How Le Creuset cooked up 4x ROI with dynamic ads

Some brands are ingrained in popular culture. Le Creuset has been a household name since 1925, universally recognizable for their colorful cookware.

From enameled cast iron cookware to stoneware, stainless, silicone and more, Le Creuset is renowned for its cheerful French kitchenware that endures through generations of meals, memories, and traditions.

So, how does a legacy brand like Le Creuset stand out and reach new audiences in the digital era?

Originally, Le Creuset sold their products through retailers, relying on them to position products and communicate the brand story. Contrast this with today, as Le Creuset has both a significant retail footprint of its own, in addition to new online channels. This direct stream of customers provides a great opportunity to fully communicate the truths of the brand and their products.

“There are a lot of cookware companies out there, but we feel Le Creuset is the only true brand in our category,” says Andy Denton, who leads the brand’s eCommerce strategy and optimization. “It’s a great situation for a marketer, to be able to sell such a loved product.”

“We’re growing very well and very fast digitally – up to 60% YoY growth. The challenge is to keep this going as long as we can.”

Classic cookware, modern ad tech

Looking to grow their audience, Le Creuset needed to add a solution to their tech stack that would have a real impact on nurturing customers and driving sales.

“I’m not a strong believer in solutions which rely on view-thru attributions,” says Andy. “I do believe that there are some instances where you can measure influence, but it’s definitely not the weight that some platforms will want to try to accredit it.”

“With Criteo, we’re talking the same language. We’re talking about consumers that reached the website, about an actual person that engaged with an ad, clicked through, and then re-engaged with us.”

Criteo’s dynamic ads are powered by data pooled from 2 billion monthly active shoppers and 100+ shopper intent signals to engage consumers precisely at the right time and with the right product. AI technology continuously learns and optimizes campaign performance.

As Le Creuset ramps up their eCommerce strategy, they’ve focused on creating a baseline with Criteo over the past year. This will help them understand how their Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) behaves throughout different buying seasons.

“We’re focused on maximizing the bottom of the funnel and the people that know us,” says Andy. “Through the help of Criteo, we’re retargeting those consumers to make sure that we’re top of mind. The next iteration of that is prospecting, to grow digitally and widen our reach, beyond our current brand loyalists.”

Since getting started with Criteo, Le Creuset’s campaigns have delivered increasing sales and revenue. This has led them to increase their budget to maximize these channels.

“We’re very happy with the campaigns that we are running,” says Andy. “In the last 12 months or so, there’s been a big focus here on modernizing our tech strategies and leveraging automation. If we expect to continue our growth as quickly as we are now, then we need to automate more.”