Are you stuck in a discounting doom-loop?

Hey {{ First Name | Founder }},

I’m seeing a really worrying pattern across eCommerce brands at the moment, and once you’re in it, it can be hard (but not impossible) to get out of.

As the eComm industry has matured, ad costs have risen, competition has increased, and attention has become harder to earn. In response, a lot of brands end up leaning on promotions.

Discounts drive fast revenue, so they get used everywhere, in email, in ads, and as the default way to stimulate demand.

At first, it works.

But slowly, almost without noticing, the discount becomes the strategy.

What tends to happen is that discounts start doing double duty.

They’re used to bring existing customers back and as a way to convince new customers to buy for the first time. Instead of being a tactical tool, discount becomes the main reason people convert.

Over time, your email list learns the pattern. Customers realise that if they wait long enough, another sale is coming. As a result, non-promotional emails stop performing, and full-price launches struggle to gain traction.

At the same time, acquisition starts to suffer too.

Rather than being forced to really understand what motivates a first-time customer — the messaging, the positioning, the education required to sell the product at full value — the marketing team relies on discounts to close the gap.

Creative strategy becomes less rigorous, landing pages stay under-optimised, and the hard work of finding winning angles gets postponed.

The discount is doing the heavy lifting.

The longer this goes on, the more entrenched it becomes.

Existing customers don’t feel compelled to buy unless there’s a promotion running. New customers are introduced to the brand through discount, rather than through value or differentiation. And because discounts are so effective in the short term, it becomes very hard to step away from them, even when margins are being squeezed and growth feels fragile.

Ironically, what started as a way to drive revenue ends up hurting both retention and acquisition.

I recently worked with an eight-figure outdoor apparel brand that was deep in this exact situation.

They had a genuinely great product and a large base of loyal customers who loved what they’d bought. The problem wasn’t the product, it was that those customers had been trained, over time, to purchase almost exclusively during discount periods, which were happening fairly often.

On the acquisition side, the ad creative was flat and uninspiring, there was very little structured creative testing, and the website assumed a level of brand familiarity that simply wasn’t there for new customers.

So we made a decision that felt uncomfortable at first.

We stopped discounting, and we held our nerve.

Not permanently, but long enough to reset expectations.

At the same time, we made sure existing customers still had reasons to engage by planning exciting, genuinely desirable product launches throughout the year.

For new customer acquisition, we built a full-funnel creative strategy that focused on education, motivation, and storytelling rather than price.

We tested dozens of combinations of marketing messages and product stories, engaged UGC creators, shot founder ads, got athletes shooting content. We went all-in on creative strategy and creative testing.

In parallel we improved the website experience so it did a much better job of explaining why the product was different, and why it was worth buying at full price. Previously, the site assumed people already knew and trusted the brand. Now, it actually sold the value.

This wasn’t fast, and it definitely wasn’t easy. There were plenty of moments where discounting would have been the simplest solution. But we stayed disciplined.

Over time, those winning messages and angles emerged.

The result was 70% year-on-year revenue growth, achieved without discounting, driven by a significant increase in new customers buying at full price.

Not because ads got cheaper.
Not because competition disappeared.
But because the brand finally learned how to sell its product based on value, not price.

Discounts aren’t inherently bad, and they absolutely have their place. But when they become your primary growth lever, they quietly erode both your ability to acquire new customers and your ability to retain them profitably.

If it feels like you can’t grow without running a sale, it’s worth asking whether the real issue isn’t traffic or spend, but the way your product’s value is being communicated.

Need help working this out for your brand?

Here are the ways I can help:

1. Coaching Join 25+ amazing ecomm brands getting my direct support in a group coaching programme: www.ecommrockets.com.

2.Agency Done-For-You (waiting list - slots available in March) www.ecommgrowthcollective.com

3.Private Consulting - on request.

Book a call to find out more: https://calendly.com/jessiehealy/coffee_with_jessie

x

Jessie