splitting the communication and making it relevant to the user’s journey (we were not satisfied with a classic sign-up discount pop-up).
With a flagship, innovative product, once we had confirmed it was the bestseller, we proposed building bundles (as boxes, to raise perceived value) and activated flyout forms on scroll to increase AOV and offer a box as a beauty routine.
We created automation flows that brought users closer to the brand and helped them fully grasp its values and Carolina’s story.
We set up properties (user characteristics) for the various automation flows, so we could build relevant journeys and more personalized email campaigns.
We also activated a back-in-stock flow, since one of the business’s traits was a high restock rate.
With a large user base, we used the predictive intelligence of Klaviyo, activating a flow based on audience interest that sends users products they care about when they are ready to buy.
We then activated a strategy to retain customers with a loyalty program and specific flows leading to conversion.
We planned a communication plan that included content emails (useful information for this niche of customers), product emails and promotions.
We identified a series of launches, creating exclusivity with a lead generation strategy to acquire more users. This took us, within a few months, from 0 to +18K users (users who are genuinely interested, as the open rate and click rate data will show)
By segmenting audiences, we built relevant audiences for each type of communication to achieve an open rate and click rate that would let the domain build authority and avoid landing in spam.
We also made our content especially engaging, so we could drive conversions through both automation flows and email campaigns (making newsletters effective and useful for conversion).
Average revenue over the last 12 months up +42%, growing steadily month after month.
Klaviyo revenue split: 52% from campaigns, 48% from automated flows
Here too, growing steadily year after year.
Annual average open rate of 36%
Annual average click rate 2.87%
Revenue generated: +€139k
Thanks to this work, we started receiving requests for B2B distribution.
Today we are distributed by:
Results of individual clients, not guaranteed. Shopify total sales include shipping and taxes.
This case is a significant example of the transformation from startup to a nationally recognized brand, with an independent B2C platform that keeps expanding.
We built a strong synergy between product, brand and marketing, projecting annual revenue of about €500,000 within six months.
Our next goal was to focus on Black Friday, aiming for a further step up in quality, as happened in 2022 and 2023, using the event as an ideal sounding board to consolidate the brand.
Thanks to the continuous optimization of lead acquisition throughout the year and the rollout of a loyalty system, we can estimate the repurchase rate with growing accuracy.
We are increasing advertising investment while reducing the impact of, and dependence on, influencers, and strengthening communication to build the brand’s authority, with the goal of improving conversion rates and customer lifetime value (LTV).
We took a proactive approach to cover quieter periods, introducing new launches and promotions to ensure a steady cash flow.
Thanks to these efforts, we have built a solid B2B dimension, which lets us keep investing in raising the brand’s awareness and perceived value.
Services
Meta, Google and TikTok campaigns that bring in qualified traffic.
Data, funnels and conversions to find out where sales are being lost.
Email and chatbots to recover abandoned carts and bring customers back.
Strategy and training on advertising, automation and conversion optimization.
Testimonials
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Jewelry – Albert and Milor Group S.p.A.
We work with the Milor team on their performance marketing, supporting the growth and optimization of the e-commerce stores of Bronzallure and Etrusca Gioielli. In this testimonial their team talks about working with Ermethe and what we built together to grow the brands’ digital performance. Video in Italian with English subtitles.
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Footwear – Suny of La Gatta con gli Stivali
We have worked for years with La Gatta con Gli Stivali, a brand of handcrafted women’s footwear, supporting the growth of its digital activity. In this interview, founder Suny shares what it is like to work with our team and why constant dialogue matters to sustain the brand’s growth over time. Video in Italian with English subtitles.
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Jewelry – Linda, personal brand LdiLinda
We work with Linda, founder of the jewelry brand LdiLinda, supporting the growth of her e-commerce through performance marketing, video content, promotions and automations. In this testimonial, Linda explains how Ermethe helped her turn ideas and products into a clear, organized, results-driven growth plan. Video in Italian with English subtitles.
They chose Ermethe
Blondesister
La Revêche
Otravez
Results of individual clients, not guaranteed. Shopify total sales include shipping and taxes.
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