The offer that is always on
Months ago an account manager from one of the apps suggested an offer to boost visibility. It seemed to work, orders went up, so you left it running. Then another app suggested something similar. Now you have a buy-one-get-one on a main on one app, free delivery over a certain spend on another and a percentage off for new customers on the third.
Are they working? Orders are busy, but you do not know how busy you would be without them. The statements show promotion charges, but they are lumped in with other deductions. You suspect some of these offers are just giving money away to customers who would have ordered anyway, but you cannot prove it, and switching them off feels risky.
Why offers are so hard to judge
The apps report promotions in their own terms: redemptions, new customers reached, sales during the offer. What they do not show is what would have happened without it, which is the question that matters. A busy week during an offer may just be a busy week.
The costs are also spread around. Some offers are funded entirely by you, some shared with the app, and some come with higher placement fees. They are deducted in the payout, often as a single line. Meanwhile the extra food costs money to make. Nobody puts the discount, the fees and the food cost next to the extra sales in one place.
What you cannot see about your offers
| Question | Why it is usually unanswered |
|---|---|
| Did the offer bring new customers? | App reports and your own records are separate |
| Would those orders have come anyway? | No comparison with similar weeks without the offer |
| What did it cost in total? | Discount, fees and extra food cost are in different places |
| Do new customers come back? | Repeat ordering is not tracked after the offer ends |
| Which app's offers work best? | Each app reports in its own format |
The result is offers that run for months because nobody can say whether to stop them, and decisions made on the account manager's say-so rather than on your own data.
How we measure each promotion
- We pull order-level data from each app, including which orders used a promotion and how much of the discount you funded, through partner reporting or statement exports.
- Each offer is recorded with its start and end dates, the app, the terms and any fees attached.
- Trading during the offer is compared with similar periods without it: the same days of the week, similar weather and no big football, so the comparison is fair rather than flattering.
- The cost side adds up the discount you funded, any placement fee and the food cost of the extra items, using your menu costings where you have them.
- Where the app shares customer references, we track whether customers who first ordered on an offer came back and ordered again at full price.
- A simple page shows each offer, what it cost, what changed in orders and sales, and a plain-English note of how confident the comparison is.
We do not give financial advice or tell you what to run. We give you a clear view of what each offer did, including when the data is too thin to say.
Deciding about offers with the numbers
You look at the page on a Monday and see that the percentage-off offer on one app coincides with more orders, but mostly at the same times and from the same areas as before, and few of those customers ordered again. The free-delivery threshold on another app nudged basket size up. You switch off the first, keep the second, and check again in a month.
- Each promotion shown with its full cost
- A fair comparison with normal trading
- Repeat ordering tracked where the data allows
- Offers judged on your numbers, not the app's pitch
Does this sound like your promotions?
- You have offers running that nobody remembers switching on.
- Promotion charges on your statements are a mystery.
- You have never compared weeks with and without an offer.
- Account managers suggest offers and you say yes by default.
- You do not know if offer customers ever order again.