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IPSY Turns Its Membership Into a Marketing Business
From:
Kathleen Greenler Sexton --- Subscription Expert Kathleen Greenler Sexton --- Subscription Expert
For Immediate Release:
Dateline: Boston, MA
Tuesday, September 1, 2026

 

The beauty company is packaging years of product trial, member feedback and audience insights into paid services for brands.

IPSY is turning capabilities built through its beauty membership and broader community into a formal marketing business.

The company launched IPSY Marketing Solutions on August 25. Beauty brands can pay IPSY for services including product trial, consumer research, creator campaigns, events and paid media.

IPSY says the offering draws on a community of 16 million beauty consumers and more than 20 million customer touchpoints, along with first-party customer and review data.

Members generated 5 million product reviews last year, according to Modern Retail. IPSY works with about 500 brands and curates roughly 4,000 products annually. CEO Galen Smith told Modern Retail that members test an average of 30 unique brands a year, and the company also works with about 3,000 creators.

IPSY has used pieces of this model with individual brands before. For Korean skin-care brand OLIVIAUMMA, IPSY put products in the hands of members, collected feedback and later used audience insights and member-created content in a paid campaign tied to the brand's Sephora launch.

IPSY says that campaign produced click-through rates two to three times higher than industry benchmarks. The company has also worked with brands including e.l.f. Beauty and Rodial on creator and launch campaigns.

Marketing Solutions brings those activities together as a paid offering available to brands in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Insider Take

The interesting question now is how meaningful this new business becomes for IPSY.

Marketing Solutions gives IPSY another way to earn revenue from activity already happening around the membership.

What we don't know yet is how much revenue Marketing Solutions can generate or how much it will change IPSY's revenue mix. If it grows, it could become a more meaningful source of revenue tied to the same membership ecosystem.

That's what makes this worth watching. The launch is one thing. Whether it becomes a meaningful piece of IPSY's business is the next question.

Related Member Resources

For a deeper look at how paid membership can create value across a larger business, including revenue beyond the membership fee:

Sources

 

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Name: Kathy Greenler Sexton
Title: CEO
Group: Subscription Insider
Dateline: Andover, MA United States
Direct Phone: 617-401-7653
Cell Phone: 617-834-2169
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