Within the past two years, the ULTAmate Rewards loyalty program gas picked up steam as an invaluable asset for Ulta Beauty.
During the company’s March 10 fourth-quarter earnings call, CEO Mary Dillon noted the loyalty program’s success.
“The fourth quarter delivered the best two-year comp since 2011 with a 23.6% two-year stack,” Dillon said, according to Seeking Alpha. “Product newness, our loyalty program, great in-store execution, and investments in marketing and store payroll hours are fueling this industry leading growth across both retail and online, with the fastest category growth in cosmetics on both mass and prestige sides of the portfolio. Our loyalty program is truly one of our most valuable assets. Asset membership grew 23%, showing continued acceleration. The growth in our loyalty program has been driven by two major things. The successful evolution of our marketing strategies to include awareness driving tactics like television, radio, and digital is driving brand awareness and new guests to our stores.”
Dillon said the company accelerated growth in its ULTAmate Rewards loyalty program membership, adding 3.2 million members to reach a total of 18.2 million active members by year-end.
“We meaningfully increased brand awareness through our investments in television, radio, digital advertising, and PR,” she noted. “We achieved strong and increased guest satisfaction scores as measured by NPS.”
For the full year of 2015, Ulta Beauty achieved 11.8% comp, its best annual comp since 2010, with double-digit comps in each of the three businesses: Stores, salon, and ecommerce.
“We brought significant newness and exclusivity to the merchandise assortment, and added 26 significant new brands during the year, demonstrating increased traction with our brand partners,” Dillon said. “We improved our supply chain operations in a few ways. We invested in better processes and inventory to increase in-stock levels. We drove efficiencies in our ecommerce fulfillment performance, and smoothly launched the Greenwood distribution center. We also delivered against complex IT goals with the implementation of a host of new tools across the enterprise: Our new warehouse management system, our new merchandise forecasting and replenishment system, and a new product information tool, among others.”
What’s more, Dillon discussed a seldom dismissed strategic imperative: Talent that drives a winning culture that is guest-centric, value-based, and high performance.
“I'm still proud to see proof that our commitment to putting the guest and the associate at the center of our mindset is truly delivering market place results,” she said. “We’re respecting the opinions of those who matter the most: The guests, who give us their hard earned money; and the associates who really knows best how to optimize the guest experience and our operations. In fact, we saw significant year-over-year increases in the level of engagement of our associates as measured by a third-party through our annual culture survey. We are gratified to achieve global top-quartile employee engagement scores among best-in-class companies. Highly engaged employees are tightly correlated with high performing companies.”