749 newsletter leads in 4 days for Rituals

Rituals wanted to convert anonymous store walk-in traffic into digital CRM contacts — without using its retail staff for IT tasks. The result of a 4-day POS campaign at selected locations: 749 verified newsletter leads from 691 completed photo sessions. This was made possible by a two-screen terminal architecture that splits photo creation and the data gate across separate surfaces, doubling throughput with no build-up.

More than 200 B2B brands from across Europe trust UpReach — from agencies to enterprise corporations.

The initial situation

Wellness and beauty brands live on the direct customer relationship. The flagship store is the most important physical touchpoint — but it has to do more than drive product sales. The challenge: to convert anonymous walk-in traffic into trackable, GDPR-compliant newsletter subscribers, without store staff being used to ask for email addresses.

The central architecture problem: classic photo-booth setups have a single screen. The visitor takes a photo and then enters their data on the same display — blocking the terminal for everyone behind them. In high-footfall stores this forms queues that disrupt the buying experience and increase drop-off at the data gate.

An additional requirement: the terminal had to be compact enough for the store entrance area (under 1 m² footprint) and run entirely unsupervised in kiosk mode.

The UpReach solution

UpReach configured a terminal in two-screen mode. The front screen handled photo creation: customers took photos with exclusively branded beauty filters and product overlays in the brand's corporate design. Output formats: photo, GIF and Boomerang.

The decisive architectural move: immediately after the shot, visitors were guided to the back of the terminal. There a second touchscreen held in-depth product information and the GDPR-compliant lead form (data gate). As an incentive for the opt-in, an instant prize draw for brand vouchers was built in.

The result of the two-screen split: while visitor number 1 filled in the form at the back, visitor number 2 could already create their photo at the front. Throughput doubled, queue eliminated.

The terminal ran fully autonomously in kiosk mode. Store staff had no technical tasks. All data points flowed into the brand's CRM in real time via REST API.

Setup & Logistics

Lead time 5 weeks: 3 weeks for interface design and brand adaptation (beauty filters, product overlays, prize-draw logic, CRM API testing), 1 week for physical configuration and kiosk-mode parameterisation, 1 week of buffer for compliance sign-off by the brand's data protection officers.

Transport in a flight case. Build by an UpReach technician, including a briefing for store management on the cloud CMS (for campaign monitoring and any remote content changes). No further technical staff were needed on site.

Data pipeline: lead records (email, opt-in timestamp, chosen content type, prize-draw status) were transferred to the brand's CRM in real time via REST API. No manual export after the campaign.

Results by the numbers

749

verified newsletter leads

691

completed photo sessions

load on store staff

The figure of 749 newsletter leads from 691 completed photo sessions reveals a particular mechanic: thanks to the prize-draw incentive, more visitors opted into the newsletter than completed a photo — some visitors completed the data gate directly via the gamification path without a full photo output.

The two-screen architecture proved a critical throughput factor. Comparative measurements with single-screen setups in similar store formats show substantially lower lead numbers at the same visitor count, due to the queues that form.

Store staff reported not a single IT intervention across the 4-day run. The autonomous kiosk mode handled peak hours with no support call.

Key takeaways from this setup

Hardware design dictates the flow: a single screen creates a jam. The two-screen split (photo creation at the front, data gate at the back) doubles throughput and removes the perceived wait for following visitors.

Autonomous operation is a core requirement: retail staff have no time for IT tasks. The terminal has to run fully autonomously in kiosk mode — including an automatic restart after a power cut.

Coupling an incentive raises the opt-in rate: in the retail context, a photo alone is often not enough of a lead magnet. Coupling the opt-in to a prize draw with a prize relevant to the target group (a brand voucher) is the strongest B2C conversion driver.

Minimise the footprint: every square metre in a premium store carries an opportunity cost. The hardware has to be space-saving without sacrificing performance.