How By Rosie Jane’s Careful And Scrappy Approach To TikTok Helped Double Sales Of Its Vanilla Fragrance Dulce

Rosie Jane Johnston, makeup artist and founder of fragrance brand By Rosie Jane, has never been particularly comfortable paying for the social media spotlight. “With perfume, the idea of someone being paid to talk about something, whether they like it or not, feels really impersonal,” she says.

So, when By Rosie Jane, which has largely dedicated its social media resources and attention to Instagram, where it has 52,000 followers, turned to TikTok, immediately paying the platform’s content creators to shout about her brand didn’t appeal to Johnston. Instead, she decided By Rosie Jane should take a careful two-pronged approach to TikTok to produce content that feels personal by organically seeding its products to test the virtual waters before mounting a paid campaign.

Both prongs centered on Dulce, a rich vanilla eau de parfum released in September last year on By Rosie Jane’s website just as vanilla scents were picking up steam. In March, the initial effort seeded it to 350 TikTok influencers. In April, the second effort dubbed #DulceXSephora, By Rosie Jane’s first-ever paid TikTok campaign, selected five influencers using the handles itstherealkimshady, andrearenee00, kylei.ann, angelaypark and sararosie to post as Dulce was rolling out to all Sephora doors in the United States and the retailer was holding its big savings event.

By Rosie Jane worked with Angie Shumov, founder of marketing agency Son of Noise, on the social media initiatives and spent less than $10,000 on them. In the paid campaign, the influencers showed themselves shopping at Sephora for Dulce and discussed the type of fragrance Dulce is and its vanilla, chocolate and Hinoki wood notes. At Sephora, a 1.7-oz. bottle of Dulce is priced at $75. “I literally get compliments all the time when I wear this,” gushed Kylie Halbakken, the content creator with the handle kylei.ann, in a sponsored TikTok post sharing that Dulce is in the “warm and spicy fragrance family.”

The outcome of By Rosie Jane’s TikTok efforts has been sweet. The brand’s organic program yielded 302 posts: 81 on TikTok and 204 on Instagram. Total social media impressions clocked in at 20.8 million, including 946,500 via TikTok and 19.9 million via Instagram, and By Rosie Jane’s TikTok follower count climbed 25.11%. The brand currently has around 1,870 followers and 4,145 likes on TikTok.

By Rosie Jane’s #DulceXSephora paid campaign yielded five TikTok posts and five Instagram Stories posts. Total social media impressions clocked in at 217,700, including 30,300 via TikTok and 187,400 via Instagram. The average engagement on posts was 14.9%, and 100% of the posts exceeded the industry engagement standard of 1% to 3%.

The screen success led to sales success. Dulce’s sales doubled during the social media efforts. It’s become By Rosie Jane’s No. 2 fragrance, trailing only musk and rose scent Rosie, the brand’s bestselling fragrance at Sephora. By Rosie Jane’s sales have jumped 60% overall and 113% at Sephora since its TikTok efforts kicked off in March.

“For a long time, we were confused about how to even talk about perfume on social media because it’s an invisible product and you can’t see results. You can’t see emotion like that,” says Johnston. “I think TikTok found this great way to have people talk about how they wear fragrance and what it does for them in exciting ways. So that is what made me sort of shift my focus a little bit and see what this does and how people react.”

TikTok has been fertile ground for fragrance, a category that jumped 15% in prestige sales in the first quarter this year, according to market research firm Circana. The hashtag #PerfumeTok has 3.7 billion views, and fragrance enthusiasts on the platform have made fragrances like Maison Francis Kurkdjian’s Baccarat Rouge 540 Eau de Parfum, DedCool’s Taunt, Narciso Rodriguez For Her and Khadlaj Perfumes’ Hareem Al Sultan Gold go viral.

For By Rosie Jane’s seeding program, the brand chose content creators who mentioned Dulce or reached out to By Rosie Jane to express their interest in it. That wasn’t the sole criteria, though. Johnston adds, “We always want diversity to show that we are making fragrances for everyone in every walk of life. So, that was absolutely a criteria, and I think the biggest one was authenticity to their followers.”

By Rosie Jane narrowed its influencer selection for the paid campaign based on findings from its seeding program. Johnston explains, “One of the biggest drivers of testing the waters and seeding out before doing a paid campaign is to find who really resonates with this fragrance, who is going to talk about it, who loves it, then we can then go back and be like, ‘Hey, we loved your content, we loved what you did, now can we do something together?’”

The most-viewed TikTok post from By Rosie Jane’s TikTok efforts was an organic post. It was by Cait Regan, a TikTok content creator who raved about Dulce, “I cannot tell you how good this is.” The post has 116,900 views, 2,751 likes and 31 comments. While it’s nice to achieve large numbers and virality is the goal for many brands on TikTok, that’s not the case at By Rosie Jane.

“If that happens, amazing, but that is not what we are looking for,” says Johnston. “We are looking for people to discover something new, something amazing that hopefully has an impact on their life in some way.”

It makes sense that By Rosie Jane isn’t concentrating on virality to hit a quick home run. The brand hasn’t been an overnight hit, but has slowly and steadily gained traction. Officially launched in 2010, Johnston remembers it generated $20,000 in annual revenues out of the gate, and its sales increased 5% to 10% yearly. Today, it’s generating millions annually, and its revenues have roughly doubled yearly beginning in 2019. In 2018, By Rosie Jane entered Sephora.

Although it may run TikTok campaigns in the future, By Rosie Jane is concentrating on lasting TikTok strategies such as long-term relationships with paid collaborators and content on evergreen themes that can be recycled often. It’s seeding merchandise on an ongoing basis and turning its seeding to Leila Lou, a perennial fragrance favorite containing notes of pear, jasmine and freshly cut grass.

“We’re being cautious,” says Johnston, “We had this amazing experience already, but now it’s about moving forward with authenticity and making sure what we’re doing and who we’re talking with matters in some way.”