Preen.Me has looked at almost 5 million posts on Instagram and analysed how the rival retailers compare on social media.
In total, the social marketing platform looked at 4,188,883 posts related to Sephora and 808,762 about Ulta posted between January 2014 and July 2016.
Of these posts, 2,223,132 posts about Sephora and 343,507 posts about Ulta were identified as unique user-generated posts and analysed by Preen.Me.
The company found that posts about Sephora have an average of 118 social actions and a median of 34. This compares to Ulta’s average of 247 and median of 36.
This means that for each user posting about Sephora on Instagram, Sephora gets an average of 541 likes and comments from the consumer’s social circle. Ulta gets an average of 1033 likes and comments per user.
Consumers who post about Sephora on Instagram create an average of 4.56 posts about the brand, while consumers post an average of 4.18 pictures each about Ulta.
The global spread of posts about Sephora (left) and Ulta (right)
Looking at the geolocations of each post, Sephora has a stronger International presence than Ulta. 87% of posts about Ulta are located in the US compared to just 42.17% of Sephora’s.
Breakdown of categories mentioned in posts about Sephora
Breakdown of categories mentioned in posts about Ulta
Across both retailers, make-up was the most posted-about topic, with fragrance the least popular. 51% of all posts were about make-up while 10% were about hair, 8% about skin care and 3% about nails.
At Sephora, the most-posted about brands were Anastasia, Urban Decay and Make Up For Ever. This was reflected at Ulta with Anastasia and Urban Decay the top two brands followed by NYX and Too Faced.
Preen.Me concluded that while Sephora is leading in terms of numbers of posts, Ulta has a lot of “untapped potential” to create meaningful conversations with its customers.
Preen.Me is an influencer marketing platform that delivers large scale social campaigns for LVMH, Coty, Estee Lauder, L’Oreal and KAO brands by leveraging their army of 11,000 influencers. Preen.Me focuses on effectively reaching and activating women of every age, around the world.
