Here's what I find sexy: The perfect red lip and a complex e-commerce system with an extensive product catalog and zillions of SKUs! Lately, I've found myself really applauding the brand Sephora for the fantastic and cohesive user experience offered to their customers through multiple mediums on the web.

Between the endless eye candy and products to play with, and good old-fashioned customer service, Sephora has always been a great store to visit in person. The brand has done a great job replicating and enhancing the in-store experience using multiple online mediums including their website, social media presences and html email campaigns. Sephora's cohesive and diversified web marketing campaign provides a great narrative for how to generate digital leads.

The hub of their web marketing tools, Sephora.com manages to offer the user a wealth of product and application information in an efficient, targeted manner. The site serves as a huge product catalog complete with juicy photography and in-depth product descriptions. As a designer and as a consumer, I'm immediately drawn to the mini-advertisements they've created for the numerous brands they sell on their site. But, most importantly, they’ve got what might be the most expansive library of customer reviews online that I've seen in a long time. Sephora also has many easy and effective ways of sorting the large amount of makeup categories and brands featured on the site, making the e-commerce experience genuine and pleasant. We're BIG fans of fun search tools with multiple sorting options!

Sephora helps to increase likability, trust and sales among their target audience by hitting up their inboxes on a regular basis. They use email marketing to speak directly to their following – even take care of them. The same alluring products found in the store and on the website arrive neatly in your inbox accompanied by witty messaging that makes it hard not to click. Being one of these customers, I can attest to the fact that I actually want to open the emails I receive from them. Every email comes nicely-designed and always seems to be completely customized to my wants and needs, which Sephora tracks through my activity and purchases in their online store. I never receive emails from them too often, which I cannot say the same for some other brands that I won't mention! Plus, I never feel like they are pushing something too good to be true. In fact, they actually give me free gifts on my birthday. Instead of running the risk of annoying their customers, they succeed in engaging them.

Another way I've seen Sephora engage customers was through a 2009 holiday Twitter sweepstakes which gave away a prize a day. Instead of filling out a boring form or mailing in an entry, all you had to do was tweet one line - a completely free and time-saving engagement for both the user and the corporate brand.

Now I've sung Sephora's praises quite a bit throughout this post, but I have just one thing to add. Since the company actually has their own "Sephora Brand" line of makeup, just imagine how their customers might enjoy a tool similar to the Jane Iredale Makeover Room. It lets the user test out products and color palettes without ever leaving home!

Empowering brands to succeed online is what stirs up excitement and gets us talking here at Silverscape. We know a thing or two about this kind of stuff. To check out what we consider some of our greatest hits in the consumer space, head over to the Taza Chocoate website, or check out the HMR e-commerce store. If you're curious to see just how cool our own HTML emails are, don't hesitate to subscribe to us, we think you'll like what you see.