There’s a retailer somewhere right now building a promotional strategy that works roughly like this: end of the month approaching, stock to shift, whack a discount on. Broad. Blanket. Done.
It’s not laziness. It’s the default. Promotions have worked this way for about 150 years, since hard little metal tokens were handed out in exchange for gifts and free goods. The delivery mechanism has changed. The underlying logic, not so much.
At Pulse eCommerce Summit 2026, Sian Wells (Senior Performance Marketing Manager at SportsShoes) sat down with me to discuss what happens when you stop treating promotions like a sledgehammer and start using them more intelligently.
The problem with “always on” discounting
SportsShoes built a strong reputation on value. Bargains. Good prices. For a long time, blanket discounting made sense because the product mix matched it: clearance lines, old-season stock, and good margins to play with.
Then the business changed. The buying team evolved. New relationships, higher-quality products, and more new season lines. Carbon-plated running shoes at £200-300 a pair. Customers who’d already decided they wanted the shoes and had their card ready.
Sian put it plainly: customers were landing on the site, ready to buy, completely sold on the product, and SportsShoes was already offering them a discount.
Who actually needs the offer
The fundamental question isn’t whether to use promotions. It’s who should get them.
Some visitors arrive already converted. They want the shoes; they don’t need persuading. They need a working checkout.
Others are hesitating – price comparison, opening tabs, copying product names into Google Shopping to see if they can get the same thing cheaper elsewhere. These people are warm, interested, and engaged, but something is stopping them from committing.
Those are two completely different customers. One of them needs an offer, and the other doesn’t. A blanket discount can’t tell the difference.
The campaigns doing the work
The SportsShoes approach with RevLifter isn’t about adding more promotions. It’s about adding intelligence to those who matter.
Exit intent
Someone’s about to leave, and a targeted offer appears. Simple in concept, but layered. If another partner has already fired a signup offer in the same session, the RevLifter overlay is suppressed. No doubling up. No bombarding someone who’s already engaged. The offer only shows on relevant SKUs. No point showing a spring/summer code on a sale item where it won’t apply.
Ctrl+C
A customer is on a product page, and they copied the product name. That single action signals something very specific: they’re about to paste it into Google Shopping and look for a lower price. A well-timed intervention keeps them on site. No intervention means paying to win them back via ads or losing them to a competitor entirely. As Sian pointed out, once people leave your site, they get distracted. The journey resets.
Invalid code
Someone at checkout has entered two incorrect discount codes. That’s not a mistake – that’s a price-sensitive customer actively hunting for a deal. The campaign fires and gives them a working code, saving them from disappearing into a rabbit hole of dubious affiliate sites full of made-up vouchers.
(Apparently, the Daily Mail has one. For traffic.)
Sale urgency
The inverse logic. When a product is on sale, campaigns that would normally suppress can fire specifically for those SKUs, driving urgency and reinforcing the limited-time nature of the price.
The number that matters most
SportsShoes’ results include improved conversion rate and AOV, which matter. But the number Sian flagged as most significant was this: around 2,000 visitors had been suppressed from receiving a discount they didn’t need. That saved roughly £25,000.
The people who were going to buy anyway, bought. Without the discount.
That saved margin feeds back into the marketing budget. Upper funnel investment. Acquisition. Growth. Efficiency unlocked at the bottom of the funnel creates headroom at the top.
One offer size doesn’t fit all customers
Not all price-sensitive customers need the same size offer to convert.
Some need 5%, and they’re done. Some need free delivery. Some need 15%, or they’ll walk. By using intent signals to understand how much incentive is actually required, you can calibrate: save on customers who’d convert for less, and reinvest in customers who need more. Overall conversion improves. Overall margin improves. Both at once.
The maths isn’t complicated. The insight isn’t revolutionary. But it requires stopping, asking the question, and building a system to act on the answer.
Testing across markets
SportsShoes runs intelligent campaigns across the UK, Italy, France, Germany, and Spain. All of them behave differently.
French customers don’t love heavy sales messaging, so softening the offer’s language improves performance. Spanish customers do a disproportionate amount of their shopping between 10pm and midnight, so RevLifter tested whether enhanced discount codes or free shipping during those windows could further increase conversion rates.
You wouldn’t know any of that from a single blanket strategy. You’d only know it from testing each market, looking at the data, and doing something with what you find.
The takeaway
Promotions work. IMRG data across a panel of 200+ retailers shows that roughly half of all revenue comes from discounted items, with an average selling price around £14 higher on discounted purchases. Discounts move product.
The question has never been whether to use them. It’s about using them thoughtfully or indiscriminately.
As Sian put it: “You’ll be giving away a lot more than you expect.” Most retailers running blanket discounts significantly underestimate the margin they’re handing to customers who were already going to buy.
Stop asking whether promotions work. Start asking who actually needs one. Complete the final point: promotions should be targeted, not blanket.
This article was written with the assistance of AI. It’s based on a live case study presentation from Pulse eCommerce Summit 2026.
