April 10, 2024
Episode 51

Sarah McNamara @ Peter Thomas Roth

Meet your customer where they want to shop. 

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On the latest episode of the Omnichannel Marketer, I had the pleasure of talking with Sarah McNamara, Executive Vice President & General Manager at Peter Thomas Roth Clinical Skin Care and Naturally Serious Skin.

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Sarah is a beauty industry veteran, having worked at Unilever, L’Oreal, and grew her own beauty brand, Miracle Skin Transformer to $35M in revenue before selling it.

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Now she oversees Peter Thomas Roth.

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Peter Thomas Roth started in a doctor’s office, but is now a retail powerhouse. 

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It was one of the first brands to launch with Sephora when it came to the US market, and also is present in Sephora locations around the world. 

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Other key channels for Peter Thomas Roth are Ulta Beauty, Amazon, and QVC. 

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Sarah’s philosophy is that you need to be where the customer is. 

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That is highly dependent on demographics. 

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PTR is a legacy brand that historically skews to an older demographic.

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So retail and QVC are big channels for them. 

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Each channel has a unique offering for the demographic that frequents it. 

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And the spread in Ulta is very different from Sephora. 

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She loves department stores herself, but sees it as a shrinking business. 

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Beauty is constantly evolving and experiencing unprecedented digital change. 

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As Sarah says, “You snooze, you lose.” 

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To that end, PTR also has a DTC presence and is active on social media to cater to some Gen X, Z, and even Alpha customers. 

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Her team is actively tinkering with Tiktok shops. 

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She was also relatively early to Amazon, compared to Clinique, another legacy brand that only launched on Amazon a few weeks ago.

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Sarah views the DTC site as a window into the brand and is in midst of an exciting website revamp going live in August. 

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The PTR website serves loyalists, but she also realizes that every channel has its loyalists. 

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“Some people really just want to buy on Amazon. Others only at Sephora.”

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At the end of the day, Sarah shares that good marketing is about “understanding where your customers are and making it easy for them to buy in those channels.”

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Thanks Sarah for sharing your experience and insights. 

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#omnichannelmarketer #omnichannel

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