L'Oréal is predicting that 50% of its sales will come from e-commerce by 2023

L'Oréal's global chief digital officer Lubomira Rochet said that the shift to e-commerce will be permanent, predicting that 50% of its sales will come from e-commerce by 2023.

She was among one of five executives who spoke about the state of marketing at Business Insider's roundtable of top execs transforming marketing.

With people stuck inside during the pandemic, brands are selling online more than ever.

At cosmetics giant L'Oréal, e-commerce has grown 65% during the pandemic to represent 25% of revenue, its chief digital officer Lubomira Rochet said during a marketing roundtable conversation recently convened by Business Insider.

Further, e-commerce made up for more than 50% of its losses in brick-and-mortar during the pandemic and is expected to account for 50% of its sales by 2023.

L'Oréal leveraged the growth in online sales by spending more on platforms like Amazon that are performance-driven; in SEO to drive people to its own websites; and on ad formats like YouTube for Action.

L'Oréal chief digital officer Lubomira Rochet.

It's also been spending more on virtual try-on technology, social commerce, and personalization. Its try-on technology ModiFace can now be found across 15 other sites and apps, including Amazon, YouTube, and Google Search. L'Oréal also invested this month in the social commerce platform Replika Software, which lets influencers, makeup artists and a hairstylists using its products to sell them directly to people online.

"L'Oréal brands have all embraced the trend of social commerce and have experimented with different models — influencers, e-beauty advisors, as well as consumers — with very promising results," Rochet said. "We want to crack this new e-commerce channel that has a very strong potential in beauty and build a solid ecosystem of advocates and social sellers around our brands."

The rise of e-commerce during the pandemic has also made marketing more conversational, with L'Oréal having a 40% rise in interactions with consumers across channels like Facebook Messenger and WeChat to pass 60 million interactions this year. That increase has given L'Oréal more data on which to base business decisions.

"We were able to track category shifts like hair color sales growing 300% and make-up falling 30% by managing data and insights not every quarter, but literally everyday," Rochet said. "Having our finger on the pulse of consumers is important also so that we can talk to them in the right tone."

Despite e-commerce's growth, Rochet said brick-and-mortar wasn't going away.

"There may be some disruption, but the Boots and the Carrefours in Europe are embracing omnichannel commerce and emerging as an alternative to Amazon," she said.