Your June sale may be why July went quiet

A big promotion can make a great week, but it can also make the next one worse.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has just put this in the official figures.

(Not where we expected to find a lesson on sale planning, but here we are.)

GB retail sales volumes rose 0.5% in August 2026, after a 0.5% fall in July. They were up 2.4% on a year earlier. That's a decent month.

The July dip is the interesting bit. Non-store retailers, which are mostly online, reported weaker July sales. The ONS put it down to "earlier promotional activity in June resulting in lower July sales". Some of those retailers also said August was strong.

So the sale worked in June, and in July, the bill came due.

What the ONS did and didn't say

It's only one month of data, and it's also the retailers' own explanation of what happened. It doesn't prove that every sale steals from the next month.

But it fits a pattern many teams will recognise. A promotion can move demand from later to now. The shopper was always going to buy, and you just paid them to do it sooner.

That's the cost many promotion reports miss. The sale week looks great, and the weeks after look flat. Nobody puts the two on the same chart.

You can check this in your own data. Line up sales for the four weeks before and after a promotion. If the weeks after sit below the weeks before, some of your sales were borrowed from the future.

Why a sale can leave a dip

Picture a shopper who plans to buy a coat in July. You run 20% off in June, and they buy in June.

You get the revenue early and give away margin, but July goes quiet. That isn't new revenue. It's old revenue with a discount.

Les Binet's research, reported by Marketing Week, suggests that about 84% of price promotions are unprofitable. Pulling sales forward is one way a promotion can lose money.

Habit plays a part, too. Capital One Shopping reports that 62% of clothing shoppers delay a purchase. A shopper who can wait is a shopper a sale can pull forward.

Show people that sales come around often, and they will plan around them. Our piece on not training customers to expect discounts covers this well.

Why this matters before Black Friday

Black Friday is on 27 November. Cyber Monday is on 30 November. Which? notes that retailers such as John Lewis and Currys typically launch sales weeks ahead.

That's a long runway. Every early deal can pull sales out of Black Friday. Every Black Friday deal can pull sales out of December.

(That's our reading, not a forecast.)

Adobe's US forecast points the same way. It expects discounts of up to 30% off in Cyber Week, with electronics at 30%, toys at 29% and apparel at 23%. That's broadly flat in 2025. It also expects Black Friday growth of 9.2%, compared with 6.2% for Cyber Monday, driven in part by earlier discounts.

It's a US forecast, so treat it as a guide for the UK, not a rule. Still, that’s the message. If discounts aren't getting deeper, competing moves to timing and targeting.

Give each window its own job.

• Early deals can reward loyal shoppers.
• Black Friday can clear stock.
• December can catch gift buyers.

When every offer has a clear purpose, they trip over each other less.

There's a trust side too. Which? says it tracks market prices over six months to judge whether a deal is genuine. A longer sale means more days of "was" prices to defend. Keep them honest.

How to plan for the lull

Here's what we'd do before peak starts:

• Judge each sale over the whole window. Count the weeks after it, not just the days of the sale.
• Keep a control group that sees no offer. The gap shows what the offer actually added. Our guide to measuring incrementality with control groups shows how to do so.
• Stagger your offers. Early deals, Black Friday, and December deals shouldn't all hit the same shoppers.
• Match stock and staff to both the dip and the spike. A quiet week is easier to survive when you expect it.
• Plan the quiet weeks on purpose. Use them for full-price launches and content. Don't chase the dip with another blanket sale, as that starts the cycle again.
• Keep reference prices clean. Every "was" price should survive a six-month look-back.

None of this needs a bigger budget. It needs a calendar that shows the whole shape of demand, not just the peaks.

Start small. Pick one sale from this year. Compare the four weeks before it with the four weeks after. Share the result with your finance and merchandising teams. A shared picture makes the next calendar easier to agree on.

Prediction beats reaction

Blanket discounts make pull-forward worse. Everyone sees the offer. That includes shoppers who were about to buy at full price anyway. They take the discount, and you take the dip.

Targeting goes after the cause. Show an offer only to shoppers who need an incentive. The rest buy at full price, as they planned.

Some shoppers need a nudge, but many don't. A blanket offer can't tell them apart, so you end up paying for both. Predictive intent reads signals, such as a shopper hovering over a full basket, and picks out those who need help.

That's where prediction helps. Tempo is our predictive intent engine. It spots a shopper who is likely to leave before they leave. We call acting at that point Precovery. You step in before the abandonment, not after.

There's plenty to act on. The Baymard Institute puts the average cart abandonment rate at about 70%.

Fewer, better-targeted offers also mean you spend less on promotions overall. It isn't the same budget spread around more cleverly; it's a smaller bill.