Digital Platform Imbeau Is Out To Strengthen The Bonds Between Beauty Professionals And Their Clients

If spas, salons and cosmetics stores only interact with customers when they visit, the beauty businesses are severely limiting sales. Imbeau extends interactions well beyond physical locations to improve customer retention and revenues.

The new cloud-based digital platform supports consumer profiles, ongoing consultation, scheduling reminders and confirmations, tailored product information and hydration tracking. The objectives for Imbeau’s beauty professional users are to provide continual service, lift customer satisfaction, and strengthen relationships between clients, and makeup artists, retail associates, hairstylists and aestheticians.

“Beauty professionals are so busy managing their clientele on a day-to-day basis that they’re completely overwhelmed. The beauty technology segment, which is largely restricted to booking platforms, has a lot of room to grow in helping them build long-lasting engagement with clients,” says Rupa Pereira, founder and CEO of Imbeau. “The more professionals know about their clients, the more they can service them and the more lifetime value can be generated.”

For a fee of $10 to $45 per month, depending on the features they desire, Imbeau will license its technology to spas, salons or stores. The onboarding process requires a training that lasts for less than an hour and customer database importation. Imbeau modifies communications that go out to customers according to the specifications of beauty businesses.

“They have the opportunity to shape how the final product looks,” says Pereira. “Besides their own branding, they can tell us the types of messages they want to send out. We try to personalize it as much as possible. The messages are powered by Imbeau, but they look like something they own.”

Once the setup is completed, customer profiles are inputted into the Imbeau system on desktop or mobile devices. The profiles cover details such as a consumer’s current regimen, lifestyle habits, skincare or haircare concerns, and hydration levels. Pereira estimates they take five minutes or so to finish. In addition to its digital platform, Imbeau offers spas, salons and stores a hydration tracker resembling a thermometer that measures moisture in the skin.

Imbeau captures product scores from the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep tool and flags chemical ingredients of concern. Green spas, salons and retailers can call up those details to assist customers transitioning from conventional to natural products. Imbeau is also collecting product ratings from beauty professionals.

At the store Be Pure Beauty, Imbeau is being tapped to monitor customers’ experiences with products they’ve purchased. “It allows the customer to reengage with us,” says April Manring, founder of Be Pure Beauty. “The customer can tell us the products they’ve purchased, and what their skin is like after a week, four weeks or more. That encourages the customer to stay the course and enjoy seeing changes in their skin. As women, we tend to buy things and try them for a week or two, but my goal as a skin therapist and business owner is for every person to commit to a six-week routine and give the products a chance to work.”

Pereira, who was a finance director at pharmaceutical company GSK prior to launching Imbeau, points out spas and salons can increase their revenues by harnessing the platform for appointment scheduling purposes. “If a customer needs to get a service done every four to six weeks, they don’t have to rebook,” she says. “Without Imbeau, you would generally have to wait for them to come back to you and that could mean two to three missed appointments a year averaging $60 per appointment. That’s lost revenue from a customer you already know, and new customer acquisition is five times the cost of an existing customer.”

At a time in which personalization is paramount, Imbeau aids beauty businesses in customizing services and product recommendations for individuals. “Now that they have enough information about the customer, they can use the opportunity to promote services that the customer maybe didn’t think they needed. That’s a way of engaging without directly selling something because the professionals know them so well,” says Pereira. “The better service you offer, the more likely a client is to respond positively.”