Intent-led solutions

Promotional pricing is the practice of temporarily reducing prices to drive a specific commercial outcome. In eCommerce, it covers everything from percentage-off codes and flash sales to BOGO deals, loyalty tiers, and seasonal campaigns. Used right, it drives genuine revenue. Used badly, you'll trash your margin and train your best customers to wait for discounts.

What is promotional pricing?

Promotional pricing is a temporary reduction in the standard selling price, applied to drive a defined commercial goal. Typically these are: clearing inventory, acquiring new customers, reactivating lapsed buyers, or responding to a competitor's move. It is distinct from permanent price changes and from dynamic pricing, which adjusts in real time based on demand signals.

In eCommerce, the term covers a wider set of mechanics than in traditional retail. A promotional price can be a publicly visible markdown, a personalised discount code delivered by email, a segment-specific offer triggered on-site, a loyalty tier reward, or a bundle price. The delivery mechanism matters as much as the discount depth, because it determines who sees the offer and what behavioural context they bring to it.

Editor's note: This guide is written specifically for online retailers. B2B SaaS, subscription, and industrial pricing follow different mechanics and aren't covered here.

The seven types of promotional pricing (and when each actually works)

The taxonomy of promotional pricing is broadly consistent across the industry. What isn't consistent is an honest assessment of when each type actually delivers incremental revenue versus when it simply moves it.

Percentage discount

The most common format in eCommerce: 10%, 20%, 30% off a product or category. It's universally understood, easy to execute across email and on-site, and straightforward to calculate. The risk is anchoring. Once a customer has bought at 20% off, their willingness to pay the full price decreases. A portion of comparison shoppers will hold out, waiting for the same discount to return.

BOGO (buy one get one)

BOGO and its variants (buy two get one free, spend X get Y) increase average order value and can move inventory efficiently. The catch is unit margin. A buy-one-get-one-free on a product with a 40% gross margin isn't a 50% discount from a financial standpoint. It wipes out margin on the second unit entirely.

Flash sales

Short-duration, high-discount events — typically 24 to 48 hours — that create urgency and can generate significant revenue very quickly. They work well for clearance. The problem is audience conditioning. Customers who've seen three or four flash sales start to learn the pattern: wait, and then the price drops. Used too frequently, flash sales train a comparison-shopping segment rather than converting a high-intent one.

Loyalty pricing

Tiered discounts awarded through a loyalty or membership programme: early access, exclusive pricing, free shipping thresholds for members. This is the most margin-efficient form of promotional pricing because the discount is earned, not freely given. It also builds switching cost, which percentage discounts and flash sales don't. If you're choosing between loyalty pricing and blanket discounting as a long-term retention mechanic, loyalty pricing is almost always the better investment. Research drawing on Bain & Company data found that repeat customers spend 67% more than new buyers by their third year of shopping with a brand. The economics of building loyalty compound in ways that a one-time discount can't replicate.

Seasonal promotions

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, January sales, end-of-summer. These events carry genuine demand spikes and everyone knows what they are. They're also where the incrementality question is hardest to answer, because so much demand is pulled forward from adjacent weeks. Research by Recast found that brands consistently see customers delaying purchases in anticipation of sales, with a revenue hangover in the weeks immediately after — the promotional spike comes partly at the expense of the periods surrounding it. The danger is running the same depth of discount in the same window year after year. The month before and after will see predictable drops.

Coupons and vouchers

Digital codes distributed via email, affiliate, or influencer channels. They're great because they're easy to trace where they've been used. Each code can be attributed to a channel and a campaign, which makes them more measurable than sitewide promotions. However, their risk is leakage. Codes circulate beyond their intended audience via cashback sites and discount aggregators, frequently discounting customers who would have purchased at full price. According to data from Ad Exchanger, for large brands, a single leaked code can generate six figures in unintended discount spend within days.

Segment promotions

These are typically offers built for a specific, defined customer segment. A re-engagement discount for customers lapsed 90 days. A new-product preview for your top 5% by LTV. A post-first-purchase offer designed to drive a second order within the critical 30-day window. Segment promotions require CRM infrastructure to execute properly, but they have the highest ratio of incremental revenue to margin cost. They put discount spend where the behavioural data says it's needed, rather than distributing it uniformly.

Why most eCommerce promotions don't actually drive growth (they just move it)

Of the revenue you generated during your last campaign, how much of it would have happened anyway?

The concept we're talking about here is promotional incrementality. Incremental revenue is revenue that occurred because of the promotion — a purchase from a customer who wouldn't have bought without the discount, at that price, in that session. Non-incremental revenue is revenue that happened during the promotion but was going to happen anyway. The discount ended up just being a freebie, and not the thing that drove conversion.

Most eCommerce teams have no idea what their ratio is. They measure revenue during the promotional window, compare it to the prior week's baseline, and call the difference "promo lift." That calculation doesn't account for demand pulled forward from the week after the campaign, or existing purchase intent that happened to coincide with the discount window.

The evidence from retail analytics is stark. McKinsey research found that 59% of trade promotions lose money globally, with that figure rising to 72% in the United States. NielsenIQ analysis corroborates this. Over half of all trade promotions result in little to no sales lift once proper measurement is applied. Both datasets come from Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) and physical retail rather than pure-play eCommerce, and the dynamics differ in some ways.

But the underlying mechanism is the same: promotions reaching customers who were already going to buy. Made With Intent's own analysis, drawn from conversations with leading eCommerce practitioners, found that 83% of shoppers would have purchased without a discount code — the discount was given to customers who had already decided.

The dynamic in eCommerce is likely bigger. Price-sensitive audiences can find and act on promotions within minutes, and your highest-intent visitors can be the first to convert at a discount they didn't need.

Now, we're not saying you should stop doing promotions. Far from it. All we're saying is that you should understand which promotions are doing real work and which are transferring margin to customers who had already decided to buy. Doing that determines whether your promotional calendar actually drives growth, or just results in margin loss.

The four hidden costs of promotional pricing in eCommerce

Margin erosion from discount depth is visible on a profit and loss sheet (P&L). These four costs aren't — and they compound over time in ways that you don't see until it's too late.

1. Margin give-away to customers who would have bought anyway

This is the incrementality cost, and it's almost certainly the largest single hidden cost in any promotional pricing programme. Every time a customer who was already in the purchase funnel redeems a discount, the difference between what they paid and what they would have paid at full price is a direct transfer to them. At scale across a full promotional calendar, this represents margin erosion that never appears in the "promo lift" calculation, because the headline revenue number looks fine.

2. Price-anchor erosion

Behavioural economics is consistent on this: repeated exposure to a discounted price lowers willingness-to-pay for the full-price experience. Research by Ariely, Loewenstein, and Prelec at Stanford shows that numerical anchors — even arbitrary ones — significantly and durably shift consumers' stated willingness to pay, with effects that persist even when participants are told the anchor is irrelevant to the product's value.

Customers who have bought from you three or four times at a discounted price don't experience your full price as normal; they think it's expensive. The more publicly and frequently you discount, the more you move your comparison-shopping audience into that anchored state.

3. Subsidising competitor retargeting

When you run a public flash sale or sitewide discount, you generate a cohort of price-sensitive customers who engage specifically because of the price signal. Many of them are likely already present in competitors' retargeting audiences. Your promotion has demonstrated to them, and to the ad algorithms tracking their behaviour, that price is a primary factor in their purchase decision. Whether that meaningfully increases their value to competitors is hard to isolate, but it's a mechanism worth thinking about when considering your promotional tactics.

4. CRM dependency

Every promotional send trains subscribers to expect a discount before they purchase. Repeat that pattern often enough, and your non-promotional lifecycle emails — welcome series, post-purchase flows, browse abandonment, replenishment triggers — start to underperform. Customers have learnt to wait. The incremental cost isn't visible in any single campaign; it accrues across your entire email programme. And by the time it shows up in open rate and conversion data, it's too late.

Promotional pricing as implicit CAC

Consider this example. A retailer sends a 20% off email to 50,000 subscribers. 3,000 purchase at an average order value of £85. That's £255,000 in revenue — but at 20% discount, the full-price equivalent was £318,750. The brand has surrendered £63,750 in margin to drive those 3,000 conversions.

Let's assume 40% of those purchases were incremental — buyers who would not have converted without the discount. Real-world holdout data on promotional email incrementality varies substantially across list quality, promo frequency, and audience conditioning; practitioners report wide ranges, with heavily conditioned promotional lists often showing much lower incremental lift than teams expect.

Replace 40% with the result of your own holdout test. On that assumption, the brand paid roughly £63,750 in foregone margin to drive approximately 1,200 genuinely new transactions. That's an effective CAC of around £53 per incremental conversion. [Illustrative example: all figures are hypothetical.]

Whether £53 is a good or bad CAC depends entirely on LTV, category margins, and what that retailer is paying to acquire comparable customers through other channels. That £53 figure belongs alongside your paid social CPA, your Google Shopping CPA, and your other acquisition costs. Most of the time, it doesn't. The discount email lives in the CRM budget and gets measured on revenue. Paid acquisition lives in the performance budget and gets measured on Return On Ad Spend (ROAS). Both are measuring the same thing — the cost to acquire a transaction. But do they share an analysis?

Reading this, you might push back. Promotional emails don't only acquire; they also reactivate lapsed customers whose acquisition cost is already sunk, and they drive AOV expansion for customers who were going to buy anyway. Both are fair points. The CAC framing is most useful when applied to net-new incremental conversions and to lapsed reactivation, where the counterfactual — no purchase without the discount — is clearest. For those specific segments, it's a better lens than overall promotional revenue.

Who should never see your discounts: a rough framework

Full-price loyalists. Customers who have purchased from you three or more times, always at full price, in the last 12 months. Sometimes sending them a discount offer can be a loyalty play. But it invites negotiation on your margins. They already think your product is worth its full price. Don't change that.

Recent first-time buyers. Customers in the 0 to 30-day window after their first purchase are in the honeymoon period: they've just made a considered decision to buy from you. A discount email in that window could drive a second purchase, sure. But it could also plant a thought. "I paid full price, but I should've waited." The post-first-purchase flow should focus on product education, social proof, and cross-category discovery.

Customers acquired at full price in the last 30 days. Similar rationale: these buyers are happy to pay your full prices.

Here's where to use discounts

• Lapsed customers at 90 to 180 days since last purchase. The cost of re-acquiring these via paid media almost certainly exceeds the margin cost of a well-targeted win-back offer.
• Browse-abandonment segments with high-intent signals and no purchase conversion. Deep product page engagement, multiple return visits, comparison behaviour: these signals justify a targeted intervention.
• Price-sensitive new visitors identified by behavioural signals (time spent on sale pages, price filter usage, sorting by price). These visitors have already told you price a key factor

Some of this segmentation logic can be built in Klaviyo using event-triggered flows and list properties. The suppression side — protecting full-price buyers from promotional flows — is as important as the targeting side, and it's the part that typically goes unbuilt. For a practical framework on building intent-aware segments in your ESP, see Email Segments Ready to Buy.

The harder problem is identifying, in real time and on-site, which visitors are genuinely price-sensitive and which would convert at full price with the right experience. Static Klaviyo segments give you that signal at the email layer, but they don't capture what's happening on-site in the moment. That's the gap that intent-based discount targeting is designed to fill: triggering a discount offer only for visitors whose browsing behaviour signals price sensitivity, while letting high-intent visitors reach checkout at full price. Appliances Direct applied this approach and saved 42% of margin that would otherwise have been given to visitors who didn't need a discount to convert. Read our full case study.

How to measure promotional incrementality (without a data science team)

Most eCommerce teams assume that measuring true promotional incrementality requires a data science capability they don't have. It doesn't. There are three practical methods you can implement with existing tools, in order of rigour and complexity.

Method 1: Geo or list holdout

Before your next promotional email, suppress a random 10% of eligible recipients. Call this the holdout group. After the campaign window closes — including a seven-day tail to capture any demand-pull effect — compare revenue per recipient between the promoted group and the holdout group. The difference, adjusted for the margin cost of the discount, is your incremental return.

The holdout must be randomly assigned. Don't use a geographic split if your list has geographic bias. Most ESPs, including Klaviyo, allow you to create a random-sample suppression list at campaign setup. It takes around 10 minutes and gives you a genuine counterfactual for the first time.

For the best results, use personalised single-use codes rather than a broadcast code. Broadcast codes (e.g. "SUMMER20") leak to cashback sites and discount aggregators, meaning some holdout recipients will redeem the code via a third-party channel, which deflates your measured incrementality and makes the promotion look more incremental than it is.

Method 2: Pre/post baseline with control

For sitewide promotions where list suppression isn't practical, build a revenue baseline from the prior eight weeks and the equivalent period in the prior year. Model expected revenue for the promotional window without the discount. Compare actual revenue to the model, then subtract the margin cost of the discount across all transactions to calculate net contribution margin.

This method doesn't control well for seasonal and macro variation, but it's substantially more rigorous than comparing the promotional window to the prior week.

Method 3: Contribution margin per cohort

The most sophisticated and most durable method. Segment promotional purchasers by their first-purchase channel — promo-acquired versus organic-acquired — and track their purchase behaviour at 90 and 180 days. Calculate LTV for each cohort. Promo-acquired customers with lower 180-day LTV represent a structural cost that never appears in any single campaign's P&L. The discount didn't just reduce margin on the first transaction: it acquired a lower-value customer at a structurally elevated cost per order. That said, this pattern isn't universal. Common Thread Co's analysis found cases — particularly in consumable categories — where sampling-led promotional acquisition outperformed full-price acquisition on long-term repeat behaviour. The point isn't to assume promo-acquired customers are always less valuable. It's to measure your specific cohorts rather than letting the assumption go untested in either direction.

This method is not achievable with basic Shopify or Klaviyo reporting alone. You'll need either a dedicated retention analytics tool (Triple Whale, Polar Analytics, and Glew all support cohort-level LTV views for mid-market Shopify merchants) or a manual export into a spreadsheet, which is achievable but requires a dedicated afternoon and some comfort with pivot tables.

Running any one of these methods will tell you more about your promotional programme's actual ROI than years of before/after revenue comparisons.

When promotional pricing is the right answer

To reiterate, we're not saying promotional pricing is bad. It clearly isn't. The challenge is when promotional pricing is used as a primary growth lever without incrementality measurement or segmentation discipline — it's an expensive habit that erodes both margin and customer quality over time.

Here are three legitimate use cases for promotional pricing in eCommerce:

Clearance: When inventory needs to be whittled down, price reductions are the correct tool. The economics stack up clearly. The margin cost of the discount is weighed against the carrying cost of the stock and the cost of a write-down. Done properly, clearance promotions don't carry the dependency risk of a recurring promotional programme because they're specific to an event and a product set, not to a calendar slot.

Genuine product launch: Introductory pricing for a new product functions as acquisition pricing. You're buying trial at a known cost per unit, with the expectation of building a full-price repeat purchase base from that cohort. The key constraint is that "introductory" must be time-limited and clearly communicated. If customers anchor to the launch price as the normal price, the discount has done too much.

Defensive parity: If a close competitor is running a promotional campaign and your price differential is generating measurable abandonment at key points in the funnel, a targeted promotional response is the right choice. What you should watch is whether this is genuine demand-retention or a ratchet. Once you respond to a competitor's discount with your own, the floor has moved for both parties, and it's difficult to claw that back.

A promotional pricing audit you can run this quarter

The following six questions use data most eCommerce teams already have:

1. What percentage of your revenue in the last 12 months came from promoted transactions?

Export all your orders. Identify those where a discount code was applied or where the order was placed during a promotional window. Calculate that as a percentage of total revenue. Nebulab's analysis found that brands with discount penetration above 40% face structural dependency requiring 12 to 18 months to unwind without damaging revenue. Companies below 40% can reduce promotional reliance within a single quarter.

2. What is the 180-day repeat purchase rate for customers acquired in your last three major campaigns, compared to customers acquired at full price in the same periods?

If your promo-acquired cohorts are returning at materially lower rates, you're acquiring a weaker customer base at a discount. That LTV gap is the true long-term cost of the promotion, and it should be in your campaign P&L.

3. What is the average discount depth per category compared to that category's gross margin?

A 25% discount on a product with a 30% gross margin leaves 5% contribution before overheads. Run this calculation across your promotional calendar. There will almost certainly be categories where promotional depth is eating margin on a meaningful share of volume.

4. How many promotional emails does your average subscriber receive per month?

Divide your total monthly promotional sends by your active list size. If the answer is above 2 to 3 per month, your list could be conditioned to expect promotional emails. Track open rate and conversion rate on non-promotional lifecycle emails over the same period. If those are declining while promotional rates hold, there's your issue.

5. What is the contribution margin per promotional campaign, not the revenue?

Revenue minus cost of goods minus the discount cost minus fulfilment and return costs for promotional orders. Run this calculation for your last five campaigns.

6. What percentage of your promotional revenue came from customers already in the purchase funnel at the time of the promotion?

Look at customers who converted during a promotional window but had already visited the product page or added to basket in the prior 7 days. That is your minimum-estimate incrementality floor. If the discount reached them and they were already close to buying, those conversions were probably going to happen without it.

Wrapping up our promotional pricing guide

Promotional pricing will always be part of the eCommerce toolkit. Clearance, launch, reactivation, competitive response: there are always times where a well-targeted discount does good work. The question is whether your promotional programme is built primarily around those situations, or primarily around habit.

The goal of a disciplined promotional pricing strategy isn't to run more profitable promotions. It's to need them less. Because your retention mechanics, lifecycle CRM, and on-site experience are doing enough of the work that you can afford to protect your margins and your price anchors.

The first step isn't rebuilding your CRM programme or overhauling your calendar. It's suppressing 10% of your next campaign list and measuring the result. That single number will tell you more about your promotional programme than 12 months of revenue reporting.

If reducing your promotional dependency without sacrificing revenue is on your roadmap this year, see how our intent-based discount targeting works in practice.

For a demo of Made With Intent, book a demo.

You've done the work. You've split your lapsed customers from your actives, your high-AOV buyers from your one-time purchasers, your engaged openers from the dormant half of your list. You've built the flows and set the rules. And your recovery rates are still flat.

The problem is your email segmentation tells you who's on your list and what they've done. They don't tell you who's in a buying moment right now. That's not a gap in your execution, it's merely a limitation of how segmentation works. And until you see it clearly, you'll keep optimising the wrong thing.

Email segmentation is built on historical data. Purchase history, past engagement, demographic profile. It tells you who someone was. But, it doesn't tell you what they're about to do. The signal that tells you whether someone is actively considering a purchase right now is a different kind of data entirely and it lives somewhere most email strategies never look.

What email segmentation actually tells you

Standard email segmentation is genuinely useful. Don't let the argument of this article dispel this notion.

When you split your list by purchase history, you're identifying category affinity and buying patterns. When you score subscribers by recency, frequency, and monetary value, the classic RFM model, you're surfacing the customers most likely to respond to an offer at a population level. When you tag customers by product category or browsing history, you can send more relevant messages than a broadcast to everyone.

These are real improvements. A CRM manager who has moved from bulk email to properly structured behavioural segmentation has genuinely raised their ceiling. Open rates improve. Revenue per send goes up. Unsubscribe rates come down.

However, segmentation is a map of things that have already happened. It's also focused on past behaviours, i.e. when someone has already signed up for an email. The ability to act immediately simply isn't there.

Your post-purchase segment tells you someone bought. Your lapsed segment tells you they haven't bought recently. Your engagement segment tells you who opened your last campaign. None of it tells you which of those subscribers is actively considering a purchase right now, in this session, having visited your site three times this week to look at the same product.

That's the gap. And it's why flat recovery rates survive even well-built segments.

The gap: why past behaviour isn't the same as present intent

To understand why this matters practically, you need to separate two things that email marketing tends to conflate: who someone is on your list and where they are in their buying journey right now.

There are two dimensions to this: the in-session signal (what this person is doing right now) and the broader buying window (are they actively in the market at all?). Standard segments miss both.

The historical data problem

Think about RFM. A customer in your "champions" segment (high recency, high frequency, high value) is someone you'd rightly treat as a priority. But their segment tells you they've bought before and bought recently. It doesn't tell you whether they're actively considering a purchase today. They might be. They might also have bought what they needed last month and have no intention of buying again for six weeks.

RFM is excellent at predicting which customers are likely to respond to a campaign over time, at a population level. It isn't designed to tell you which specific customer is in an active buying moment right now. Those are different questions, and treating the first as a proxy for the second is where the gap opens.

The engagement data problem

The standard workaround is engagement-based segmentation: split your list into openers and non-openers, active and inactive, and weight your sends accordingly. The principle is sound. The inputs have a serious problem.

Since Apple introduced Mail Privacy Protection with iOS 15 in September 2021, a proportion of email opens have been pre-fetched by Apple's servers rather than triggered by a subscriber actually opening the email.

According to Litmus's email client market share data, over 50% of email opens now occur on devices with Apple's Mail Privacy Protection activated. For UK fashion, beauty, and home retailers, where iPhone dominates device usage, the proportion of affected opens on your list is likely significant.

If your engagement-based segments were built or last reviewed before late 2021, it's worth auditing what proportion of your "engaged subscriber" definition rests on open rate signals and whether click and conversion data could give you a more reliable proxy. However, this isn't us saying "abandon engagement segmentation". We're saying you've got a reason to check that your inputs still mean what you think they mean.

The timing problem

Even if your segment is perfectly accurate, it doesn't solve the timing problem.

Suppose you have a genuinely high-intent customer: they're in market, they've been browsing your site, they're ready to buy. If that customer is in your 60-day lapsed segment, they'll receive your win-back flow on whatever cadence that flow runs. If they're in your post-purchase segment, they'll receive your next post-purchase email at the point the flow schedules it.

Neither of those flows asks: is this person ready to buy today? The segments tell you who to send to. They don't tell you when that person is receptive, or when they're actively in the middle of a buying decision that the right message could tip.

What "ready to buy" actually looks like

Buying intent doesn't show up in your CRM. It shows up in behaviour, but not in the way most email strategies assume.

The instinct is to look for observable signals: a customer who's visited the site twice this week, spent time on the outerwear category, or added something to their basket and removed it again.

These patterns feel meaningful, and they are. But they're proxies. They approximate intent rather than measure it. And proxies are very good at generalising.

Return visits to the same category could mean active consideration. It could also mean idle browsing, research with no near-term purchase plan, or a customer who's decided not to buy and is still processing why. Two customers can leave identical behavioural footprints with completely different intent trajectories.

The distinction that matters here is between an intent proxy and an intent prediction.

A proxy uses a single observable signal. So, page views, return visits, time on site, as a way to characterise specific behaviours.

A prediction uses hundreds of behavioural signals together. Things like scroll patterns, hesitation, comparison behaviour, click timing, revisit frequency, and models the probability that a specific visitor, right now, is likely to purchase.

That difference matters for email specifically because your flows are triggered on schedule, not on signal.

Consider a customer in your 90-day lapsed segment. Their segment says win-back flow, probably with a discount. But a real-time intent prediction across their session behaviour might tell a different story: they returned twice this week, built strong product affinity for outerwear without adding to cart — affinity that was visible well before any CTA click — and their intent has been rising, not falling, across the session.

That isn't a lapsed customer who needs persuading. Instead, it's someone ready to buy. They don't need a discount at all.

If you're offering discounts to people like that, all you're doing is eroding your margin. And let's just play with some numbers for a second. If you have a £120 average order value, a 20% discount on sale you would've made anyway costs you £24 pounds for that one sale. But it also costs for every single customer you've offered the same discount to.

Your email strategy can see who someone is and what they've done before. It can't see the modelled probability that they will purchase today. That requires a different layer of data entirely. (Spoiler: It's Made With Intent)

How to close the gap between your CRM and what's happening on-site

There are three ways to close it, and it's worth being honest about what each one costs.

1. Layer session behaviour onto send triggers — trigger sends based on a real-time on-site event rather than a profile segment on a schedule. If your ESP is Klaviyo, the ActiveOnSite flow trigger gets you closer. You're still dependent on session-entry events rather than continuous in-session behavioural signals, but it's a step in the right direction.

2. Prioritise timeliness over segment precision — tighten the timing of your event-based flows. Klaviyo's 2024 abandoned cart benchmark report, covering more than 143,000 flows, recommends sending the first recovery email within 2-4 hours of abandonment. Most brands set this window far wider. The window of peak intent closes faster than most email schedules assume.

3. Use intent-based scoring to qualify your existing segments — add a signal layer on top of your CRM segments that identifies which subscribers are currently showing on-site behaviour indicating an active buying moment. Platforms like Made with Intent analyse hundreds of behavioural signals in real time: return visit frequency, product page depth, comparison behaviour, session patterns. The result is a send informed by both who the customer is and where they are right now.

What this means for how you build segments

Audit your current flows against three questions:

• What is the trigger? Profile rule, onsite event or intent prediction?
• Does it rely on open rate engagement? If built before 2021, review whether click/conversion data could replace open rate as the proxy.‍
• Is it event-led? Tighten the send window to match the actual window of intent.

The question your segments can't answer

The most commercially important question: is this person ready to buy right now, isn't answered by a session behaviour alone. It's answered by a prediction built across hundreds of behavioural signals in that session, continuously updated as the customer moves.

That's not something a segment can produce. And it's not something a single observable proxy can substitute for.

Want to learn more about intent-based selling? Grab yourself a demo.

Social proof is everywhere. And that’s the problem.

Most brands run it sitewide, triggered on page-load to each and every visitors. It works brilliantly for some visitors, but damages conversion for others. Early urgency messages can cause anxiety and exits, especially for visitors who have yet to show any intent to purchase.

We covered the status quo of social proof already, but for a quick recap, if you only measure generic conversion rate uplift, you see the benefit for those it helps but miss the hidden downside for those it turns off. That’s why the first step is to rethink why you’re using it at all.

Remind yourself why you’re using social proof

Why are you really doing social proof? It may start off as a best practice, that is low-hanging fruit to “increase conversion rate” or “drive more revenue”, but that’s only half the story. Social Proof is ultimately about encouraging a certain behaviour from an individual by using the influence that the actions, choices or approvals of others have on them. And when you apply the message to everyone, all the time, you’re missing the real opportunity - and ultimately playing conversion roulette.

Urgency-style proof like “X people bought this today” might give high-intent visitors the final nudge, but it can spook a casual browser into leaving. Without understanding these nuances of an experience (by splitting results by audience and keeping a control group for each stage), you’ll never see the drop hiding inside your averages. Which brings us to the next question: who exactly are you showing it to?

Rethink who you’re delivering it to

Do all your visitors get the same message at the same time? They shouldn’t. High-intent visitors close to purchase are often persuaded by urgency. That same message can make a low-intent browser feel pushed and leave. In fact, urgency messaging can decrease conversion for low-intent visitors by 4–5%.

Instead, Bestseller messaging can help low-intent users refine their choices by pointing them to popular items. But it can also distract a high-intent shopper who’s already found what they want, just like showing unrelated recommendations in checkout can derail the final purchase. The key is knowing which messages work for which segments — and that’s where a more targeted, step-by-step approach comes in.

Step-by-step: How to get started with intent-based social proof

1: Analyse or test across intent stages

Start with what you’re running today, but split results by low, building, and high intent. Maintain a control group for each stage to compare “no message” against “message.” This is where the surprises appear. Urgency might lift high-intent conversion by 10% but drop low-intent by 4–5%.

2: Exclude the unsuited audiences

If urgency is scaring off browsers, remove it for those segments. Replace it with different messaging styles that fit their stage. Bestseller or top-rated messages can help low-intent visitors explore, while reassurance works better for those already on the brink of purchase. For segments where the original Social Proof didn’t work, consider testing alternative messages entirely.

3: Layer in real-time signals

Static triggers are blunt. Use signals like a drop in purchase confidence or increase in a visitor’s likelihood to abandon to time your messaging more precisely. For example, one jewellery brand predicted basket backtracking and swapped urgency for reassurance style Social Proof. This single change lifted conversion for that segment by 25%.

4: Bring in affinities and more

Make it personal. If someone’s deep into a specific brand or category, show them messaging that reflects it. “Custom rings designed this month” speaks to an engagement ring shopper. In a multi-brand store, tie the experience to brand loyalty, like “People who love [Brand X] also love this.”

5: Iterate and evolve

For segments without strong affinities, use it as a discovery tool rather than reassurance. Keep testing new messages for each stage, refining your targeting, and improving your timing. Social proof should get sharper over time, not sit as a static, set-and-forget feature.

A real-world example from a jewellery & watch retailer

A premium UK jewellery and watch retailer faced a familiar problem. Shoppers were reaching the basket, then backing out to browse again or revisit product pages. For higher-value, considered purchases, this hesitation was a sign of uncertainty. The team realised not every basket visitor needed urgency, some needed reassurance.

Using intent signals, they built a segment of visitors showing backtracking behaviour and delivered targeted in-basket reassurance, highlighting flexible delivery and secure payment options. This message appeared only to those who needed it, avoiding unnecessary noise for confident buyers. The result was a 25% uplift in conversion for that segment.

This example shows how the right message at the right moment can have a big impact, which leads to the bigger picture of what happens when you get intent-based social proof right. You can read the full customer story here.

The impact of using intent in social proof

When intent guides your targeting and timing, you keep the uplift without the hidden drop-offs. Better timing can amplify gains, and removing harmful triggers boosts coverage. Over time, social proof becomes a natural part of the journey, helping with discovery, reassurance, and evaluation, instead of a blunt, one-size-fits-all tactic.

Social proof works when it works for the right people. Intent makes that possible. Want to see what that could look like for your brand? Book a demo.

Social proof should be one of the most powerful tools in ecommerce. At its core, it’s the influence that the actions, choices or approvals of others have on an individual’s behaviour.

People look to others when they’re uncertain about what to choose, who to trust, or whether to act. In ecommerce, that influence can appear anywhere in the journey. As reassurance that a brand is worth buying from, or as urgency to act before missing out.

It comes in many formats: scarcity messages (“only 3 left”), activity indicators (add to baskets, recent views, recent purchases), reviews and ratings, and trending or bestseller labels. Used well, these cues can reassure, create urgency, and help people find what’s popular or trusted.

The problem is, social proof has become one of the most overused and underthought tactics in the game. It’s often deployed as a blanket message to everyone, with little thought about whether it fits their mindset or the brand experience.

Retailers love it because it’s quick to turn on and almost always delivers an aggregate uplift. But those uplifts are often driven by a smaller group, and the negative effects on others are hidden in the averages.

The status quo of social proof

Most ecommerce teams apply it generically, showing the same messages to everyone – often on every product page. The most common use is as a conversion-driving technique late in the journey, but there’s a growing trend to apply it earlier in discovery (e.g., “bestseller” on PLPs).

Its popularity comes from being considered “best practice,” easy vendor implementation, and the reliable ROI it shows on aggregate. But those aggregate numbers are disproportionately influenced by high-intent visitors, which hides the harm it can cause to others.

What works for one mindset can actively put another off. As part of our research for The Intent Gap Report, we found:

• “Trending” overlays on PLPs positively impact low-intent browsers.
• “X sold last week” overlays on checkout pages deliver an average +5% conversion lift for high-intent visitors but cause a -1% drop for low-intent visitors.

Luxury and exclusivity-driven brands often avoid generic social proof entirely. In high-consideration categories, it can feel out of place – an engagement ring buyer doesn’t want to hear that “20 others bought this today,” and a £3000 jacket doesn’t need a flashing urgency tag over carefully curated imagery. In these cases, overlays can jar with the brand and undermine the premium feel.

When social proof is everywhere, it stops providing reassurance or focus. The message becomes noise, prompting the question: why stick with this approach?

Because most retailers rely on page-type triggers (e.g., PDP = ready to buy). But many PDP visitors are still browsing. Without behavioural context, tactics are based on where someone is, not how they’re behaving. That one-size-fits-all approach ignores timing and mindset. And that’s exactly why it needs a rethink.

Social proof with intent

Social proof can reassure early in the journey or create urgency later, but timing and fit are critical. Softer cues like “bestseller” or “trending” help those still discovering products. Urgency or scarcity works best when someone has decided what they want and just needs a final nudge. Use it too soon, and it risks creating anxiety or distraction.

Think of walking into a DIY store paint aisle: if you’re browsing, you don’t want someone saying, “Only three tins left – buy now!” before you’ve chosen a colour. But if you’re holding the exact tin you want, that message might spur you to buy. The same logic applies online.

Or picture a luxury sales assistant with a £3000 jacket. They wouldn’t start with “20 people bought this today.” They’d focus on its quality, heritage, or popular combinations, tailoring the message to the moment.

Real-time intent signals mean you can:

• Show discovery-style social proof to those exploring
• Reserve urgency and scarcity for visitors with strong product interest or signs of hesitation
• Avoid showing it altogether to those it might deter

When you match the message to the moment, social proof stops being background noise and starts driving action.

The path to better social proof

While we’ll cover how to move from generic application to something more intent-based in a follow up, the core steps are:

1. Analyse performance by visitor mindset, not just aggregate.
2. Exclude audiences where a message harms conversion.
3. Adapt style and timing to fit both brand tone and visitor context.

The benefits? Higher incremental gains, reduced brand risk, and interactions that build trust.

Social proof works – but not for everyone, not everywhere, and not all the time. The more you align it with intent, the more it delivers.

Ready to deliver social proof that meets the moment? Discover how Feature Delivery with Intent works.

Abandoned cart emails became a key part of the CRM playbook for a reason. They’re easy to set up, look great in reports and are seen as a no-brainer for driving conversions. But let’s be honest. Most of them are blunt. They ignore why shoppers abandoned in the first place and often end up adding noise instead of value for the visitor.

In a recent piece, Rethinking abandonment emails with intent, we explored why this tactic so often falls short. The reach is limited to visitors you can actually email. The timing often misses the moment. And blanket discounts don’t just erode margin, they train shoppers to delay purchases.

If you haven’t read that yet, it’s worth a look. But this article is about moving forward. Here’s how CRM teams can use use intent with abandonment emails to make them smarter, more targeted and more effective.

Review why you are sending abandonment emails (and who to)

It’s easy to assume the goal of abandonment emails is simple: recover a lost sale. But was it a lost sale to begin with? Just having items in a cart isn’t always a signal of high purchase intent. Shoppers use them to shortlist products, compare options or as a save-for-later tool.

If the goal is to recover real opportunities, this tactic needs refining.

Not every abandoner should get an email. Without context, CRM teams risk:

• Sending to shoppers who are still browsing and not yet ready to buy.
• Triggering emails too soon or too late.
• Flooding inboxes with irrelevant reminders.

The consequences? Unsubscribes. Inbox fatigue. And lost trust. Excluding shoppers who aren’t ready to buy isn’t only a better experience. It also leaves room for emails that actually work, allowing you to send them with impact.

If someone’s adding to cart to compare or wishlist items, hitting them with a salesy reminder could risk turning them off completely.

So how do you make abandoned cart emails smarter, more targeted and more effective? Start here.

Optimising abandonment emails with intent

This isn’t about rebuilding from scratch. It’s about fixing the foundations first, reducing downside and then optimising for growth.

Step 1: Analyse

Start by reviewing your current campaigns with intent data. Segment visitors by mindset and product affinity. Understand which groups engage and which ones churn. Look beyond standard metrics like open rates. Ask who clicked, who converted and, crucially, who unsubscribed.

Step 2: Exclude

Stop sending to low-intent visitors. Protect your list health by cutting out disengaged shoppers who are unlikely to convert. Focus efforts where they’ll actually move the needle.

Step 3: Improve

Optimise the emails you do send to high-intent visitors. This isn’t just about tweaking subject lines. Think about mindset. If a shopper is in discovery mode, avoid hard-sell copy. Instead, highlight educational content, social proof or unique selling points to build confidence. For those showing strong purchase intent, timely nudges and delivery reassurance might be all they need to convert.

One area many retailers get wrong is discounting. Blanket incentives erode margin and train shoppers to wait. Instead, reserve offers for visitors showing clear signs of hesitation, with an unlikelihood to return to site.

Grow with better emails and beyond the inbox

Once you’ve reduced downside and optimised for impact, you’re ready to grow further.

In email, you can tailor creative based on intent stage and affinities. Think beyond discounts or nurture flows. You can even explore dynamic recommendations for basket builders and cross-sell opportunities. This isn’t about flooding them with options but about making the right product feel obvious.

One of our customers, a leading UK jeweller, faced this challenge head on. Their CRM team realised their “one-size-fits-all” abandonment email was limiting relevance and risking engagement. They started with our exclusion and optimisation steps, then moved onto more context-driven creative.

They created three visitor groups: low, building and high intent. Each group received tailored emails. High-intent abandoners got a timely, persuasive message tied to browsed products. Lower-intent visitors were sent softer campaigns focused on brand USPs. Some received no email at all to protect list health.

The result? A 12% uplift in click-through rates and a strategy that felt more like a conversation than a conversion ploy. Read the full customer story here.

But your response doesn’t have to stop at the inbox.

Onsite, once you detect exit signals in real time, you can trigger supportive nudges before visitors abandon, such as delivery reassurance or save-for-later prompts. You can also surface email capture prompts for unknown visitors at the right moment to grow your contactable base.

When onsite and email journeys are connected, you’re no longer chasing abandoners after they’ve gone. You’re helping them complete the journey in the moment.

The impact when you get this right

When you rethink abandonment emails with intent, shoppers feel understood instead of pestered. CRM teams send fewer, smarter emails that actually drive revenue.

Metrics improve across the board too:

• Unsubscribe rates drop dramatically due to less inappropriate emails
• Click-through rates (CTR) climb as relevance improves
• Higher return visits and positive movement on intent to return metrics.
• On average, Made With Intent users see a 65 percent increase in campaign impact overall

This isn’t just about improving KPIs. It’s about changing how shoppers feel when they hear from you. Intent-based emails create relevance, reduce noise and rebuild trust. They don’t just recover sales. They set the stage for long-term growth.

Want to see how intent-first abandonment emails work in practice? Get a demo to learn how Made With Intent helps teams recover more revenue without damaging their shoppers’ experience.

Abandoned cart emails are often seen as the gold standard for CRM success. They’re easy to set up, look great in reports, and are widely viewed as a no-brainer for driving conversions. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: they’re not the silver bullet we’ve been treating them as.

Most retailers rely on them as a core tactic. Yet the reality is they only reach a small fraction of abandoners. These are the people you’ve identified and secured permission to email. Even when these emails land in a shopper’s inbox, the moment has often passed. It’s like walking out of a store and having the assistant chase you down the high street an hour later. That window to influence the decision has already closed.

To make matters worse, customers have learned how to game the system. Many now abandon carts deliberately to trigger a discount code. According to our Intent Gap research, 83% of online shoppers have used a discount code even when they were ready to pay full price. That’s margin erosion, but also proof that current approaches are blunt, and shoppers know how to exploit them.

It’s time to rethink how we handle abandonment. And it starts with the emails themselves.

The status quo: Abandonment emails as the default fix

Abandoned cart emails feel like an easy win: a shopper adds something to their cart, leaves, and a templated flow comes to the rescue. Subject lines like “Forgot something?” or “Your cart misses you” flood inboxes, often paired with a discount to lure the customer back.

On the surface, these campaigns perform well. High open rates. Strong click-throughs. Solid ROI. But let’s not kid ourselves: those metrics don’t tell the whole story.

• Limited reach: Only a fraction of abandoners are identifiable and contactable.
• Delayed timing: By the time the email lands, the shopper’s attention has moved on. Or worse, they’ve bought from a competitor.
• Added friction: Unless you’ve captured an email address and marketing consent, most visitors are already out of reach.
• Predictable patterns: Shoppers now anticipate these emails and wait for discounts.
• Generic messaging: Emails rarely account for why someone abandoned in the first place.

If we’re honest, these emails are less of a personalised recovery tactic and more of a reactive safety net. And safety nets don’t work for everyone.

The Problem: Why they fall short

There’s no denying abandoned cart emails deliver some results. But they’re flawed:

• Low impact at scale: Most shoppers won’t even see one. No email means no campaign.
• Lack of context: “You left something behind” doesn’t consider intent. Were they comparing prices? Still browsing? Waiting for payday?
• Delay kills momentum: The longer you wait, the colder the lead gets. What felt relevant in the moment quickly becomes noise.
• Margin drain: Blanket discounts train customers to delay purchases and wait for incentives.

These emails aren’t inherently bad. But in their current form, they’re blunt and reactive. They’re also increasingly easy for shoppers to tune out or exploit.

The Reframe: Fix the email, then think bigger

We don’t need to throw out abandoned cart emails. But we do need to evolve them.

Start by making them smarter:

• Segment for context: A high-intent abandoner may only need reassurance. A low-intent visitor might require education or a compelling USP.
• Time with care: Not every shopper needs a follow-up within an hour. Some need space.
• Rethink the content: Shift from discount-first to value-first messaging. Highlight free returns, flexible payments, or social proof instead.

This isn’t theoretical. One UK high-street jeweller used intent data to personalise abandonment emails, tailoring content and timing to match each visitor’s mindset. The result? A 12% uplift in click-through rates and a strategy that felt more like a conversation than a conversion ploy. Read the full story here.

But even the smartest emails have their limits. If we know when and why a shopper is about to abandon, why wait until they’ve left to act?

Every abandonment email is, by definition, too late. The shopper has already gone. That’s why leading retailers are complementing smarter emails with in-session interventions.

With real-time intent data, you can:

• Detect when a shopper is hesitating in the cart.
• Surface supportive messaging before they leave (e.g., save-for-later prompts or delivery reassurance).
• Reserve discounts for visitors showing exit signals, rather than everyone.

This approach doesn’t just recover abandoners; it prevents abandonment in the first place. And because interventions happen in the moment, they feel like help rather than a hard sell.

Future Vision: Abandonment reimagined

Abandoned cart emails still have their place. But they’re no longer enough on their own.

The smarter play combines:

• Smarter emails: Contextual, well-timed, and less reliant on discounts.
• In-session interventions: Adaptive experiences that engage all abandoners, not just the small percentage you can email.

It’s a shift from generic flows to contextual journeys. From chasing abandoners to understanding them. From reactive tactics to proactive engagement.

And when you get this right, abandonment isn’t just reduced. It’s transformed.

Ready to rethink your abandonment tactics? Learn how intent makes abandonment emails more impactful or read our article on getting started with intent-based abandonment.

Retailers ask for emails with the goal of growing their audience, their campaign reach, and their influence.

But most retailers are asking at the wrong time, in the wrong way, and it’s costing them.

In our Intent Gap research, we found 55% of online shoppers dislike pop-ups that appear early in a session. 45% say they actively make them less likely to buy. One in five even say they’d leave a site altogether if interrupted too soon.

37% of the retail sites analysed as part of the report used pop-ups, with 79% shown within the first 30 seconds.

The problem isn’t the capture itself. It’s the lack of context.

Most email capture strategies are built on fixed rules; time on site, page views, scroll depth. But these are proxies, not signals. They don’t reflect how a visitor is behaving or how likely they are to respond. They assume intent, rather than recognising it.

This isn’t about switching tactics. It’s about responding to behaviour in real time.

Rethink: Why you’re capturing emails

When email capture is treated as a numbers game, relevance drops. And the risk goes up. You might gain a contact in the short-term, but ultimately lose a customer.

The right question isn’t how do we collect more emails? It’s how do we make the exchange feel appropriate, valuable and well-timed. For both sides?

That means considering two things:

• Mindset: Where is the customer in their journey? Are they focused and confident? Or showing signs of struggle, and unlikelihood to progress?
• Value: What are you offering in return? Is it aligned to what they’re doing?

The best email capture doesn’t interrupt the journey. It supports it.

Optimise: Start capturing with Intent

To start with, optimise what already exists. Use intent segmentation to change when your capture prompts fire.

Play 1: Trigger email capture for abandoning visitors

Most email capture is delivered too soon, before visitors have shown any interest or given any signal that they’re ready for a value exchange.

The fix: Wait for signs of struggle or abandon, then trigger based on live behaviour.

Take On The Beach, who triggered capture only for visitors in the Engage or Build stages of the Intent Framework, who were showing subtle signs of drop-off. By adjusting the timing to match behaviour, they saw a 28% uplift in email sign-ups with no hit to conversion.

Why this works:

• You reach the right audience, in-session
• You increase sign-ups without sacrificing experience
• You stop defaulting to time-based rules that overlook nuance

Play 2: Ask for an email when a visitor is unlikely to progress

Instead of waiting for signs of struggle, or abandon, you can also target a visitor when they’re indicating they’re unlikely to move forward in their journey, by using Intent to Progress.

That’s what Le Chameau did. By limiting email capture to visitors who were unlikely to progress, and excluding focused shoppers entirely, they:

• Increased email sign-ups by 3%
• Drove 24% incremental revenue
• Protected high-value journeys from interruption

Grow: What comes next

Timing is essential. But message matters too.

Most capture prompts lead with a generic offer: “Sign up for 10% off.” But not everyone is looking to buy. And not everyone cares about a discount.

Visitors early on in their journey, who haven’t found the right product for them? Offer a newsletter prompt.

Shoppers who have a product affinity, but low likelihood to purchase? Suggest a save for later or price drop alert.

This approach moves email capture from a hard sell to a helpful nudge. Tailored to behaviour, aligned with intent.

It also opens the door to experimenting with softer incentives, different tones of voice, and varied placements. Especially for visitors who show high exit intent, but lower likelihood to return.

What happens when you get this right?

When email capture is powered by real-time intent:

• Sign-up rates increase, because prompts are more timely and contextual
• Conversion rates hold steady, because you don’t disrupt high-intent visitors
• List quality improves, with fewer disengaged or disinterested contacts
• Revenue grows, from visitors that may otherwise have been lost

Capture becomes strategic, not interruptive. And it builds long-term value in your customer base.

Your first three steps

If you’re looking to make an impact fast:

1. Replace time-based triggers with intent-led email capture prompts
2. Target abandoning or struggling visitors, and those unlikely to progress. Exclude focused shoppers
3. Align your offer or message to the visitor’s behaviour and mindset

From there, test new placements, value exchanges and copy aligned to intent predictions. And treat capture as a recurring opportunity, not a one-off chance.

Because when you understand visitor behaviour, you don’t have to interrupt to make an impact. You just have to respond at the right time.

Want to see how intent-first email capture works in practice? Get a demo to learn how Made With Intent helps teams grow their lists without damaging their visitors’ experience.

An engaged customer list is a valuable asset. It’s no wonder most retail websites go for the obvious way of growing it: triggering a pop-up to everyone. Often seconds after someone lands, or as they go to exit.

Yet, asking for someone's email address moments after they arrive feels abrupt and annoying. It’s not the best start to a new relationship, is it?

The thing is, eCommerce makes these things easy to overlook. For most teams, a visitor's reaction to the pop-up is only perceptible through proxy metrics like close or conversion rate. This doesn’t give you the full picture. What’s not measurable is the number of people who were there to buy but didn’t, because of the email capture.  

So we asked shoppers. 

Our Intent Gap report found that showing an email capture pop up too soon has a 1 in 5 chance of causing a visitor to abandon your site.

Let’s be clear. It’s not all email capture pop-ups that frustrate customers. Some are viewed as valuable and helpful, with conversion rates in high double figures. It all comes down to timing and context. 

We’ve heard from the shoppers, so it’s only fair we did the same with the retailers. We spoke with nine ecommerce leaders to understand why a catch-all approach to email capture pop-ups is still the norm despite how they make shoppers feel. 

The status quo of email capture 

More than half of shoppers find pop-ups annoying. 1 in 5 dislike them so much it stops them from shopping. Yet, 79% of pop-ups are triggered within the first 30 seconds. 

Is this the best approach we have in 2025 and beyond? 

“How we shop online has changed a lot over the last 5-10 years, yet we’re still relying on the same tactics. Customers are more savvy, shopping across multiple websites and are protective over who they give their personal information to.”
Jackie Barnett, Head of CRM at MandM Direct

As Jackie points out, immediate email capture pop-ups might have worked 10 years ago, but today's shoppers are worried about data security. Plus, with overflowing inboxes, most people are reluctant to offer up their info. Time on site pop-ups might well be “the way we’ve always done it,” but it won’t wash with today’s customers.  

Another reason the industry is stuck using an outdated method? FOMO. 

“Most brands do email pop-ups early or on exit because it feels safe. Like, catch the visitor before they leave or bounce. It's a numbers game--more eyeballs, more chances.”
‍Natalia Lavrenenko, UGC manager/Marketing manager

It’s a numbers game when it should be a people game. Where’s the value in collecting 1000s of email addresses of annoyed people? Will they read your emails, or mark them as spam? That’s if the email’s even real.

So, what’s really at stake here? 

“If you've got a lot of inbound organic traffic, combined with a good lead magnet, you can do well on that 1%-2% conversion on popups. The con is that you're annoying everybody else.” 
‍Brenna Milleville, Founder at Elly and Grace

Capturing emails from a tiny percentage of all traffic while actively irritating the vast majority. It’s a pretty bad deal, and everyone knows it. So why is this method still being used? 

“There's pressure to capture volume. Just like the pressure to send more marketing emails, even though we know it’s ineffective. It can be hard to justify more targeted efforts without data, especially when a belief persists that more activity = more revenue.” 
‍Alfie Calas, Head of CRM at thortful

This is the reality for many ecommerce teams. Goals and targets that direct them away from doing better work. 

It comes down to what can be measured and what data is available. While it’s obvious a smaller, engaged list will outperform a larger, disengaged one, having the data to prove it is the stumbling block. 

“Customers who consent to email tend to have a higher LTV, so capturing their email is a priority. The more emails we have, the more customers we can keep speaking to, the more chance we’ve got at cost-effectively retaining them!”
Jackie Barnett, Head of CRM at MandM Direct

As Jackie shared, the rationale behind capturing every email address vs. just those that matter is the idea of chance. 

Email capture pop-ups triggered after 30 seconds on-site equate to a scattergun approach based on a wish and a prayer. What’s ignored is the loss of potential immediate sales from the people put off. 

This isn't news to ecommerce professionals, but it's not just the pressure of targets that has seen it become an accepted behaviour. It's the limitations of visitor data and the targeting options available in their tech stack.

“Most out-of-the-box tools only allow for a handful of triggers, so marketers are restricted in the ways they can be creative about approaching customers for email capture.” 
‍Alfie Calas, Head of CRM at thortful

“The prevalent [email capture] methods don't consider the unique journey and mood of each visitor.” 
‍Ben Read, CEO at Mercha

It’s worth reiterating; a web page tells you nothing about the customers’ buying stage.

So when tools are limited to triggering pop-ups based on page or time on site, you miss critical signals. Your experience becomes disconnected from the context of the visitor.

If retailers want to improve their relationship with customers, this status quo has to change. The focus needs to shift to the shopper and how they behave in the context of the whole experience. This is how we create higher opt-in percentages, less friction, and more meaningful lists.

The cost of generic email capture

So much effort goes into crafting the perfect welcome email series, the tone of voice, database segmentation, data security practices, etc. But so little goes into the moment when customers are asked to sign up. Yet there’s much at stake. 40% of shoppers say email capture pop ups make them less likely to buy.

“I've learned that how and when you ask for an email can make or break a relationship with customers…Focus on building relationships, not just lists.” 
Asim Rahat, Founder at Oswin Hyde

Asim found out the hard way: get it wrong, and there’s rarely a second chance. A poorly-timed pop-up might get closed, but it also sets the tone. 

So, what’s the real cost of generic, ill-timed pop-ups? 

The negative shift in perception and lost sales you’ll never track.

“A huge issue is the unseen impact on people who find these pop-ups a total turn-off. What percentage of potential customers are being lost each day due to this one-size-fits-all approach? Plus, the cost of the voucher codes being handed out to customers who would have purchased anyway or had no intention of making more than one purchase.” 
‍Jackie Barnett, Head of CRM at MandM Direct

Because generic email capture is a catch-all, it’s hard to work out what’s in it for the customer.  Retailers resort to bribing visitors with discounts. This leads to a bad outcome: lost margin.

Offering discount codes in sitewide pop-ups might help you capture emails, but that’s because you’re giving money away to everyone by default. We’ve already explored the status quo of discounts in this article if you want more on the subject. 

Fundamentally, generic email capture pop-ups cost you customer relationships, margins, and sales. But if this is the industry standard, what options do retailers really have?

Approaching discounts based on visitor intent

“Imagine someone is browsing sneakers, comparing a few models, maybe even checking delivery options. They’re clearly into it, but not quite ready. That’s when a “Hey! Want 10% off your first order?” feels helpful, not annoying. It’s like catching them at the right moment in-store, not shouting at them the second they walk in.”
Kardelen Ozyurda, UX & CRO Manager at PUMA

That’s the shift. Ask when it feels natural. 

If you're not sure when these moments occur in your customer's online buying experience, consider when you might go over to a customer in a store setting to ask if they want more help, more information, or some material to take home. This exercise can also help you work out what to offer in return—whether that’s a newsletter, discount code, or a stock alert.

It should be obvious to the visitor why you need their email address, because there's value for both parties. 

“We ask for push notification permissions after customers have done a 'high-value' action, like adding a product to their basket or purchasing. It's an easier value exchange when the customer can see the why behind giving their permission. We found the rate of acceptance skyrocketed when we did this.”
Alfie Calas, Head of CRM at thortful

If you find yourself cringing at the idea of only asking people at the end of the journey and not everyone, consider this: intent-based email capture reduces impressions by 50%. But it also grows sign-ups by 40%. 

You know why? 

Because it only triggers when appropriate. 

“Context is everything. Email capture should be aligned with genuine value, like after engaging content, unlocking a discount, or adding to cart. The more it feels like a fair exchange, the better. The key is making it feel earned, not demanded.”
‍Niall Young O'Brien, CRM Manager at Represent

The more value you can convey, the higher the conversion rate of your email capture. 

What’s wild is transforming something that actively annoys people into something that they are happy to sign up for, just by changing when you show it. It’s no longer one-sided.

What you say is just as important as when you ask. The more relevant what you say is to the individual, their mindset, and stage in the buying journey, the more likely you’re going to get your form filled in. Not only that, but relevancy has an added bonus when it comes to relationship building. 

“Personalise the ask, tie it to behaviour, interest, or value. Relevance builds trust, trust builds lists. Ask when you’ve earned it. Timing + relevance = quality leads and higher conversion.”
Brad Ledson, Email Marketing & CRM Manager 

Brad echoes what Jackie said earlier. Today's customers want, or even need, to trust the company asking for their information before they will give it away.

If you offer a discount for first-time buyers shortly after someone checks out as a guest, they aren’t going to have much faith in your brand. Likewise, if the visitor is in product research mode, offering a discount won't resonate as well as offering a handy guide to the product. 

Retailers want relationships, not emails. But old tactics and poor tech haven’t kept up with how customers should be treated. The status quo prioritises capturing emails over customer experience and sales. To flip the script, retailers need to ask for emails at the right time in the right way, based on buyer intent. 

Want to capture emails without subjecting your customers to generic, inappropriate pop-ups? Explore Email Capture with Intent.

Thanks again to all the ecommerce experts who shared their thoughts with us: 

Jackie Barnett, Head of CRM at MandM Direct

Brenna Milleville, Founder at Elly and Grace 

Natalia Lavrenenko, UGC manager/Marketing manager at Rathly

Alfie Calas, Head of CRM at thortful

Ben Read, CEO at Mercha

Asim Rahat, Founder at Oswin Hyde

Kardelen Ozyurda, UX & CRO Manager - Ecommerce Europe at PUMA

Niall Young O'Brien, CRM Manager at Represent

Brad Ledson, Email Marketing & CRM Manager

We need to talk about how ecommerce brands collect emails.

Pop-ups demanding your email the second you land on a site? We've all seen them. We've all clicked the 'X'.

Yet this is still ecommerce’s default behaviour. A visitor hasn’t scrolled, clicked or even looked around, and already the brand is asking for their data. Sometimes dangling a discount. Sometimes just promising to keep them "in the loop." But always interrupting. Always assuming.

It’s digital directness at its most extreme. And the numbers show it is doing more harm than good.

As we found in The Intent Gap report, 55% of shoppers dislike pop-ups that appear early in a session. 45% say those pop-ups make them less likely to buy. And one in five say they would leave a site altogether if interrupted too soon.

Yet 79% of the leading retail sites we analysed fire pop-ups within the first 30 seconds.

Brands might think they are winning because the database grows. But what they are really doing is playing a game of short-term gain, long-term pain.

The people and teams at these brands are aware of this. We know because we asked them for an article on ecommerce’s email capture issue. But despite knowing it, most don’t have an easy way of changing their behaviour.

This is one of the biggest blindspots in ecommerce. It’s time to rethink the entire logic of email capture.

Email capture works...But at what cost?

For CRM teams, email capture is a KPI. The more addresses in the database, the better.

But the real question is not whether these pop-ups collect emails. They do. Some of the time. Around 2% of the time, in fact.

The question is whether they should.

Because when you look closer, that growth comes with a hidden cost. And it is more than just a momentary annoyance.

Shoppers are irritated. Journeys are disrupted. Trust is eroded.

And perhaps worst of all, most email capture pop-ups offer a discount as the incentive. Usually 10%. It feels easy. It feels like a win. But the truth is, you’re not just interrupting a visitor. You’re also handing out margin you never needed to give away.

Yet inside ecommerce teams, nobody measures the downstream impact. Very few ask how those emails perform once collected. Whether they open the emails. Whether they engage. Whether they unsubscribe immediately or, worse, mark it as spam.

Because the metric is the email captured. Not the value of that email.

It is the lazy default. A blunt trade-off between quantity and quality. And it only survives because brands never step back to challenge the assumption that capturing an email is always better than not.

But is it?

Imagine this offline. A shopper walks into a store, takes two steps past the entrance, and a salesperson jumps in front of them demanding their contact details in exchange for 10% off. It would be absurd. Yet online, it is the norm.

We measure the upside. We ignore the downside.

Why do brands still do this?

Because it is easy.

Because the tools make it easy.

Because the KPI is set. Grow the database at all costs.

The truth is, the tools most ecommerce teams rely on aren’t built to do anything else. They only support rigid, rule-based triggers. You can fire a pop-up after a set time, after a certain number of pages, or when a mouse scrolls to the top of the screen. Blunt instruments that don't adapt to what the visitor is actually doing.

Because the tools are so limited, teams don’t have to think strategically. They pick one of the arbitrary options, turn it on, and move on to the next task. When platforms lead with convenience over context, strategy suffers. The tech shapes the behaviour.

But it is not just the tools. Organisational silos compound the problem. Email capture, discounting and experience are often owned by three different teams. Each has valid goals, but they are pulling in different directions.

CRM teams want emails. UX teams want less friction. Trading teams want conversions.

And no one asks the simple question: at what point would you be comfortable giving your email address to a retailer?

The anonymity of ecommerce only deepens the problem. I call this the veil of anonymity. Because shoppers can’t push back or protest, teams feel detached. When you remove human connection from the buying experience, it becomes easier to justify inappropriate interruptions. It becomes easy to forget that shoppers are real people.

How intent changes the game

This is not an argument against email capture. It is an argument for more appropriate email capture.

Not based on arbitrary page views or timers. Based on real behaviour. Real signals. Real moments of relevance.

You need to wait for the right time when the visitor has committed something towards that relationship before you ask that question.

And those moments will vary. There is no single 'right' page or second. Instead, teams should look at the journey through the lens of the visitor. Not the website.

For example:

• Browsing content? Offer to send more, like recipes or inspiration.
• Comparing products? Offer to save favourites to their inbox.
• At the basket, but hesitating? Offer to email them the basket or send price alerts.
• Showing signs of exit? Use that as the trigger to invite them to continue the conversation.

This is exactly what brands like Le Chameau and On The Beach have done by adding real-time intent to their email capture tactics.

Le Chameau used intent signals to show email capture only to disengaging visitors, not those in a focused, progressing journey. You can read the full play here.

The result:

• 3% more sign-ups.
• 24% incremental revenue from that segment.
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On The Beach used exit signals to trigger email capture earlier in the session, before visitors had fully disengaged. Explore their play here.

The result:

• 28% more email captures.

Not more pop-ups. Not more impressions. Just better timing. Better targeting. And better outcomes.

A more considered playbook for email capture

Want to do the same? Here’s how to rethink your approach:

When should you ask?

• Not on entry
• When visitors show signs of struggle, hesitation or exit
• When they have built some product affinity or journey progression
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Who should you ask?

• Not everyone.
• Exclude visitors in a Focus state, who are progressing naturally
• Target those most at risk of leaving or showing hesitation

What should the offer be?

• Not always a discount
• Offer content, save-for-later prompts, alerts, or softer relationship-building asks

And above all: stop thinking of email capture as a one-shot pop-up. Think of it as a sequence of opportunities to connect, at the right moment for the right customers.

You get a pop-up demanding your email before you’ve even looked around. How does that make you feel?

That is the question we should be asking of every tactic, every journey, every decision.

Because this is not just about collecting more emails. Or it shouldn’t be. It is about thinking in terms of value as much as volume. From interruptions to relationships. From blunt force to appropriate timing.

It is always better to start a relationship with respect than to do a fast grab for 10%.

Want to see how others are using intent to grow email lists without hurting experience? Read up on Email Capture with Intent.