How Castore uses data and Klaviyo AI to scale intuitive customer journeys in mere days

If you’ve watched any elite-level sports, you’ve probably seen the athletes strutting their stuff in Castore gear.

A British precision sportswear brand, Castore partners with some of the biggest sporting brands and individuals around the world. Andy Murray, England Cricket, Newcastle United Football Club, several Formula One teams (including serial winners Red Bull Racing) and many more football and rugby clubs around Europe perform in Castore kits.

On top of this, Castore sells its own products directly to consumers, has B2B relationships with partners around the world and, in some cases, manages the ecommerce journey on their behalf.

AI and advanced segmentation help Castore ramp up ecommerce revenue around the world

Challenge

In early 2024, Castore had 25 stores in the UK and Europe—by the end of the year, it will have over 50. Such rapid growth is a mark of customers’ affinity for the brand, but also brought challenges around ecommerce scale, reliability, and quality control. Castore needed to quickly build robust and intuitive buying journeys—but they couldn’t sacrifice the strength of their customer relationships. They needed both speed and exceptional quality in their marketing to match their fans’ expectations.

We’ve gone from five websites two years ago to 31 websites today. Rolling out new accounts efficiently is integral to our business model—and Klaviyo allows us to do that.

Solution 

To deliver incredible customer experiences straight after setting up a new store, Castore needed a 360 degree view of its customers. That’s why, today, all of Castore’s partners and proprietary customer data sits within Klaviyo. Using this central source of data, Castore can create highly curated, omnichannel journeys through Klaviyo email marketing and SMS. 

The team at Castore also uses Klaviyo segmentation to target customers with relevant products, whether that’s through dedicated campaigns, paid media, or using Klaviyo AI to share products with consumers based on their shopping and browsing habits. By combining these features in Klaviyo, Castore and its partners can set up and execute smooth buying experiences from the word ‘go’.

“With Klaviyo AI, we can effectively deliver content that customers actually want to receive,” says Max Holland, Castore’s Senior CRM Manager. “That leads to stronger conversions and click-throughs, more sales on site, and greater customer retention in the long term.”

Strategy

The Castore marketing team optimises its content output with Klaviyo AI, building subject lines, defining customer segments, and testing the effectiveness of signup popups. 

For every hour of work my team puts in, the AI within Klaviyo is doubling that.

“There’s constant learning going on in the background. The AI allows us to make better decisions more easily and faster than we ever have,” Holland continues.

From the data Castore has within Klaviyo, the team can understand products and ranges which might interest a customer. The CRM team uses this data to segment those customers, working with Castore’s paid media team to re-target customers with the most compelling adverts for them on Google and social platforms. 

Castore also uses its data to feed Klaviyo’s smart send time feature. This has increased its campaign open rates leading to more site visitors, more transactions, and stronger customer retention.

“If I was to sum up the benefits of Klaviyo in three words, it would be intuitive, adaptive, and responsive. Intuitive because of the level of AI and how easy it is to use,” says Holland.

“Adaptive, because it gives us the flexibility to make changes on the fly. And responsive, because we can see the results from everything that we do immediately.”