Welcome back to Ulta Beauty Strategies, Glossy’s new monthly series breaking down the latest strategies of the retailer and its most popular brands.
Ulta Beauty is leveraging store associates who already make social media content for an ambassador program designed to connect directly with consumers while also fueling and informing the company’s social marketing strategy.
“We knew we had an untapped superpower with our [store] associates,” said Stacy Coblentz, associate manager of Ulta Beauty’s associate ambassador program. “They know what’s happening before we do.”
Ulta Beauty has around 50,000 store associates across its 1,437 stores.
“Our associates are really the heartbeat of what we do,” Amiee Bayer-Thomas, Ulta Beauty chief retail officer, told Glossy. “Our associates post and engage on all sorts of different [social media] platforms, and [last year] we said, ‘My gosh, our biggest advocates and those most passionate about what we do are our own associates,’ so we stood up this influencer program.”
Called “Ulta Beauties,” the internal influencer program was announced in June at the retail’s field leadership conference, and around 1,500 associates applied for the first cohort. The program is open to any Ulta Beauty associate who has been with the company for at least six months.
“We thought, ‘How do we amplify their voices? How do we get them on a bigger stage to share their content in a bigger way?’” Coblentz said. “How do we help support them with that content to make it bigger, make it better, and compensate them for it?”
The team accepted 30 staffers for its first cohort with a focus on those already making beauty-focused social content. The team considers associates’ store locations less important than their expertise since most content is location-agnostic; participants chose whether or not to share their store location, last name or any other identifiable details online, although almost all do.
Instead, the team considers diversity of knowledge: The current cohort represents 16 different roles, from store managers to cashiers, all with different areas of expertise, such as hairstyling, makeup, skin care and nail care.
For example, Jenn Rodriguez got her start at Ulta Beauty as a hairstylist before taking on a gm position in Lansing, Michigan. She has also been creating content for a decade and has amassed 50,000 followers along the way.
“[The Ulta corporate team] is very clear about what they’re looking for, which I appreciate, and open to questions and ideas,” Rodriguez told Glossy. “We get to engage with the team on a whole different level, and I can feel that they respect us and value our input in so many different ways.”
This is part of Ulta’s bottom-up approach: The store associates are often asked for their feedback as a direct pathway to real-time consumer sentiment and needs.
The program is structured around two content deliverables per month for each associate. Coblentz’s team delivers a brief to the group each month so they can begin to plan their content. Engagement is the top KPI.
The themes vary and have included sales promotions, category and product launches, and most recently, a ‘you call it’ month to give associates an opportunity to creatively speak to consumer needs they’ve identified from their community.
Associates that stand out are offered an opportunity to star in Ulta commercials, go live on Ulta’s platforms to deliver advice, and have their content reposted.
Associates submit their content to Coblentz over a platform called Creatable.io where it’s reviewed by the team. Sometimes the creators get notes, but mostly the videos are quickly approved for the associate to post across their channels, Coblentz said. Coblentz told Glossy she’s mostly fact-checking dates and other details in the posts because too much direction hinders their authenticity, she said.
Associates can make content while on the clock for their day-to-day position, or off the clock if they prefer, and are compensated for the social content per deliverable.
Content types that do best vary by creator but some general themes include get-ready-with-me videos, educational content around new products and rundowns of their product recommendations.
Glossy spoke to three current participants, and they all agreed that the perks have been one of the best parts. This includes PR packages from brands, paid trips to events like Ulta Beauty World, access to beauty brand masterclasses, lots of free swag, and educational opportunities with social media platforms like TikTok and Meta, all of which are facilitated by Ulta.
The opportunity has also helped many of the participants grow their own followership.
“When I first started, I think I had around 20,000 followers, and within this past year, it’s up to almost 35,000,” said Alex Agag, a former corporate intern turned virtual try-on specialist. She is one of two “Ulta Beauties” participants in Ulta’s Chicago corporate office. “A lot of my [recent] followers have been really interested in my journey at Ulta Beauty corporate, how I got my position and what it’s like to work in that position,” she said.
Her audience is mostly female beauty enthusiasts, creators and Ulta Beauty staffers from across the country, she told Glossy. As a Gen Zer, she’s often tapped by internal teammates for her expertise on newer trends, like press-on nail or faux-lash application, while her followers regularly ask her to try new products on camera.
Reaching diverse consumers is also a goal for Ulta Beauty. For example, Odette Paulino, a content creator and Ulta sales manager in Orlando, Florida, was the inspiration for the program, Coblentz told Glossy. Paulino is originally from the Dominican Republic and speaks to her 400,000 social media followers mostly in Spanish.
‘When a Spanish-speaking person comes to a store, they usually get a little bit nervous because they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, they don’t speak my language,’” Paulino told Glossy. “I was part of that community, too, because when I moved here, I didn’t know what to buy.”
Paulino originally grew her social following as a crafting and knitting creator who loved beauty and happened to work at Ulta. Once she identified the need for beauty-focused shopping content in Spanish and started sharing skin-care routines and reviews online, her community grew astronomically. Now she gets so many messages, she can’t reply to them all, and consumers from all over the country DM her review requests and questions.
Now in its second cohort, Paulino has taken on one of five mentor roles where she helps to guide and inspire five newbies to the program. Like many of the ambassadors, Paulino hopes to leverage the experience into a corporate role in the future.
As a 15-year vet of Ulta Beauty who started in a brick-and-mortar store before landing at corporate, Coblentz’s mentorship holds a special place for many of the participants.
“A lot of them want to end up at corporate in marketing, [creative social media, or PR],” Coblentz said. It’s an endeavor she understands very well.
“I would say the possibilities are limitless,” she said. “They could be CEO of Ulta one day. … I’ve specifically seen the opportunity available just from my career over the last 15 years.”
