Maximising PMax performance with Charles Tyrwhitt
For nearly 40 years, Charles Tyrwhitt has been synonymous with timeless menswear, combining quality craftsmanship with excellent service. This case study explores how the heritage brand leveraged AI technology to evolve into a digital-first, internationally renowned fashion retailer, maintaining its competitive edge in a rapidly shifting market.
Customer challenge
Three years ago, Charles Tyrwhitt faced several strategic hurdles: • Acquiring new customers more efficiently in a competitive UK market • Expanding sales beyond its core shirt category • Accelerating growth in international markets • Leveraging actionable insights from technology to refine its strategy As two-thirds of Charles Tyrwhitt’s business is online, they are very focused on optimising digital channels to market. They recognised that this approach would require access to and assimilation of significant volumes of product, market, and customer data and that the best approach was to build a technology infrastructure that would be scalable and flexible enough to meet their growing needs. They were an early adopter of Google Performance Max but recognised that they needed Upp.ai as a complementary technology to optimise campaign management efficiently and at scale. The Upp.ai platform enables its digital marketing team to focus on executing their growth strategy of winning new customers and maximising the lifetime value of existing ones without getting bogged down in the manually intensive implementation of multiple international digital marketing campaigns. “We knew Google Shopping was the most important channel in terms of the opportunity it offers for growth. However, a huge amount of heavy lifting was required to plan campaigns which would not have been possible without AI. The other challenge is doing that at scale and efficiently. Upp.ai does this for us and allows us to focus on strategy which is far more rewarding for us and much more valuable for the business.”
Efficiently acquiring new customers
Charles Tyrwhitt understood the importance of technology and saw the adoption of AI as a way of gaining competitive advantage. They started working with Upp.ai in 2022 to focus on making new customer acquisition as efficient as possible. “New customers are the lifeblood of our business and we work very hard to offer first-time eCommerce buyers a unique experience and ongoing relationship to maximise lifetime value. Technology is very much part of our strategy and finding the right partner and the right solutions has helped us achieve success.” Joe Bloomfield, Head of Digital, Charles Tyrwhitt Upp.ai analyses billions of data points in real-time to identify products that are attractive to key parts of Charles Tyrwhitt’s audience; in this case new customers. Using the power and learning capability of Upp.ai and the ability to interpret huge volumes of data, Charles Tyrwhitt was able to reduce CPA initially by 52% and afterwards maintain CPA and drive up new customer acquisition by 28% in the UK and 50% in the US. Charles Tyrwhitt’s unique customer service proposition and unrivalled quality ensure repeat purchases and the positive lifetime value of each customer.
Expanding product sales mix
An important factor in the continued growth of the business has been the expansion in product mix. Shirts made up the majority of revenue with other clothing not getting the promotion it needed to contribute fully to sales. Upp.ai redefines the way paid media campaigns are run and facilitates much broader visibility of product lines through the re-prompting of the Google algorithm at the individual SKU level. For Charles Tyrwhitt this meant a 10% increment in revenue through a broader product mix being advertised. “I recognised our best seller has never really changed online: the white shirt. It’s a classic. It’s our icon. I can’t see that ever going away. But we’ve got so many other great products available that we wanted to work out how to get more visibility for them in more markets and Upp.ai was fundamental in achieving this.”
Using market understanding to accelerate territory growth
Getting to the level of understanding needed to be successful in new regions would have taken years using conventional technology and paid media teams. Using AI Charles Tyrwhitt has accelerated its US business and launched in Canada, Switzerland, France and Germany. Utilising a technology stack that interprets huge volumes of data to enable immediate, automated prioritisation of key products with near-instant results meant rapid adaptation to local market requirements and unprecedented market adoption. “The business has changed quite a bit through geographic expansion. So, to be able to support that we have developed a technology playbook and Upp.ai has been a big part of that. Upp.ai helps us answer the ‘why’ questions; why trading patterns are the way they are; why checked shirts are more popular in the US and shoes are more popular in Germany for example.”
Customer Success
Since using Upp.ai’s platform, Charles Tyrwhitt has achieved:- • -52% reduction in CPA • +29% net new revenue – UK • +55% net new revenue – US The Upp.ai platform enables its digital marketing team to focus on executing its growth strategy of winning new customers and maximising the lifetime value of existing ones without getting bogged down in the manually intensive implementation of multiple international digital marketing campaigns. Upp.ai is proud to continue working with Charles Tyrwhitt, who values the platform’s transformative impact on its rapidly growing business. The Upp.ai platform’s scalability and flexibility have allowed the retailer to continue focusing on strategy and using the latest digital marketing technology to stay ahead in its target markets. “To keep pace with the dynamic marketplace that we operate in we need a solution like Upp.ai. It has definitely given us a competitive advantage.”
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