# Ximena Vela

Ximena Vela focuses on marketing for beauty and skincare brands, writing about brand strategy, ecommerce conversion, and customer retention.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/ximena-vela/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ximena-vela-3a66733a6
- LinkedIn followers: 1,198
- Topics: email-marketing, retention-marketing, brand-strategy, conversion-rate-optimization
- Based on 11 dated posts, latest 2026-09-30

## Summary

Ximena Vela is most useful for beauty and skincare retention and post-purchase content.

- Best for: Beauty DTC brands needing retention and post-purchase thinking turned into team content.
- Not for: Campaigns needing reach, measured results, non-beauty focus, or proven performance lift.
- Check first: Confirm paid work availability, terms, and any performance or audience data they can provide.

### Takeaways

- A seven-step post-purchase journey covers confirmation, shipping content, usage education, check-in, results, recommendation, replenishment.
- Conversion problems often stem from unclear messages, weak trust, friction, or confusing shopping experiences.
- Rhode case study examines recognizable product cues, community, focused range, and cultural relevance building desire.

## Main ideas

- **Beauty growth is a retention problem before it is an acquisition problem**: Vela argues that beauty brands keep treating acquisition as the main growth lever while the numbers point the other way. A brand can recover acquisition costs and still fail to give customers a reason to return, leaving growth expensive. The posts contrast the volume of first-order offers, welcome discounts, new-customer bundles and paid ads with what returning customers receive. They argue that retention depends on product experience, education, content, community and the post-purchase journey, not only on a CRM team. The benchmark figures are cited from third parties in the post text, not from reports.
- **The post-purchase journey should teach, connect and time the next purchase**: This is the most operational argument: a staged sequence from order confirmation to next-purchase prompt, with a stated purpose at each step. Vela pairs it with a reported Klaviyo figure of roughly 60% average open rate for post-purchase flows and an average 180-day repeat purchase rate of about 17% for health and beauty. The post says the day markers are not a universal formula and should be tested against the product and buying cycle, making the sequence a starting hypothesis rather than a fixed schedule.
- **Build cultural capital before scale, not after**: Vela reads public brand cases as strategy lessons rather than news. In the Rhode analysis, they argue that the product became part of the content through culturally recognizable codes, the founder created context without carrying the whole brand, desire was built before physical distribution, the range stayed narrow so recognition stayed strong, and cultural capital was accumulated before scale. The closing point is that people buy beauty because the brand represents a version of themselves they want to be—the difference between selling a product and building a brand people want to belong to.
- **Conversion is a message, trust and friction problem, not a design detail**: In a Spanish-language post, Vela argues that most websites do not have a traffic problem but a conversion problem, and that changing a button colour will not solve it. The causes named are unclear messaging, lack of trust, too much friction and confusing purchase experiences. The framing separates the job of the ad from the job of the site, making it a diagnostic checklist rather than a testing programme.
- **A deliberate move into skincare, watched through how beauty brands build trust**: In a Spanish-language post, Vela says the shift from marketing across sectors to a skincare focus was a considered decision, not an impulse. They argue that beauty brands which stand out do more than sell a cream, serum or cleanser: they build trust, educate consumers and create communities around a personal need, feeling good in one's own skin. The post points to K-beauty growth, user-generated content, TikTok's influence on purchase decisions and increasingly informed consumers as forces changing how brands communicate and grow.
- **Working in two languages and two formats**: The posts alternate between English and Spanish, and between two shapes of argument. The analytical post opens with a reframing or contrarian line, builds a numbered body around named metrics or dated milestones, and closes with a question to the audience, often on LinkedIn with topical hashtags such as #BeautyMarketing and #RetentionMarketing. The operative walkthrough lays out a step-by-step process with a purpose for each step. Two posts note that the accompanying visual was sourced from Pinterest, so the posts are designed to run with a graphic. The retention and brand-strategy material is in English; the conversion and sector-focus material is in Spanish.

## Work to read

- [A seven-step post-purchase journey for beauty brands](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ximena-vela-3a66733a6_beautymarketing-retentionmarketing-ecommercemarketing-activity-7511054936881782784-0ZV_)
- [Retention benchmarks and a case for shifting growth spend](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ximena-vela-3a66733a6_beautymarketing-beautygrowth-retentionmarketing-activity-7505981531090296833-Wvv8)
- [Rhode case study: brand, community and cultural capital](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ximena-vela-3a66733a6_beautymarketing-brandstrategy-beautyindustry-activity-7495826946774384640-zgWW)
- [Conversion rate optimisation: the experience, not the button colour](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ximena-vela-3a66733a6_cro-conversionrateoptimization-ecommerce-activity-7467567951609733120-A60J)
- [Why this marketer focused on skincare](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ximena-vela-3a66733a6_marketing-skincare-beautymarketing-activity-7470084982741381120-qJK4)

## Partnerships

The five posts by Ximena Vela offer editorial commentary on beauty and skincare marketing, not partnership announcements. None discloses a sponsored format, rate card, media kit, audience-deliverable specification, or way to enquire about paid work. Brand mentions, including the post analyzing Rhode and the e.l.f. Beauty acquisition, read as market analysis rather than disclosed commercial placements; the posts do not say whether any were paid. Before planning a beauty retention campaign, ask whether sponsored placements are available and in what format, and confirm the price, lead time, and contact route.

## Alternatives

- Carla Acevey: A beauty DTC brand would be better off with Carla Acevey if the need to improve retention is part of a larger ecommerce or omnichannel operating problem — for example, when the brand needs someone who has run digital transformation at scale, integrated marketplace and fulfilment operations, and can now connect retention to AI-driven customer growth. Carla Acevey's posts describe leading ecommerce, marketplace, and omnichannel transformation at Walmart Mexico and Central America, growing the online business 3X and launching services like Marketplace, Walmart Fulfillment Services, and quick commerce. In one post Carla Acevey joins Vambe as Chief Revenue Officer, describing its mission to help businesses across Latin America grow, sell more, and serve customers better through AI. If the brand wants a revenue leader to own the retention P&L and weave retention into broader commerce operations, this background is closer to that need than Ximena Vela's content-led approach.
- Daniel Palacio / Premio Global en Inteligencia Artificial: A beauty DTC brand would be better off with Daniel Palacio if the need to improve retention calls for building an AI-powered commerce experience — for example, a conversational product advisor or a recommendation engine that re-engages customers between purchases. Daniel Palacio's posts show hands-on creation of AI products across music, faith, and guitar, and an AI commerce rebuild of La Tienda de Comics, a niche online store. They describe moving from a traditional catalogue and filters to a conversational model where customers discover rather than search. That experience could translate to a beauty brand wanting an AI tool to drive repeat purchase or personalised routine recommendations.
- Andrea Dalle Molle: A beauty DTC brand would be better off with Andrea Dalle Molle if the retention problem is operational: slow or missing follow-up after a customer signs up or buys. Andrea Dalle Molle's posts focus on CRM as a sales system, not a contact list — arguing that a lead contacted within five minutes is 21 times more likely to qualify, and that 68% of leads die from lack of follow-up. They describe building Escala, a CRM with automated WhatsApp follow-up, a visual pipeline, and alerts when a lead has gone 48 hours without contact. For a brand whose post-purchase emails are not firing on time or whose customer questions go unanswered, that operational discipline could be the missing piece in a lifecycle sequence.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/