I’ll spit it even though you’re thinking it: it would stroke your hubris if Sephora wrote your name on their black and white striped shopping bag every time you made a purchase, just like Starbucks baristas generously graffiti your coffee cup. Seeing your name tucked between the black lines of the bag, would jog your memory as to who really matters: makeup.

Sometime when Christina Aguilera enlightened us as to What A Girl Wants, Sephora developed one of the most famous points per purchase loyalty program christened “Beauty Insider.” The program is segmented in tiers of Beauty Insider, Very Important Beauty Insider, and Rouge.There could be more exotic tiers to this suite, but trying to clarify them would only expose the Beauty Outsider I really am.

Tucked in this points program are product samples, gifted as you build points or on milestones such as birthdays. There is really never a better time to gift samples of anti-aging potions then on the day your customer grows older. Lead generation 101.

There is a duality to samples unlike anything else. Samples are useful and useless all at the same time. They cause clutter, rarely have enough product, and forever remind you of one more thing you need. They are capitalism dressed up in warm syrupy socialism. Everyone can frolic in the product, but if you want to find out more please select your form of payment.

Samples done the right way (yes, there’s a right way) are called TRAVEL SIZED. In the past six months my eye fringe has been making love to a travel-sized Milk Makeup mascara, endowed to me by my Sephora Beauty Insider points. I won’t share the points tier I’m in, I’m not ready for that kind of intimacy. The mini mascara packaging especially gets me off: tube small enough to tuck in the palm of your hand, ergonomic versatility to twist and contour your lashes 261 million kilometers to Venus; and enough product packed in the tube to last two breakups.

Now the product itself, Milk Makeup’s veganified (new word alert) mascara won my ferocious love and earnest in two ways; #1 it makes my lashes look magically fluffy and #2 its relatively easy to wash off at the end of a long punishing day.

Supposedly the magic is in the wand fibers (heart shaped, they say) and in the hemp-derived cannabis oil formula that conditions the sticks of hair and reduces fall out.

The hemp-ish cannabis oil potentially entering my blood stream and improving my mood (all hearsay) plus the development of a really effective plumping volume enhancing mascara (hat’s off to NYC-born and progressive Milk Makeup), have woven together the ideal customer: a vocal and loyal one.

Credits:
I’d like to thank Sephora Beauty Insider points for introducing a useful sample in my life, just when I was at the breaking point of actually saving my cash, moneys, and assets for retirement.