Campaign and promotion optimisation
Campaigns and promotional activity are among the most powerful tools for driving short-term growth, but they are also some of the most expensive and complex levers to manage. While they can deliver immediate uplift, they often come with hidden side effects that are not captured in standard reporting, including cannibalisation of other products, shifts between sales channels, and pull-forward effects that reduce future demand.
We help organisations optimise their campaign and promotional strategy using advanced data science techniques such as econometric modelling and machine learning.
By analysing historical campaign performance at a granular level, we isolate true incremental impact from underlying baseline demand. This includes quantifying how promotions affect not only total sales, but also how they redistribute demand across product portfolios, for example when a discounted hero product cannibalises full-price adjacent SKUs, or when promotional activity in one category reduces sales in another.
The hidden side effects of promotions
Cannibalisation
A discounted hero SKU can quietly steal sales from full-price adjacent products, eroding category profitability.
Channel & partner shift
Promotions often reallocate demand between channels and retail partners without lifting total category sales.
Pull-forward & dip
Short-term spikes are frequently followed by depressed demand as customers stock up or advance their purchases.
Incremental sales uplift and profit uplift
Promotions often shift customer behaviour between distribution channels and retail partners, without necessarily increasing total category demand. By explicitly modelling these dynamics, we help businesses understand whether campaigns are genuinely growing the business or simply reallocating revenue across channels and trading partners.
We also measure intertemporal effects, such as demand acceleration and post-promotion dips. Many campaigns drive a short-term sales spike, followed by a period of depressed demand as customers have already stocked up or advanced their purchases. By quantifying these lagged effects, we provide a more accurate view of true campaign ROI over time rather than relying on short-term uplift metrics.
A real campaign, decomposed
What looks like a strong campaign on the surface is rarely as profitable once price reduction, margin erosion, cannibalisation and the post-promotion dip are isolated. This is the picture our framework brings to the surface.
Illustrative example. Baseline sales plus the gross incremental uplift, then sequentially adjusted for the erosion effects, yield the true net campaign contribution.
A decision-ready framework
The outcome is a robust, decision-ready framework for campaign optimisation. This enables businesses to identify which promotions generate genuine incremental growth, which primarily shift demand between products, channels or time periods, and which erode long-term value. Ultimately, we help clients design more efficient promotional calendars, reduce unnecessary discounting, and improve the balance between short-term activation and sustainable, profitable growth.
- Genuine incremental growth
- Reduced unnecessary discounting
- Balanced short-term activation and sustainable, profitable growth
Campaign & promotion optimisation
Make your next campaign genuinely incremental
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