Spring Retail Festival recap: Smarter promotions for better results
The RevLifter team recently delivered a talk on intelligent offers at the Spring Retail Festival. Here's what you missed about turning basic discounts into precision tools for growth.
The ancient problem with promotions
Promotional offers have barely evolved in 150 years. What started as metal tokens now exists as digital codes, but the approach remains frustratingly similar: broad discounts to boost sales and clear stock.
The downside? These blanket promotions damage brand perception and eat margins. Nobody wants to be seen as a discount brand or train customers to wait for sales.
Why we still use them
Despite the drawbacks, promotions remain essential because they work. RevLifter's research with IMRG shows they drive more than half of revenue and transactions.
Interesting finding: discounted products had an average price £14 higher than non-discounted items.
The intelligent alternative
How do you get the benefits without the downsides? RevLifter's answer uses two types of intelligence:
- Targeting intelligence - Who sees an offer and when
- Testing intelligence - What works fastest
Smarter targeting in practice
Instead of showing everyone the same discount, RevLifter uses:
- Traffic source
- Visitor status
- Funnel stage
- Product interest
- Location
- Basket contents
Their most sophisticated approach predicts purchase likelihood, showing offers only to visitors who need that extra push. This saved Radley London 8% on promotional costs while maintaining conversion rates.
Testing reveals what works
Stop guessing which discount works best. Testing measures the complete impact of your offers. RevLifter's approach examines conversion rates alongside redemption patterns, AOV shifts, and true incremental revenue. This eliminates the common mistake of celebrating high conversion rates while ignoring diminished basket values or unnecessary discounts to customers who would have purchased anyway.
Real campaigns, real numbers
RevLifter's exit campaigns produced measurable results for several retailers. Radley London saw a 15% conversion rate increase and 28% higher revenue per user. When Rowan Homes implemented Stretch & Save campaigns with tiered spending rewards, their revenue per user jumped 16%. The Offers Wallet solution created a central hub for personalized promotions that boosted AOV by 15-16% for both Nasty Gal and Club L.
Promotion optimization insights
The presentation revealed several counter-intuitive findings about shopper behavior. Email visitors convert at higher rates than PPC traffic, suggesting relationship-based marketing outperforms pure acquisition. Customers who view multiple products aren't just browsing – they actually demonstrate higher purchase intent. Those who add recommended products at checkout complete their purchases more reliably than those who don't. Perhaps most useful was their observation that while percentage-off and value-off discounts show similar conversion results, value-off promotions typically cost retailers less in actual margin.
The bottom line
Blanket discounts are outdated. Modern eCommerce needs intelligent offers that target based on behavior, test relentlessly, and protect margins by only discounting when necessary. The difference between spray-and-pray promotions and precision targeting isn't just theoretical – it directly impacts your bottom line.
