Renude is a UK-based company that leverages AI technology to provide personalised skincare solutions for brands and retailers, aiming to enhance customer engagement and drive sales growth.
They combine AI analysis and professional aestheticians to offer tailored skincare advice, resulting in increased conversion rates and average order values for their clients.
1. What’s your name and title, what do you do day-to-day in 20 words or fewer?
I’m Dena, Chief Revenue Officer at Renude, leading sales, partnerships, and growth and helping skincare brands drive conversion with Renude’s AI-powered, personalised AI skin chat, analysis & routine builder.
2. At Renude you give customers confidence in skincare purchases. Can you give us a success story for a D2C brand you’ve worked with? E.g. what was the problem? What did you do? What were the results?
One of my favourite success stories was with a global pharmaceutical skincare brand, Laboratoire SVR.
Their products and routines are recommended by human experts for their core distribution channels in pharmacies and professional retail, so they needed a way to be able to offer the same quality service via their online channel that aligned with their professional recommendations approach.
Another thing they were focused on was building their D2C customer base in the UK, as it was a newer market for them. We integrated Renude’s AI-skin analysis, giving shoppers a dermatology-grade skin analysis with personalised routines in minutes. The routines are matched using ingredient and formulation expertise pre-built into the tech, overlapped with visual image recognition to map and understand skin concerns like redness, barrier irritation, wrinkles or pore size and recommending skin routines.
This helped transform the sales funnel, as conversion rates on the website shot up by 3x, and engagement with email and social campaigns also saw really impressive uplifts of ~5x. Their average order value increased by 2x too because customers felt more confident in their purchases and buying a full routine.
Lastly – and I think really surprised us to see worked well was that the email opt-in rate for their skin analysis was 91%, which helped quickly scale their database of opt-ins, supporting their goal of building up their customer base in the UK. Seeing our technology turn uncertainty into trust (and ultimately, revenue) is what I love most about what we do.
3. You specialise in AI-driven personalisation – what piece of advice would you give to DTC brands who want to improve in this area?
Don’t rely on guesswork! Personalisation is the future.
Customers expect a seamless, expert-led experience online, just like they would in-store. The brands that win are the ones using AI to understand customers on a deeper level and to guide customers to the right products with precision so they have the best skin results.
This is to say that every interaction should feel tailored but effortless – nobody wants a robotic feeling experience with customer-facing AI tools!
4. What do you think the biggest challenges facing eCommerce/D2C businesses will be over the next 12-18 months?
Customer acquisition is getting more expensive, data privacy changes are making it harder to track and retarget, and traditional retail is fighting back.
Brands that focus on being very specific with which consumers they’re targeting, focus on retention, build a strong community, and create hyper-personalised experiences will be the ones that thrive.
5. Complete this sentence – DTC brands that survive and thrive in 2023 will …
… ditch the one-size-fits-all approach, invest in customer loyalty, and use AI-driven insights to deliver hyper-personalised shopping experiences at scale.
6. Name three D2C brands that are killing it and whom you recommend others to emulate/learn from.
Beauty Pie – Their membership really did re-create the rules with luxury skincare pricing and it’s an amazing business model that won’t be losing traction any time soon!
Skin Rocks – Are building a powerhouse skincare brand.. they’re combining education by experts, strong community engagement and product trustworthiness to make science-backed skincare accessible. All values that we stand behind too.
Medik8 – I think they’ve ultimately mastered the balance between professional-grade formulations and approachable branding. They have a really loyal customer and fan base and consistently focus on and deliver strong skin results.