Madison Reed pilots interactive hair color displays

A digitally native hair care company is testing an interactive digital swatch panel to boost in-store hair color sales.

Madison Reed is deploying the OnQ Converge digital engagement platform, integrated with 46-inch Elo touchscreens, at four stores in Manhattan, Miami, Chicago, and Boston. Utilizing these solutions, the retailer provides an intuitive experience for customers to narrow their choices, filtering by their desired hair color, level of gray coverage and color intensity.

By tapping their way through this series of questions, customers arrive at an optimized color, and then have the option to have the shade texted to their mobile device. By entering their mobile number or scanning a QR code, customers can have full details about their chosen shades sent to their phone so they can take the digital sample home, get advice from others, and then complete their purchase.

Of the more than 1,500 customers who visited the display during the testing period, Madison Reed says nearly 12% of them sent the experience to their phone to continue at a later time. Customers also have the option of taking the Madison Reed color quiz by entering their mobile number or scanning a QR code.

The retailer’s digital swatch panel experience also includes a library of informative videos that can either be viewed on the display, or sent directly to the customer’s phone for later viewing. Video content includes tutorials about home hair coloring, as well company history.

According to Madison Reed, deployment of the new digital swatch panel experience has led to significantly increased engagement in all four pilot stores. Thousands of unique interactions were captured in the first several weeks of deployment, with each customer engagement averaging more than three minutes per visit.

Madison Reed’s on-site color specialists also utilize the digital experience to provide a self-assisted product demonstration for customers to select a shade.

Every point of interaction with the new digital swatch panels is captured by the OnQ Converge digital engagement platform, giving insight into how and when customers engage with the screen. Madison Reed personnel have access to a detailed dashboard that gives aggregate and average data for the number of product visits, interactions, session duration and video plays. Additionally, OnQ logs every time a customer sends content to their phone.

Madison Reed chose to pilot the digital swatch panel experience in two of its full-service Color Bars, and two of its retail-only locations. Deploying in this mixed environment enabled the company to gain valuable insight about customer engagement habits at each location type. For example, customers in Madison Reed’s retail-only locations researched an average of 2.86 products, while Color Bar customers researched an average of 1.79 products.

Similarly, customers at the retail-only locations were more likely to view instructional videos than customers at the Color Bar locations. According to the retailer, this data suggests that Madison Reed’s retail-only locations attract a broader customer base, many of whom are not yet familiar with the company’s products.

“Helping someone discover their perfect shade is the most important interaction we have with our customers. Enhancing the process with the digital swatch panel introduces a certain air of playfulness that makes the whole experience much more approachable and fun,” said Andrew Lande-Shannon, Madison Reed senior director of store experience.