How European Wax Center achieved 450% ROI and 40% engagement
Despite having to shut down its centers for most of 2020, European Wax Center was able to keep its community engaged and stay top of mind for consumers throughout the year. How did they do it?
We recently had the chance to sit down with European Wax Center's Auburn Berry and Kara Salazar to dive deeper into their strategies.
At European Wax Center, the definition of “influence” is changing. Rather than focusing on follower count, the European Wax Center social media and influencer team look for creators with an engagement over 3% and positive comment sentiment — an indication that the creator is able to compel their audience to act.
Boosting ROI & awareness without an agency
Since 2004, European Wax Center has provided first-class, professional waxing services to guests in over 800 centers around the United States. But as the pandemic forced restrictions on in-person experiences, the brand had to revamp its strategies to foster digital connections with its community and attract new customers for when it was time to re-open its centers.
Prior to leveraging Aspire, European Wax Center managed all of its influencer marketing programs through an agency. The agency’s high cost and markups for campaigns, paired with the lack of ability to scale programs, made it difficult for European Wax Center to reach its brand awareness goals. With Aspire, European Wax Center’s team can bring the influencer program in-house and maintain full transparency into every relationship.
Scaling from 15 to 100+ influencers
European Wax Center leverages Aspire to narrow in on their ideal brand partners — people with similar goals and high-quality content — in a matter of minutes. As a result, European Wax Center has scaled its program 7x. The saved time managing campaigns has allowed the team to focus on experimentation, working with a diverse pool of creators to find what content resonates. Now, the brand’s Content Library on Aspire is a goldmine of quality content that all of European Wax Center’s marketing team repurposes on organic social, emails, their website and more.
Driving impact across social platforms
European Wax Center worked with a wide range of creators across channels to generate TikTok videos, Instagram feed posts, and Stories for its 2020 Holidays & Hygiene campaign. Creators educated their audiences on European Wax Center’s increased hygiene measures and encouraged them to treat themselves to a safe self-care day. It was the brand’s highest performing campaign to-date, with 40% engagement and 450% ROI.
“Aspire’s Analyze tab is just heaven-sent for helping you see a single campaign’s success and also viewing all campaigns holistically. Being able to see everything from ROI to engagement to impressions is very helpful for letting us share out to our broader team how campaigns are doing in a way they understand, as well as showing what content and creators perform best for our brand.”
— Kara Salazar, Manager of Social Media & Influencer Marketing at European Wax Center
From influencers to ambassadors
As the influencer marketing industry evolves, European Wax Center is looking to form more authentic relationships with creators by building a brand ambassador program. Kara Salazar, European Wax Center’s Social Media and Influencer Manager, explains, “Brand ambassadors are becoming more pivotal in the space. With influencer marketing becoming such a beast, ambassadors end up coming off as more authentic to whatever brand they are promoting.”
The brand plans on working with Aspire to expand beyond traditional social media influencers to partner with more members of its community, including its Peer Trainers (associates), customers, and college students.