Case Study
How Chilipad Lifted AOV 41% by Fixing the Foundation First
A premium sleep brand was leaking revenue in a funnel it couldn't guide or measure. McGaw fixed the data foundation first, then everything built on top of it started to pay off.
The case study at a glance
- Chilipad's premium funnel was leaking revenue, and their data was too siloed to fix it or measure it.
- McGaw built out Twilio Segment CDP as a single source of truth first, before touching any campaign tool.
- That foundation unlocked three wins: a guided funnel that lifted AOV 41%, a clean site relaunch, and sharper Meta ad signal.
- One investment, compounding results as the business kept growing.
The Problem: No Way to Guide the Sale, or Measure It
Sleep.me makes the Chilipad, a premium bed cooling system. It's not an impulse buy; it takes education and trust to sell. But paid traffic was landing straight on product pages, where high-intent shoppers hit the price before they understood the value. Conversion rates and average order value both suffered.
Underneath, their stack had grown organically, leaving data siloed across ecommerce, marketing automation, and analytics with no unified view of the customer. The root problem was simple: you can't guide, or measure, a journey you can't see. Fixing the funnel first would have been building on sand.
The Foundation: One Source of Truth
Instead of bolting on another tool, Chilipad brought in McGaw to rebuild the foundation first. That foundation was Segment, a customer data platform that became the single source of truth for every customer interaction, connecting ecommerce, marketing automation, and analytics through one clean integration.
Once the data foundation was right, everything downstream became possible: a funnel they could guide, a site they could change safely, and ads they could actually optimize.
What the foundation unlocked
A Guided Funnel That Lifted AOV 41%
With clean data flowing, Chilipad could finally build and measure a guided funnel for their Holiday Bundle campaign, using ConvertFlow plugged into the CDP so marketing could iterate without developers. Rather than a product page, paid traffic hit a dedicated landing page that controlled the narrative: clear value framing, guided bundle exploration, and focused CTAs.
The guided landing page for the 2025 Chilipad Holiday Bundle
The system was simple, and it worked as one loop:
- Paid traffic hit the guided landing page, framed around value instead of price.
- Hesitant shoppers triggered an exit popup at the moment intent dropped.
- The popup routed them back into the strongest revenue path.
- The landing page closed the sale at a higher order value.
Because the funnel ran through the CDP, every step was tracked and attributed. The payoff: a 41% lift in average order value versus the baseline store funnel, in one of Sleep.me's strongest seasonal periods.
What the foundation unlocked
A Site Relaunch That Didn't Break the Data
A foundation is only worth building if it survives change, and a site rebuild is where tracking usually breaks. When Chilipad shipped a new frontend and CMS, McGaw stayed close to the launch, validating tracking end to end so page views and ecommerce events kept flowing into Segment without disruption.
McGaw also used the moment to tidy up: legacy and redundant data destinations were reviewed and cleaned up, so data flowed only to the tools Chilipad actually relied on. And with the Chilipad 2.0 launch on the horizon, the Segment setup was audited again to make sure the foundation was ready for what came next, not just what had already shipped.
What the foundation unlocked
A Cleaner Signal Feeding Every Ad Dollar
Paid channels only scale when the signal reaching them is clean, and a clean signal starts with clean data. With the foundation in place, McGaw sharpened how well Meta recognizes Chilipad's purchasers, their event match quality:
- Improved match quality on purchase events, closing gaps in the customer data passed to Meta.
- Enriched the conversion payload, mapping location fields so Meta can match more purchases to the right person.
- Maintained Pixel and CAPI mappings over time, including new conversion events for Chilipad 2.0 early-access ads.
The Results
Working with McGaw from the data foundation up, Chilipad achieved:
- 41% increase in AOV in 2025 versus the baseline store funnel
- One of their strongest seasonal revenue periods
- A Segment foundation that held through a full site and CMS relaunch
- Stronger Meta match quality and cleaner conversion data
- Tracking ready for new launches, including Chilipad 2.0
Every one of these traces back to the same decision: build the foundation first, then keep it healthy as the business grows.
There's a reason the phrase 'you can lead a horse to water' is a cliché. The same principle applies to customers: people are smart. When you leave the ego at the door and guide the conversation, even within a structured digital experience, the results speak for themselves: a 41%+ increase in AOV.
Want to See How Your Stack Stacks Up?
Chilipad's results show what's possible when your data foundation comes first and everything else is built to work with it. The architecture matters as much as any single feature.
