Global Unilever Prestige brand Dermalogica gets growth edge from CRM-powered personalization
21%
YoY growth in revenue from CRM in last 12 months
4M+
active Klaviyo customer profiles
100M+
events processed by Klaviyo in last 12 months
Dermalogica is a skincare brand in the Unilever Prestige family, focused on science, innovation, and education over beauty industry trends. Founded more than 40 years ago as an advanced educational institute for skin therapists, Dermalogica has expanded into a global consumer brand, working with retail partners from Ulta to Amazon and running thriving DTC operations in more than 20 countries. They still work closely with skincare professionals, too, supplying them with innovative formulas developed in their headquarters’ on-site R&D lab.
Through the years, Dermalogica has always emphasized personalization and professional guidance, rather than one-size-fits-all solutions. Their marketing needs to do the same.
Learn how Dermalogica tightly targets messaging throughout their funnel with Klaviyo B2C CRM
Challenge: Personalized skincare messaging across 20+ countries
One of Dermalogica’s brand pillars is 1:1 personalization. In the skincare space, it’s non-negotiable.
“Skincare is a very personal thing,” says Frank Freeman, VP of AI and digital disruption at Dermalogica and Unilever Prestige. “Different skin types mean different product needs."
That’s one reason Dermalogica was an early mover in the AI personalization space. Years ago, the brand launched an AI face mapping tool that recommends products based on an uploaded photo.
Skincare is a very personal thing. Different skin types mean different product needs.
“We want to really listen to our customers and speak to them uniquely as they come to our site, interact, and show interest in specific products or skin concerns,” says Courtney Wallace, head of ecommerce at Dermalogica.
But expanding personalized skin guidance into every channel and touchpoint is not easy for a major enterprise like Dermalogica. The brand operates more than 20 ecommerce sites globally, and they communicate with millions of customers all over the world.
At that kind of international scale, it’s a massive, technically complex task to transform customer data into relevant, expert, brand-aligned messaging in real time.
Solution: Granular segmentation with one enterprise CRM
Dermalogica relies on Klaviyo B2C CRM and the built-in Klaviyo Data Platform as their personalization engine.
The flexible, vertically integrated platform gives them a competitive edge in an industry where even major players often stick to the basics.
“Leveling up segmentation can really move the needle,” Freeman says. “Being able to drill down into an individual user in Klaviyo and then roll that up across segments has been a game changer for Dermalogica.”
For us, Klaviyo is our CRM and our CDP, and it allows us to take data-backed actions to reach our customers.
The team uses Klaviyo's pre-built integrations with Shopify, Recharge, and more to pack their customer profiles with purchase, loyalty, and subscription data. They also use Klaviyo’s API to pull in customer data from their face mapping tool and beyond.
The marketing team can then efficiently build and activate ultra-granular segments across email, text messaging, and paid media.
“We connect our customer data in Klaviyo to our retention campaigns, our acquisition campaigns, and our evolving on-site personalization campaigns,” Wallace says. “For us, Klaviyo is our CRM and our CDP, and it allows us to take data-backed actions to reach our customers.”
Strategy: Targeting based on skin concern with Klaviyo’s MCP server
Going forward, Dermalogica aims to better capture and approximate their most valuable data, and the most impactful trait they segment on: each customer’s primary skin concern.
“If we could ask everyone coming to our site, ‘If you could treat anything in your skin right now, what would it be?’, that would transform the site experience,” Wallace says.
In the US, Dermalogica collects this data directly from customers through their face mapping tool, and uses various modes of pattern recognition, including cluster analysis, to fill in blanks.
Going forward, the marketing team plans to use Klaviyo to target even more widely and accurately on primary skin concern, with a few new tactics:
- Pulling in first-party skin concern data from a new quiz: Not everyone is comfortable uploading a photo of their skin to the Dermalogica site, so Wallace’s team is launching a new, supplementary quiz. It will output a recommended skincare routine based on multiple-choice questions about skin health and lifestyle. Data the customers share will also sync into Klaviyo and inform segmentation.
- Analyzing product launch patterns with Klaviyo’s MCP server: Dermalogica recently released two category-defining new products, and sent launch emails to broad audiences to assess interest. Then, they used Klaviyo’s MCP server and Claude to identify the skin concerns and other profile traits that correlated with launch email engagement. The results will inform future targeting around these products.
Klaviyo’s core value for Dermalogica lies in its ability to ingest customer data in real time, analyze it efficiently, and turn it into action: targeted campaigns, automations, and more.
"Data is king, and we want as much data as possible,” Wallace says. “But if you can't actually turn that data into a revenue-driving, engagement-driving action, then it's just data. Klaviyo makes our data actionable."
The drumbeat of new AI tools from Klaviyo, like the CRM-native AI marketing agent Composer, keeps Dermalogica in a strong position to innovate.
"I'm chomping at the bit to see what we can do to drive unprecedented levels of personalization with Klaviyo's AI features,” Freeman says.
I'm chomping at the bit to see what we can do to drive unprecedented levels of personalization with Klaviyo's AI features.
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