Discounts [Coming Soon]

Discounting is one of the most common levers in eCommerce... and one of the easiest to lean on too hard.

A discount can acquire a customer, trigger a repeat purchase, move slow inventory, or lift demand during a quiet period. But every discount gives up revenue in exchange for a change in customer behavior. That doesn't make discounting a bad idea. The question is whether what you give away comes back as something more valuable.

The Discounts analysis helps you understand how reliant your business is on discounting, where that discounting comes from, and how broadly it affects your orders.

Understand where your discounting comes from

RetentionX separates discounting into Coupons and Markdowns.

• Coupons are discounts applied through coupon codes, such as welcome offers, campaign promotions, or retention incentives.

• Markdowns are reductions from the list price (compare-at price) to the selling price that aren't tied to a coupon code.

• Total Discounts combines both.

The distinction matters because the two usually come from different business decisions. Coupons are a marketing or CRM lever, while markdowns are more often driven by pricing, merchandising, or inventory.

Let's consider the following example order:

At first glance, you see that the customer received a 10% discount on the Cashmere Tee. That's the coupon clearly applied to the order. But the customer also paid $239 less for the Kitten Heel because it had already been marked down. So the customer actually saved $298.80. The two discounts show up differently in the business. The coupon is explicitly applied to the Tee, while the markdown is already baked into the lower selling price and typically won't appear as a separate discount in your P&L. But to the customer, that distinction doesn't matter: both made the purchase cheaper.

That's why RetentionX separates Coupons from Markdowns, but brings them together as Total Discounts. The split tells you where the discounting comes from.

How much and how often?

The report lets you switch between Value and Orders, depending on what you want to understand.

The Value view tells you how much you're giving away. It shows the monetary value of coupons, markdowns, and their total. 

Switch between # and % to see either the absolute discount value or its size relative to the order value. That context matters. Your total discount value might increase simply because the business is growing. But if the percentage rises too, you're not just discounting more in absolute terms— you're giving away a larger share of each sale.

The Orders view tells you how often discounts are part of the purchase. It shows how many orders included a coupon, a markdown, or even both.

Again, switch between # and % to see either the number of discounted orders or their share of all orders. This tells you whether discounting is concentrated in a small number of purchases or spread across a large part of the business. A high discount value on a handful of orders is a very different story from discounts appearing on half of all orders. In the latter case, customers may be getting used to buying only when there's an incentive.

Together, the two views show you how much you're discounting and how widespread that discounting has become. For every metric, PoP Change shows how it changed compared with the previous period, making it easy to spot when that behavior starts to shift.

What to look for

More discounting isn't automatically a problem. What matters is whether it is growing faster than the value you're getting back.

A few patterns are worth a closer look:

• Total Discounts grow faster than sales. You may be buying growth with discounting without a corresponding increase in demand. 

• Total Discounted Orders keep rising. Discounts may be becoming the norm rather than an occasional incentive. 

• Coupons account for most of your discounting. Check whether acquisition, CRM, or campaign activity has become too dependent on offers. 

• Markdowns account for most of your discounting. Look at pricing, assortment, inventory, and markdown strategy rather than just campaigns. 

• Repeat customers receive large discounts. You may be paying for purchases that would have happened anyway. 

• Discounting falls without hurting revenue or orders. That's a good sign: you're keeping more revenue without losing demand.

But spotting the pattern is only the first step. The next question is: What did we get back for what we gave away?

For acquisition, that might be a high-value customer who returns repeatedly. For retention, it could be an incremental purchase from someone who was about to lapse — or a deliberate reward that strengthens loyalty with your best customers. For merchandising, it might mean moving inventory before it becomes a bigger liability.

Imagine increasing an offer from 10% to 15%. Conversion improves slightly, but CM1 falls by more than the incremental revenue gained. The deeper discount hasn't improved the economics — it has simply cost more.

That's why conversion alone isn't enough to judge a promotion. Look at CM1, repeat purchase behavior, and LTV to understand whether the discount actually created value.

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