How DTC Brands Can Ditch Discount Popups Without Sacrificing Growth

Despite the growing pushback against discount popup culture in ecommerce, a whopping 70% of Shopify stores still rely on incentives to drive first-time purchases and list growth.

Why such a high number? Many brands view discounts and incentives as necessary evils to grease the conversion wheels and obtain marketing consent. However, in the case of discount popups, they (ironically) risk driving discount-trained customers and lower-quality opt-ins while overcomplicating the path to conversion.

Fortunately, there are more effective ways to transform site visitors into loyal customers without sacrificing your bottom line in the process. In this tactical guide, we'll dive into the dangers of discount popups and how your brand can drive quality opt-ins (and conversions) through other value-creating offers.

The Dangers of Discount Culture in Ecommerce

While it's common for brands to default to discount popups as a "proven" growth lever, the long-term consequences of relying on these incentives can be significant. From attracting lower-quality opt-ins to the steady erosion of margins, these are the most pressing drawbacks of relying on discount popups:

Erosion of Margins

In an ecommerce landscape defined by rising CPAs, discount popups act as an additional drain on your brand's already thin margins. Even offering a modest 10% discount means your brand has to sell 50% more items to earn the same amount of profit. Plus, a continuous flow of upfront incentives can quickly dilute the perceived value of your full-priced products.

We've learned from brands like Jones Road that discount popups aren't necessary to drive opt-ins and repeat purchases. By focusing on building great products, loyalty rewards, and smooth user experiences, these brands maintain shopper engagement and solidify continuous demand for full-priced items.

Consolidation of Discount-Dependent Traffic

When price becomes a shopper's primary motivator behind conversion or marketing opt-in, they'll jump ship as soon as they find a deal elsewhere. This is the Achilles heel of discount popups. They tend to attract discount-trained subscribers who become anchored to lower prices, creating a relationship with consequences beyond the initial purchase.

These customers often ignore full-price communications and only respond to campaigns offering similar or better discounts. This creates a cycle where brands feel pressured to offer increasingly deeper discounts to maintain engagement, further eroding margins and brand value. Over time, this discount dependency becomes increasingly challenging to break, potentially forcing your brand into a race to the bottom on pricing that's nearly impossible to escape from.

Disrupted Shopping Experiences

The last thing shoppers want to see at the start of their browsing journey is a popup asking for their email. The fact that almost 1 billion people worldwide use adblockers is proof that shoppers crave seamless, uninterrupted experiences. When you layer a quiz, a discount popup, an exit intent message, and sometimes even require shoppers to leave your site to claim discount codes, you're creating a virtual obstacle course that many visitors simply won't complete. Instead, they'll abandon their session entirely.

Because discount popups are so universal, the question rarely gets asked – do they actually help or harm conversion rates? Some brands have asked that question and ended up dropping them entirely, providing offers that don't require shopper emails and instead collecting marketing opt-in at checkout. The result? Improved CVR without diluting the strength of their marketing lists with low-intent users.

How Brands Benefit From Breaking Their Discount Popup Dependency

When brands break their reliance on discount popups, they drive higher profit margins, deepen customer loyalty, and lay a foundation for sustainable growth. Instead of chasing fleeting wins, you'll unlock opportunities to: 

Break the Bargain Trap

It's true that discount popups can coax shoppers to take action. However, continuously offering incentives trains even your best customers to wait for sales before making a purchase. 

Removing discount popups from the equation helps establish a healthier long-term relationship with your customer base. As you hold firm on prices, they'll value your products more, enabling you to sell more full-priced items that boast strong margins.

A prime example of what happens when the bargain trap gets out of control is Bed Bath & Beyond. For decades, the retail chain's ubiquitous 20% off coupons cultivated a customer base unwilling to pay full price. Shoppers grew so accustomed to these coupons that they refused to shop without them; the discounted price became the "real" price in their minds. 

This rigid discount dependency played a major role in the company's recent bankruptcy filing. And the resulting flock of customers to competitors who offered similar discounts shows their loyalty was fleeting to begin with.

Build Authentic Brand Connections

Believe it or not, price isn't the only determining factor in getting shoppers to take action. Conveying the core value props behind your products or brand story through high-value content can quickly gain you a loyal following based on genuine interest rather than temporary price advantages. Taking this approach will also help you avoid the dreaded "discount brand" perception, which is nearly impossible to shake once established.

Sephora is an excellent example of a brand building authentic connections with its customers. Its YouTube channel not only showcases makeup tutorials using the products it sells but also highlights unique conversations from employees worldwide, effortlessly humanizing the brand. And with nearly 1.5 million subscribers to date, it's clear that customers are resonating with the content.

Fuel Sustainable Growth

Growth based on continuous incentives is rarely (if ever) sustainable. As shoppers become accustomed to discount popups and marketing lists get filled with low-engagement users, crucial metrics like AOV, repurchase rates, and LTV soon plummet. 

Focusing on delivering value outside discount popups sets your brand up for cleaner long-term growth, fueled by customers who resonate with your message and value your products. This sustainable momentum only compounds over time as revenue streams become more predictable and crucial growth metrics are no longer burdened by continuous incentives.

In other words, cut discounts and discover the true baseline of your brand.

4 Steps to Achieving Discount-Free Growth

Ready to ditch discount reliance without sacrificing sales or subscriber momentum? Follow these four actionable steps to smoothly transition your brand toward sustainable, margin-friendly growth.

1. Measure and Test Your Dependency

Start by digging into your data to understand how much of your list growth and sales are driven by discount popups. Check signup rates and repeat purchase behavior from discount users and full-price customers for comparison.

Next, run a no-discount test period to gauge how shoppers will react when these incentives aren't present during their journey. Replace popups with a neutral signup offer for one month while tracking list growth, average order value, and retention to see how these core performance metrics change. 

2. Create Value Beyond Discounts

Product guides, interactive quizzes, or exclusive access to new releases are powerful alternatives to discount popups that won't eat into your margins or dilute brand equity. 

Consider your existing product catalog to uncover which path will deliver the most value to your customers. The Perfect Jean, for instance, created a "Perfect Match" quiz guiding customers to their ideal fit based on their unique body type, eliminating the frustrations of online clothes shopping. This simple addition delivered a 15% quiz conversion rate, 31x ROI, and significantly lower return rates by helping shoppers find the right product the first time.

Doubling down on content and community-building can also deliver tangible value to shoppers. Consider running an industry blog covering industry-specific topics in-depth, establishing an exclusive social media group, or hosting live events. Your continuous presence within the industry helps cement authority and bolster brand equity, especially with discount-sensitive shoppers.

3. Reimagine Your Customer Journey

Rather than placing an additional roadblock on the path to conversion, consider weaving opt-in opportunities into the core flow of your site. Footer CTAs, smart exit triggers, and checkout flows work beautifully at capturing marketing consent without disrupting the buyer's journey.

Hair Gain, a premium vegan haircare brand, implemented this strategy by using Dataships to deploy a dynamic, location-based consent checkbox directly into the checkout flow. By naturally weaving in marketing consent at checkout, Hair Gain was able to target its highest-intent shoppers with optimal consent strategies, significantly boosting both opt-in rates and CVR.

4. Build Sustainable Relationships

Rewarding customer loyalty is one of the most potent ways to wean your brand off discount popups. Start with a loyalty program rewarding continuous purchases, referrals, and engagement through incentives that don't (initially) include discounts. Free samples, members-only content, early access to new collections, and limited edition products are all ways to check that box, ensuring the program is viewed as exclusive and valuable rather than transactional.

If you decide to offer discounts, make them feel rare and special. Consider seasonal drops or loyalty rewards for your most engaged customers, but clarify that discounting is the exception, not the norm. This creates genuine excitement when these rare opportunities arise.

Drive Effortless List Growth at Checkout With Dataships

Hair Gain is far from the only brand driving tangible results with Dataships. Leading smart wallet brand Ekster also worked with our team to optimize its checkout flow for increased opt-ins without the looming worry of data non-compliance.

These were the results since our partnership began:

- $363K in repurchase revenue

- 38K net new contacts

- 4088 repeat purchases

Ready to see what checkout optimization can do for your brand?

Start with a free A/B test and see the difference for yourself.