Trinny London: Personalizing everything from makeup to content

Six hundred and twenty-five billion dollars — that’s the collective revenue raked in worldwide by beauty and personal care brands in 2023. With so many sales to win, marketplace competition is high, forcing companies to get creative with their products and marketing tactics. One brand doing this exceptionally well is Trinny London. 

Founded in 2017 by renowned London makeup artist Trinny Woodall, the brand has become a daily staple for everyone — from cosmetologists and makeup artists to those who like to keep it au naturel. 

What’s behind Trinny London’s rapid success? While high-quality products like its viral Elevator Cream and BFF All Day Foundation might have something to do with it, the brand’s devotion to personalization and its strategic use of composable content play a role too — as shared by Valerie Overgaag, Senior Web Content Manager at Trinny London, and Sachin Ahya, Senior Software Engineer at Trinny London, during our recent webinar.

If you’re strapped for time (or have lost your headphones and don’t want to subject everyone around you from hearing — and taking advantage of — the insights shared), here’s a quick rundown of the topics discussed, with moderation by Nicole France, Chief Evangelist at Contentful. 

Tell us a little about the company — what makes it stand out from other brands? 

Valerie: We started a few years ago as the makeup brand really known for its unique packaging — we had all these cute pots of cosmetics that could be stacked and taken on the go. Three years later, we decided to expand into skincare. And I think that initial success and scaling came from the content we created (and continue to create). Our founder was really active on social media. And, as a company, we were really vocal about helping customers not only look their best but feel their best. Customer attraction and retention aren’t strictly related to the product anymore. For our brand, it really comes down to the story we tell and the emotional connection we create with our audience. 

How do you approach content at the company? 

Valerie: For us, it's about creating content that isn’t just for “selling.” Of course, we want to sell our product but we also want to create content that is enjoyable and educational for our customers. That content makes our brand a destination that customers keep returning to and sets us apart from competitors. Trinny herself and social media in general are two other channels for content. As a customer, I’m going to go to these sources because I want ideas on how to do something, I want to feel inspired. 

How do Trinny’s unique selling points translate to the online shopping experience? 

Sachin: There are a lot of parallels. When we build our digital experience, we follow an approach similar to our packaging. It’s very modular. And that requires us to have technology that’s dynamic and flexible. We need the ability to change things quickly and without much lead time should we get new insight into our customers. We also mirror the quality of our products by creating an ecommerce experience that is performant and fast. Contentful has been essential for achieving each of these things. 

What were content operations like before Contentful? How have they changed? 

Valerie: Before we onboarded Contentful and optimized our use of the platform, our content, website, and operations were a lot less flexible. So much was hardcoded, which meant making changes took more time and effort. And, as a marketer, I always need the help of our Engineering team to make adjustments. Today, those of us creating content have more power to build and change things. From a developer perspective, this is also great because they aren’t bothered by all these little requests that pull them out of other, more impactful projects. 

Sachin: Valerie summed it up perfectly. It’s all about empowering individual teams to do what they do best. And to do that, we’ve learned we need to collaborate in all areas. When Engineering needs to build a new feature or component for the site, we consult the Content team at the very beginning to understand what their needs are so that uploading and editing content can be as efficient as possible later down the line.

Can you share a recent project where that collaboration and forward thinking were on display? 

Valerie: We just released a flexible skincare builder which sort of echoes the modularity of Contentful. Basically, our customers can mix and match either full or travel-sized products to create a custom four-step skincare system that compliments their unique skin type. 

When we built out components for these new pages, we considered what future use cases could be for it — like utilizing those modules for our makeup or being able to add in discounts for buying a certain number of stackables — and made sure that transition would be possible from the start. It’s a really good example of our modular way of working. It helps us to avoid the pitfall of spending a lot of time and effort on something that is going to be retired sooner rather than later and might not be worth the effort. 

Sachin: Composability also gives a consistent look and feel to our site. I think it gives Valerie’s team more confidence when creating content because they know what end result to expect when they add something to Contentful.

What’s Trinny’s approach to personalization? 

Sachin: Personalization means different things to different people. For us, it's aspirational — every department wants to establish and improve personalization but we all have different methods of getting there. For some areas, like marketing, it's about exposing customers to new products that resonate with them — education and awareness there might be an email. For engineering, the focus might be on creating a more tailored shopping experience that meets the customer where they are at. 

Valerie: Exactly. It’s all about giving our customers relevant information no matter where they interact with us or what their interests are. We even localize some of our content as certain products aren’t sold in specific markets or they may be less relevant there. 

How has Trinny successfully expanded from an online-only brand to operating several physical stores as well?

Valerie: The online and in-store verticals really try to learn from each other and apply new knowledge to operations. Here’s a prime example: Say you book an appointment with one of our makeup or skincare experts in-store. They’ll use our Match2Me tool to create a color profile for you — which will be their starting point for the consultation.

Sachin: If customers haven’t been to our site before, they can have that color profile and link emailed to them so they can continue their journey with us later online. As we expand more into physical retail, the experience needs to be connected and intuitive. 

What capabilities outside of reusability and personalization are essential for keeping Trinny’s website up and running?

Sachin: Scalability and reliability. In ecommerce, you need to be able to scale the website to cope with increased demands, especially during sales or holidays. You need to ensure the website works and is high-performing — which is made easier with Contentful. As a global brand, all of this becomes even more important because customers are accessing the site from much further away. This presents new challenges as well, like figuring out how to adhere to additional data security requirements. 

What is the next big technology or marketing opportunity Trinny London is looking to leverage?

Sachin: AI is something we’ve considered a lot but it doesn’t offer exactly what we’re after. We’re experimenting with AR technology instead. We have a feature on our website that prompts customers to take a photo and it does a skin analysis. Then, it combines the answers from the Match2Me questionnaire to offer more pointed product recommendations for the individual. 

Wrapping up

For even more insight into Trinny London’s approach to creating an anti-aging digital experience, watch the complete webinar recording. 

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