A Message to our Clients about Epic Rewards

[sephoraadmin2]

Sephora is committed to offering our valued Beauty Insiders exceptional rewards to thank them for their loyalty and for being part of our community.  Yesterday we held an Epic Rewards promotion, and while we have held similar promotions in the past, yesterday’s promotion was the largest number of Epic Rewards we have made available to date.

Despite our best efforts to predict the response, demand was overwhelming, resulting in our being out of stock very quickly. We deeply regret this and apologize to our Beauty Insider clients who did not get a chance to participate.  

At Sephora our first and foremost priority is to give our clients an exciting and fulfilling shopping experience.  Those Beauty Insiders who were unable to get one of our limited quantity Epic Rewards, please email us by Tuesday, August 25, 2015, to epicrewards@sephora.com and include your Beauty Insider account number or email address associated with your account. 

Beyond that, please know that we are committed to learning from this experience. Thank you for your ongoing support. We greatly appreciate you.

Sephora is committed to offering our valued Beauty Insiders exceptional rewards to thank them for their loyalty and for being part of our community.  Yesterday we held an Epic Rewards promotion, and while we have held similar promotions in the past, yesterday’s promotion was the largest number of Epic Rewards we have made available to date.

Despite our best efforts to predict the response, demand was overwhelming, resulting in our being out of stock very quickly. We deeply regret this and apologize to our Beauty Insider clients who did not get a chance to participate.  

At Sephora our first and foremost priority is to give our clients an exciting and fulfilling shopping experience.  Those Beauty Insiders who were unable to get one of our limited quantity Epic Rewards, please email us by Tuesday, August 25, 2015, to epicrewards@sephora.com and include your Beauty Insider account number or email address associated with your account. 

Beyond that, please know that we are committed to learning from this experience. Thank you for your ongoing support. We greatly appreciate you.

**********************

Updated August 17

Thank you to everyone who has been reaching out to us about Epic Rewards. We value your feedback and recognize your ongoing loyalty to us, and we are working to get back to you quickly.

To that end, please know that if you have contacted us you will hear back from us in direct response to your inquiry during the period between Tuesday, August 25th through Tuesday, September 1st. The timing of the response to you will depend on when we received your initial contact regarding Epic Rewards.

If you haven’t contacted us yet, please email us at epicrewards@sephora.com. We’ve set up this dedicated mailbox to collect the right information quickly and accurately, separating you from the queue for general Sephora inquiries. When you email us at this address, it will generate an automated response that confirms we’ve received the message. You can then expect to hear back from us as quickly as possible with more information.

Please know that our team is listening, and we take your concerns to heart. We value your support, and we will be in touch soon.

With our sincerest thanks,

The Beauty Insider Team

*************************************

Updated September 1

Thank you to everyone who reached out to us about Epic Rewards. We have reached out to all of those members who emailed us on or before August 25th, and are no longer accepting new submissions. epicrewards@sephora.com has been closed. Please contact us at 1-877-SEPHORA (1-877-737-4672) regarding any other questions or concerns. We have reviewed your feedback and are taking it into consideration as we plan for future promotions. Our loyal Beauty Insiders are enormously important to us.

[mchan86]

The lack of ability to clearly state when the launch time is quite frustrating. Regardless, I belong to a group of Canadian Beauty Bloggers, and we had a few people who pulled an all nighter, refreshing the redemption reward screen. Then during the day, we had at least 10+ of us refreshing the screen together literally any chance we got. But somehow, only 2 of us in the group managed to put something in their cart, which was already pre-filled with product to check out, but with the next click to the checkout screen, the perk was gone. I mean in seconds, EVERYTHING was gone. Yes I understand you can't have an unlimited amount of each 1000-2000 product, but to literally make it feel like there was ONE of each or something for everyone to get, seems honestly unattainable. 

Everyone here is a lover of Sephora, and thats the only reason why we would have enough time and energy to really let you know our thoughts, however Sephora really needs to step up their game with their competitors. Department stores offer free gift(s) with purchases over $35 for specific brands for e.g. and at sephora, the perks are quite minimal in the sense that even if we had thousands of points......... the things to redeem it for are quite average. For 100 pt - which means i spent $100, i get a small sample of a face cream that I can only use 3-4 times. 

Please take this as constructive feedback and offer better point perks (the regular 100, 250 + 500 ones) so that when the EPIC rewards come out, we all don't feel like its our only chance to get something good.

[MUAStephM]

The last paragraph sums up about 90% of peoples frustration I imagine. 

[Tracib1981]

I think that this is going to be used to guage how many people actually tried to get a reward.  As opposed to how many people actually got one. But that is just a thought.

[Lunality]

Can't they just base their number off of how many accounts have more than 1000 points banked? Why go with this stupid email thing....I don't even want to take the time to send them anything. Also like heart said, they should be able to see how many people are interested based on the traffic on the website on the 10th. 

[fashny]

I think one problem here is their use of the phrase "supplies are limited" or "extremely limited."

With Sephora's GWP codes for example they say supplies are limited.  I know this means I have to order within a couple of days, or sometimes that same day, in order to get the gift.  That seems reasonable to most of us from a business perspective.  I don't expect Sephora to have a reward for every single customer.  Some element of first come, first served is pretty reasonable across most businesses and I personally usually expect promo stuff to be gone in a day or two.  Think this is the case with most business promotions and awards where "supplies are limited."

But gone in 30 seconds?   After having to refresh like you were getting tickets to a concert?  And some people not even seeing them on their screens at all? That is really not a reasonable definition of "supplies are limited." That is more like "supplies are not available."

[heartsmyface]

My guess is that they're just trying to appease the 'easy to appease customers' privately by giving them points.  They probably feel that if we don't go out of our way to beg for them to rectify the situation then we're happy the way it panned out.  

It also shuts up the more aggressive shoppers who will cause them the most trouble.  

[Tracib1981]

I thought that too. But how many people have already gotten points privately? Either by calling in or on BT or facebook? I know that some have. But as everyone has stated that points just don't really mean what they used to because the every day rewards truly are something ou will get as GWP just about any other place.

[heartsmyface]

It probably worked for them last time cause their numbers didn't suffer.  Who knows.  

[Lunality]

How many points are they giving out this time? 1000? I still haven't touched the 500 from last time lol...

[heartsmyface]

I don't know. I'm not in the habit of begging for fake currency.  Sephoras trying to turn us into point panhandlers. 

 What I do know is that the more points they hand out, the lower the value of them will be. 

[simplycaren]

Exactly, heartsmyface! I'm not Rouge, but this year is the closest I've come to achieving it and now I'm thinking I won't bother to spend that additional money because it's BS. I also don't bank my points for this reason, because I've seen the absolute HELL everyone goes through every time Sephora announces these so-called "Epic Rewards." It's just ridiculous.

Sephora, if you're going to offer your customers REWARDS, at least have enough to cover those who can actually benefit from what's offered. I'm sure you have ways to see how many customers have a thousand or more beauty points in their bank. I'm sure you could have used that number to gauge how many items were  needed in order for all of your "VALUED CUSTOMERS" to get a "reward" with the points they've been saving. Even if they were the smaller, 1000 point rewards, and the larger items were limited, you should have made it clear HOW MANY WERE AVAILABLE! If we'd known at the start that there was so little of each, I'm sure most people wouldn't have bothered wasting their time.

[heartsmyface]

That's ridiculous because not everyone is going to speak up so their numbers will be off.  They should have a good idea how many people were using their site during the reward release.  They can guess off those numbers.  

[beautyaddict99]

Yup. I was on BT for most of Monday and the average number of online users here was hovering between 17-18,000 people, compared to today where it's just around 3-4,000. 

[Tracib1981]

Was it that many?!?!!? DAYUM!

[beautyaddict99]

I know, crazy, right? It was verrry slow loading when it hit those numbers, sometimes not loading at all until you refreshed two or three times. Then they shut it down "for maintenance" for about an hour... perhaps to force the crowds to disperse. lol

[Tracib1981]

Yeah i was like i have NEVER seen the boards shut down! wth?!

[Lunality]

Also have to take into the account of people that weren't on BT and just on the regular reward page. I feel like there is at least 50,000 people trying for these rewards. Most likely a lot more since there's so many Rouges and it's not even limited to Rouges

[Mochapj]

There are supposedly over 700,000 Rouges.  Even if we assume that only a third of them had enough points to qualify for these rewards, that still doesn't take into account how many more VIBs and BI have points hoarded.

There were never going to be enough rewards available for a decent percentage of people to have a chance at obtaining them.

[KellW]

Hmmm...that's actually a really good point. Maybe they'll use the number of people who email this as the minimum number of rewards required for the next round (?).

[KellW]

Is anyone who has a position of power to change the rewards system going to listen to these comments or respond to them? Or is this Sephora's way to try and get all of our frustration over the latest failure out of our system before returning back to the way things were previously?

[lucyshnoosy]

I am one of the many who feel that it would be great if Sephora would offer 1000 and 2000 point perks throughout the year, and if the 500 point perks were better again.  I dislike this frenzied atmosphere; that is absolutely not what I am looking for in a loyalty program.  I want rewards that are easy to redeem, and not a stressful experience.

Please give me the opportunity to use my points for rewards that have value in my eyes.  I never even got to see the moment when the extraordinary rewards were in stock; they went out again that quickly, and I must not have refreshed in the magic 0.001 second window.