Yon-Ka Personalizes the Customer Experience with the Latest in AI Skincare Technology

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Created over 67 years ago, Yon-Ka is a French-family skincare brand that specializes in personalized aroma-therapeutic care, providing results comparable to medical spa brands. The story began in 1954 with the Muhlethaler family aiming to create rich botanical oils in Paris, France. Later their passion led them to develop a line of products that mix the best of two worlds: rich aromatherapy and skincare technologies, introducing one of the world's famous phyto-aromatic products. 

The brand is committed to optimum skin health, sharing a new form of holistic beauty "that respects the body and mind, as well as nature, its resources, and the living beings that fill it." The brand’s product combines the most vital elements of plants: revitalizing essential oils filled with energy from the sun and complementary active ingredients (vitamins, fruit acids, polyphenols, peptides, and trace elements). This powerful combination gently, accurately, and effectively meets the needs of the consumers' most challenging and demanding skin concerns and needs. 

"We create essential experiences that strengthen each person's balance and vital energy using effective, personalized phyto-aromatic products that don't aggravate the skin," said Amal Amgaad, Head of Communications at Yon-Ka Paris USA.

Forging Stronger Bonds With Customers Through Personalization  

As a leader in organic and result-driven skincare, Yon-Ka has always created authentic connections with customers to make them feel valued. The brand wanted to provide a precise and on-demand omnichannel solution to the most challenging customer skin care needs. This led Yon-Ka to explore innovative ways of offering a deeply personalized and consistent digital brand experience.

"During the pandemic, beauty lovers were especially interested in leveraging their wellness routine and expanding their spa at-home experience. This led us to search for a technology partner with the expertise and capabilities that can help us bring the in-store experience to an intimate digital environment, " says Amal Amgaad.

As a skincare brand with a wide range of natural beauty products and treatments, Yon-ka aimed to inspire assortment discoverability to enable a dynamic, personalized experience. This eliminates countless hours customers would otherwise spend forming a regimen based on trial and error. 

Moreover, the brand was looking to gather quality zero- and first-party data, which they could immediately use to enhance their retargeting and customer communications strategy, and to inform future business decisions. 

Augmenting Yon-Ka’s In-Depth Skincare Expertise with AI technology 

Revieve was selected as a trusted partner in helping Yon-Ka augment its skincare expertise with AI technology and boost customer acquisition. The brand implemented the “Skin Advisor”, powered by Revieve’s best-in-class selfie skin diagnostics and next-generation AI product recommendation engine. 

"Revieve is the ideal match for us because of the team’s deep understanding of innovative technology and the insights they provide. We are thrilled to partner with Revieve to offer our customers the autonomy to access reliable personalized solutions for their skin wherever they are," said Amal Amgaad, Head of Communications at Yon-Ka Paris USA.

The experience was launched in August 2021. Behind the experience sits Revieve's Skincare Advisor, a market-leading self-diagnostic solution that analyzes a user's skin and provides personalized routine recommendations in seconds. 

Skincare Advisor takes into consideration the results of the skin analysis as well as consumer goals and concerns and suggests to each customer a dynamically created personalized skincare routine bundle with a frictionless add-all-to-cart experience. As of today, all of Yon-Ka's customers in the US can utilize the unique experience provided by Yon-Ka across desktop and mobile devices and on all browsers. 

"Our new personalized service and product offering prove that technology, data, and science can address the niche needs of a diverse population, helping them find suitable wellness and skincare routines. We are proud to lead by example, ensuring everyone gets personal and reliable advice wherever they are. We've already seen how this experience resonates with our consumers, as the solution is driving great results," she added.

Skin Advisor Has Helped Increase Average Order Value, Conversion Rates, Revenue, and Engagement 

Yon-Ka Skin Advisor is a central part of the brand’s customer journey today. Since launch, the brand has extensively promoted Skin Advisor on social media and has been leveraging influencers across social media platforms. Promoting the experience extensively on social channels and making it central to their brand experience has helped the brand yield fantastic results. In just one year, Yon-Ka almost doubled its conversion rate and saw a 30% increase in the average order value among users engaging with Skin Advisor.

“We have been proud to see that our conversion rate has been significantly higher, generating significant revenue. In addition, we notice a tendency of our customers to be willing to spend more. The average value is about 50% higher, which is super encouraging. Our customers are taking AI recommendations very seriously,” said Amal Amgaad.

Additionally, the brand has seen how engaging the solution is for consumers - the revenue per user is 1.7 times higher for Skin Advisor users, and they are also five times more engaged than a regular web user.

For Yon-Ka, collecting zero- and first-party data was of the highest importance.

“The data generated allow us to get a clearer picture of customers' concerns and what they are exactly looking for. We were able to use the data to connect our customers to the skincare products that work for them and curate high-performing skincare routines that they would never have assembled on their own in our marketing approach based on AI, ” she added.

By building an effective zero- and first-party data strategy around what information to collect and how to use it to segment and target customers, the brand was able to deliver a superior and hyper-personalized brand experience tailored to the consumer's individual needs.

“With this tool, we can have the data showing us patterns across different customer groups and what products might work best for each. It gives us precious insight into our customer's behavior, and we are currently launching new skincare rituals to respond to those needs.” 

Beyond a Better Shopping Experience

As the beauty experience landscape continues to evolve, consumer demands are driving Yon-ka to elevate further how they reach and interact with shoppers across its various touchpoints. From the initial brand engagement with the consumer to their first purchase, the brand continues to build lifelong customer relationships, with technology being the core of that. 

“We are embracing the latest technologies, from AI, to offer our Yon-ka customers a more 'hyper-personalized' and tailor-made approach to better beauty and skin health. Our customers love to dive deep into product personalization using AI. It gives them a smart skincare experience from the comfort of their home. We clearly notice that applications such as Revieve have now become part of our lives, disrupting and re-molding the beautiful landscape.”

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