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Here’s How to Know If Your Retail Promo Is Actually Working

September 30, 2025 / 1 minute read / By Zoya Naeem

Here's How To Know If Your Promo Is Actually Working

Are your retail promos actually working? Discover the metrics, A/B tests, and POS tools retailers need to track promo performance the right way.

Retail promotions are a tried-and-true way to improve sales, move inventory, and keep customers coming back. Whether it’s seasonal markdowns, BOGO offers, or digital retail promo codes, most retailers use promotions regularly.

But how do you know if those promos are actually working? Too often, businesses focus on the excitement of running a discount without measuring whether it’s profitable or driving the right kind of customer behavior. That’s exactly what we’ll dig into in this article.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

How to track retail promo performance directly in your POS system
Metrics that show if your promo is working
Practical ways to A/B test your promotions
How to track smarter with Celerant’s reporting tools

How to Track Retail Promo Performance Directly in Your POS System

The best way to know if a promotion is working is to look where the sales actually happen, inside your POS system. Modern all-in-one retail platforms don’t just record transactions, they LITERALLY track every detail, including which promo retail codes were redeemed, how much revenue they generated, and whether they boosted overall sales.

This beats tracking promos manually or relying on spreadsheets. When everything is captured at the transaction level, retailers can quickly compare promotions side-by-side, see which ones bring in new customers, and understand which ones are cutting too deep into margins.

Having this visibility means you can adjust your strategy in real time rather than waiting until the promotion ends to figure out if it worked.

Pro Tip:

Now, if you’re using an all-in-one retail system that comes with advanced tools and tracking capabilities like Stratus Analytics, you don’t just see how many promo retail codes were redeemed. You can tie those redemptions to bigger business outcomes like average order value, repeat visits, or sales by category. With real-time, interactive dashboards, you can quickly see if a discount is truly boosting revenue or simply eating into your margins. All of which means that you don’t have to wait until the quarter ends to find out if your promo actually worked. You can adjust mid-campaign, refine your offers, and make every promotion smarter and more profitable.

Discover: How Smart Retailers Use Celerant POS Insights to Drive More Sales

Metrics That Show If Your Promo Is Working

Tracking retail promo codes inside your POS system is step one, but the real insight comes from looking at the metrics behind those redemptions. A promo that “looks busy” at checkout may not be profitable once you factor in discounts, margins, and long-term customer behavior.

So, here are a few KPIs that will tell you the true story:

Foot traffic
Did your campaign bring more people through the door or to your site?
Average order value (AOV)
Did shoppers spend more overall, or just buy discounted items?
Repeat visits and customer retention
Did the promo attract one-time bargain hunters, or actually build loyalty?
Margin impact
Was the discount structured in a way that grew sales without cutting too deep into profits?

For example, let’s say you ran a weekend BOGO promo on $40 jeans. Normally, a shopper buys one pair for $40 and adds a $20 T-shirt, bringing AOV to $60 with a 40% margin. During the promo, two pairs of jeans are sold for $40 (effectively $20 each) with no T-shirt add-on. Foot traffic goes up 25%, but AOV drops to $40, and margins fall to 20%. Unless those new customers come back for full-price purchases, the promo may have hurt more than it helped.

Explore: How You Can Personalize Your Retail POS Reports For Sales Insights You Can Actually Use

Pro Tip:

Using an all-in-one retail POS system like Stratus Enterprise helps you monitor KPIs in real time across every channel -in-store, eCommerce, and even mobile apps. Instead of waiting until a promo ends to figure out if it worked, you can spot issues or wins on the fly. For example, if foot traffic spikes but AOV is dropping, you can tweak the discount or push upsell items before the promotion runs out. That means if a promo is driving traffic but shrinking margins, you’ll know instantly and can pivot. Maybe by tightening the discount, shifting it to a different product category, or even ending it early.

Practical Ways To A/B Test Your Retail Promotions

Once you’re tracking the right KPIs like foot traffic, AOV, and margin impact, the next step is figuring out why certain promos perform better than others. That’s where A/B testing comes in. Instead of running one blanket offer and hoping for the best, you can test two versions of a promotion side by side. For example, some customers may respond better to a “Buy One, Get One” offer, while others prefer a straight 20% discount.

Retailers can also experiment across channels. An in-store promo might drive higher AOV with impulse buys, while the same discount online could boost first-time customer conversions. By comparing results, you’ll see not just which promo attracts attention, but which one delivers real profit.

Pro Tip:

Effective A/B testing is all about consistency. You want to run your tests for a set period, keep the audience groups comparable, and only change one variable at a time (such as the discount type, channel, or timing). That way, you can trust the results instead of guessing. The real advantage comes when you design these tests using data already available in your POS system. With built-in insights, you can segment customers, track redemptions, and measure performance in real time, giving you a much clearer picture of which promotions truly deserve to be scaled.

But promotions are only valuable when they’re measured against the bigger picture of your business. It’s not enough to know that a promo drove sales last weekend; you also need to understand if those sales improved margins, cleared the right inventory, and encouraged customers to return. That’s where many retailers fall short, because they look at surface-level results without tying them back to long-term performance.

Start Tracking Smarter with Celerant’s Reporting Tools

With Celerant, retailers can move beyond guesswork. Our all-in-one Retail POS System comes with powerful analytics and tracking tools that connects each promotion to sales data, customer behavior, and inventory in real time. That kind of visibility helps you decide which offers to repeat, which to refine, and which to retire altogether.

Instead of juggling reports from multiple systems, you can LITERALLY work from one source of truth. That makes it easier to protect margins, understand customer patterns, and design promotions that actually move the needle for your business.

Discover How Powerful Stratus Analytics Is

Here’s How to Know If Your Retail Promo Is Actually Working

Are your retail promos actually working? Discover the metrics, A/B tests, and POS tools retailers need to track promo performance the right way.

How to Track Retail Promo Performance Directly in Your POS System

Pro Tip:

Metrics That Show If Your Promo Is Working

Foot traffic

Average order value (AOV)

Repeat visits and customer retention

Margin impact

Pro Tip:

Practical Ways To A/B Test Your Retail Promotions

Pro Tip:

Start Tracking Smarter with Celerant’s Reporting Tools

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