Edition 71 | September 7, 2025

Any September birthday babies on the Bloc? This one might be special for you!

Here’s how one brand is turning early birthdays into lifetime loyalty, and here’s what we can learn from it.

(Plus, ideas for product- and service-based brands included!)

Here are 3 brand bytes to elevate, inform and inspire you this week:

1. Besties, beauty, and Ulta’s clever brand plays.

Ulta Beauty just turned 10 stores into birthday hotspots. 🥳

The retailer’s “birthday party service” is designed for tweens and teens, and for $42 a person, kids get 75 to 90 minutes of in-store skincare demos, makeup tutorials, games, and $100 gift bags stocked with brands like Bubble, E.l.f. and Sol de Janeiro.

Parents can make the event extra special with add-ons like braids or tinsel hair for the fiesta.

Plus, the beauty-loving party goers also get 20% off to shop mid-party. 🛍️

The strategy?

Hook the next beauty-shopper generation early.

“The bigger play here is about creating stickiness around the Ulta brand,” says Neil Saunders, a managing director of retail at the data analytics firm, GlobalData.

The brand battle?

Sephora’s held the teen crown since 2023, so Ulta is fighting back with more than 70,000 in-store events planned this year.

And not everyone is happy for the birthday kid.

Sephora workers have griped that beauty stores aren’t “kids places with pizza and cupcakes.”

Yes, I think Chuck E. Cheese caught a stray there.

But still, Ulta employees report that the parties are fun, well-booked, and even give attendees the store to themselves before or after hours.

Call it skincare, cake, and customer lifetime value (CLV).

2. Birthday funsies or clever brand strategy?

On the surface, Ulta’s new service looks like confetti and cake.

But peel back the balloons and beauty, and it’s also a savvy play in customer relationship management (CRM).

The parties aren’t just about $42 entry fees.

They’re about capturing data, loyalty, and lifetime value before Sephora gets to them first.

Memories, too.

Remember these three principles of CRM (that can inspire your brand activations, too):

1. Customer relationship management isn’t just software. It’s any structured way your brand can gather data, build loyalty, and deepen engagement over time. In Ulta’s case, the “birthday party” is the front-end experience. The back end is the data capture: attendees’ names, ages, parent contacts, brand preferences, and early shopping habits.
2. It forges long-term relationships. By positioning itself as the place for a tween’s “first makeup moment,” Ulta is investing in awareness and loyalty that could last through high school, college, and beyond. Fun fact: I personally remember the exact brand and store I purchased my first foundation from. Makeup is a rite of passage, and Ulta’s stamping their name on that milestone.
3. It blends experience with acquisition. Each party isn’t about the $42 ticket price. It’s about converting a room of tweens into future (and forever) Ulta shoppers.

That’s classic CRM logic: an investment today for repeat spend tomorrow.

3. The CLV Play: the real ROI

CLV = customer lifetime value.

Ulta isn’t really banking on the $42 per tween.

They’re banking on the decades of beauty spending those kids represent once they get hooked on the brand.

Think about it:

• Early brand imprinting. A 12-year-old who celebrates at Ulta, learns skincare basics, and gets a bag full of Gen Z approved products is likely to see Ulta as their store. That affinity can carry into their teen years when beauty spend grows fast.
• Repeat purchasing. Ulta’s loyalty program, coupons, and in-store experiences give plenty of reasons for those same shoppers to keep coming back. The birthday party is just the warm up.
• Cross-category growth. As those customers get older, Ulta has them for skincare, makeup, hair, fragrance, and even salon services. This can multiply their spend potential.

That initial party fee is pocket change compared to the potential thousands spent over a shopper’s lifetime.

Ulta isn’t just hosting parties.

It’s securing future wallets. 💵

Bonus: Ideas you might consider...

While you don’t have to redo your whole office to accommodate birthday parties for teens, here are a few small-scale examples of clever CRM/CLV for any brand:

• Call your VIP customers. Here’s how one brand turned that appreciation call into a profitable, million-dollar ad spend.
• Launch a rewards program. Every purchase can yield points that can be exchanged for future discounts, exclusive product launches, and more. There are tools like Smile (dot io) that can make this a low-lift effort. Here’s one rewards program I love from a competitor brand (ironically, also sold at Ulta).
• Request birthdays at email signup. Make “Birthday” an optional field and explain the perk. Trade that data point for an exclusive discount or surprise. Automate a birthday flow (in your email setup) to send the code, gift, or offer on the date. Add a pre-birthday reminder for excitement, and keep it respectful. Just the month and day is enough. Disclose usage, and offer an opt out.

For my service-providers and service-based brands, here’s a few ideas for you, too!

• Quarterly “Success Session.” Offer a 10 to 15 minute check-in for top clients. Audit progress, capture goals and preferences, then recommend a next step or mini-upgrade.
• Monthly “Office Hours.” Host a 45-minute group Q&A for clients and warm leads. Use RSVP forms to gather topics and segmentation data. Send a recap, a limited-time booking link, and a small perk for showing up.

More brand bytes next Sunday at 5!