How "LUSH cosmetics USA" can enhance customer engagement?

In the first part of monitoring, you were introduced "LUSH cosmetics USA" social media and their customer engagement via groundswell. Two weeks past, a lot things have changed for "LUSH cosmetics USA" and there are some new things I found.  In this post, I will continue to monitor some changes of  "LUSH cosmetics USA" and considering the problems I find in my post, I will also figure out some steps that "LUSH cosmetics USA" can generate more buzz in the groundswell and enhance customer engagement.

• New campaign: Make Fur History

Cruelty-free cosmetics brand LUSH is joining with the Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals and Montreal SPCA in hopes to #MakeFurHistory. People can join the fight against the fur trade by taking the pledge online or spreading the hash tag, #MakeFurHistory, with a picture of your favorite fur-bearing animal via your Twitter and Facebook accounts.

We see that many people support LUSH #MakeFurHistory campaign on Facebook.A major tenant of the LUSH is not to test its products on animals; these vegan and vegetarian products attract consumers fighting for animal rights.  LUSH also makes the majority of its products with fair-trade ingredients, which grabs the consumer who is concerned with social justice. LUSH’s target markets are women 18-45 who are middle to upper class and desire fresh organic beauty.

• Consistent increase of fans and followers

  

  Twitter increase fans and followers

  

  Oct.29th

  

  Nov.3rd

The increase in fans and views on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ continued in last two weeks(data gathered from Starcount). The daily increase of fans can be 600-700 on Facebook, and the most fan increase in on Instagram, about 2000 a day. During the two weeks, followers increased more than four thousand on twitter only.

From the data I gathered from Tweetstats, LUSH cosmetics has about 124 tweets per day and 1610 tweets per month. On Thursday it has the most tweets-568 tweets. About the hourly tweets, around 4 pm it has the most tweets in a day-435 tweets. What's more, the graph shows through Sept 14th to Oct 14th, the tweet number grew from 961 to 2259 in one month. 

You maybe wonder why tweets increased that much on October and reach to the peak on Oct 14th.

• #LUSHoween - LUSH Halloween 

Lush Cosmetics love any excuse for a lim-ed product launch. Whether it’s Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Easter or a campaign special, Lush have our backs with season tailored goodies. Halloween is no different. This year, Lush launched their Christmas and Halloween ranges at the same time , new product for Halloween is October 1st online, and 3rd in stores, and new products for Christmas is in the mid-October. That's can explain the peak in the graph of interest over time at the beginning of October, and the peak in the graph of daily blogs citation trend in the mid-October (data gathered from Google Trends and Ice Rocket).
As a result of  Make Fur History Campaign, we can see there is a peak at the beginning of November in the first graph and As a result of Make Fur History Campaign, we can see there is a peak at the beginning of November in the first graph and the line rose up in the second graph.

• Feedback and problems

- Different types of criticisms on Facebook and Twitter

It wasn't easy to find negative comments on its Facebook pages, as positive comments seem to be more frequent than complaints; however, I categorized different types of criticisms:

A. The staff is overbearing. By trying to be too friendly and helpful, some staff members come off as pushy. Or the opposite, staff is snooty and the customer feels ignored.

B. Products weren't as fresh as they should be, or the customer was expecting something different from a certain product.

C. Discontinued products: comments asking for discontinued products to be brought back (this is not exactly a complaint, but we have seen a lot of these)

D. After ordering online, customers complain that the products arrived late or damaged. (They sometimes post pictures as well.)

On the positive side, happy customers leave comments as well: to thank the brand and express how much they love it, praise the staff members for their help, post pictures of their makeup, nails, in-store experience, etc.

- On LUSH cosmetics forum   

                         

As a communication platform for customers and LUSH cosmetics USA, I found sometimes there standard answer in it. Customers deserve to feel special, so I don't think they should use standard answers. If they response this angry customer in one short sentence, I don’t think this customer will be satisfied with their solution. Also they failed to give timely response to their customers sometimes.

- Problems on Facebook

- During the two weeks, I have noticed that LUSH cosmetics on Facebook didn't respond to their customers’ questions. As an example above, five days past, LUSH hasn't given a timely response. But on Twitters, I can see an active communication between customers and LUSH. I think maybe LUSH cosmetics should pay more attention on timely response on Facebook.

- To grow a Facebook community, brands promote what they stand for, knowing that the fans share the same values. LUSH cosmetics did really good at that aspect, they held campaign for protect animals rights, but here are some followers hold opposite opinion with LUSH on Facebook.

For example, in LUSH #MakeFurHistory campaign, many customers support LUSH’s value about people shouldn't use fur and what LUSH post on in their Facebook, but there are some customers don’t agree on that, so they have argument on Facebook. Also I can’t see there is any response from LUSH to deal with these replies. I think this can make LUSH loose their followers.

• Few steps to enhance customer engagement

- Assess customers’ social activities. Listen to your customers, and talk with them.  If customers are happy about the in-store experience, they will tell you on Facebook, and it’s important to show them that you’re thankful. If they are unhappy, they will also tell you. The company has to show that they care, and try to fix it somehow.

- Decide what you want to accomplish. Company should support their customers, and  energize their best customers to evangelize others. Then try to collaborate with them to figure out your objectives of each activities or campaign.

- Plan for how relationships with customers will change. LUSH should involve right people in their campaign and measure the effectiveness of their campaign.LUSH seem to have an international community of loyal fans. It becomes easier to do customer service on social media  when fans are ready to step up and defend the brand at any time, as well as answer other fans’ questions.

- Pay attention to what your fans/customers are complaining about: staff, products, orders, etc. and try to fix any problem they may have as soon as possible. 

Monitoring "LUSH cosmetics USA" Social Media

Lush Cosmetics is a company that produces natural, handmade, cosmetics that focuses on using fresh, organic, and vegetarian ingredients while also using little or no preservatives or packaging.

Over the course of the past two months I've been using a few different Lush products including a cleaner, a toner, and fresh mask and I've noticed dramatic improvements in the clarity of my skin so I plan to begin a series of Lush-related posts  monitoring "LUSH cosmetics USA".

LUSH’s products are lovingly made by hand. They invent all their products with a personalized touch, while creating local jobs and using resources from their backyard. Rather than rely on mass-produced, machine-made formulations and warehousing excess stock, LUSH makes products as needed to ensure that everything delivered to their local shops and customers is as fresh as possible. Here is how it's made by HAND!

Lush is ruling various social media platforms

LUSH Fresh Handmade Cosmetics relies almost exclusively on word-of-mouth advertising via social media to promote their products and social awareness campaigns–they do not partake in any traditional media advertising (magazine, newspaper, TV, or radio ads). They rely on like-minded consumers who share the same principals and social values as the company to promote their products and campaigns through personal blogs (reviews, promotions, and giveaways), personal (reviews, hauls, demos) and proprietary (demos/tutorials, campaign specific awareness) YouTube videos, Facebook (main company pages, plus individual store pages), Twitter (main company feeds, plus individual department, and employee feeds), and the company-run forums.

Examples of how the use of social media has encouraged customer 

• Lush Fresh Handmade Cosmetics Company has a campaign supporting charities concerned with human rights, animal welfare and environmental protection. And now, one of those charities is Save Shaker Aamer. In 2013, Charity Pot donated over £2.5 million to organizations around the world. The funding generated by Charity Pot sales is essential for the survival of independent groups. This can encourage customers to buy their products, in order to support organizations for human rights, animal welfare and environment.

• Halloween is coming, Lush is holding a campaign called " Green Halloween". Lush encouraged customers have a Green Halloween party. They said:"Reducing the amount of waste we generate by cutting down on excessive shopping is not only better for our planet (and easier on our wallets) but reducing the number of products we purchase also teaches our children the art of simplicity as well the value of moderation." They let their social media campaign related with recent festival, it's also a way to promote their sales.
  

Social mention analysis

 

The information I gathered from Social Mention showed an increase in the strength of discussion surrounding Lush from 1% to 51% from week to week.  The passion of discussion increased gradually from 29% to 41% over the weeks. However, there was fluctuation in the sentiment around conversations from week one to last. Most of the mentions are either positive or neutral and there isn’t a noticeable negativity around conversations. Another important thing to note is that there is an increase in the average per mention, and the number of unique authors reduced on second week and then rose up again to 97.

Lush topics trend on Google Trend

We can see from the line chart that the overall trend of interest of Lush through Sep 29th to Oct 13th went up, though there are fluctuations during this growing time. What we should pay attention is about the part of regional interest, because of this brand is a British brand, so the number of U.K. is 100. But the number of USA, compared to other regions is really low, only 34. It's at the bottom of the chart. Lush should improve level of recognition of the brand in America.

Daily blogs citation trend by IceRocket

I gathered the blog citation data from Sep 21st to Oct 19th, the rise trend of the line chart, we can see some days the number of blog citation can be zero. There have been big swells during last 30 days. And I think this may be related to Lush social media activity level.

Data of unique visitors from Compete

A Unique Visitor can be defined as a person who visits a site at least once within the month being researched. As we can see from the chart, in the rise level of the unique visitors through the past one year time, the peak of the  line chart showed in the end of 2013. And in Aug 2014 the total unique visitors number is more than 90,000.

A consistent and effective brand personality on social media platforms is important for companies of any size. Overall, Lush posts a range of different media to keep their audience engaged and add a personal touch to their tweets/posts. This leads to more interaction between the brand and their audience and oodles of user generated content.

During the next few weeks, I will continue to monitor and see what will happen with social media of Lush cosmetics USA, especially see if Lush can have any improvement of its social media.