We used the newly launched RW Claude Connector to ask if Shake Shack (SHAK) was modifying their email marketing strategy in recent months. Typically, brands present the narrative to investors that they are never discounting, but the Promotional Ensemble goes under the covers to detect if any sneaky changes in messaging or offers to key cohorts is occuring.
Using our RW MCP Claude connector, we inquired as to if there were any unusual marketing campaigns from Nike. The response, while complex, is not surprising. Nike is still struggling to connect with its lead base and is engaging in unusual discounts to push sales.
Our promotional ensemble revealed unusual discounts in the form of never seen before “75% off” language to attempt to push free users to premium.
However, leveraging Claude, it was able to unearth even more subtle changes. Its clear with years of price hikes for premium Spotify is now having to work harder convert.
Our new Random Walk Claude MCP leverages our best in class proprietary data repository containing millions of email campaigns dating back to 2018 for leading brands. Our process classifies and categories these emails turning images to readable text enabling investors to uncover stuble changes in the marketing message from management.
Many times brands do now offer or change their explicit discount, but tweak the language or send more campaigns than the past. This typically indicates diminished organic demand.
As we continue to test our Random Walk AI with Claude MCP we sought to understand which restaurants continued discount into July 4th weekend. With our new Claude connector, investors can instantly analyze email marketing patterns from over 700 brands. Analyze millions of. emails to instantly uncover changes in the language management is using to communicate with its customers and leads.
PZZA: Our promotional ensemble reveals continued explosive growth in steep discounts.
For months prior to yesterday’s massive 45% inflection, our promotional ensemble revealed sharp behavioral changes in how Victoria’s Secret was connecting with leads. Our systems were tracking sharp reductions in email campaigns and sending volumes typically associated with robust organic demand.
When brands see strong responses to new product offerings, they can reduce reliance on push email campaigns. Our systems tracking volumes of promotional emails to real VS customers and leads tipped our investor partners toward to soon to be announced massive beat and raise.
Specifically our steep discount index declined over 35% as VS sent fewer 40% off discounts. Our ‘desperation’ index also retreated lower as VS needed fewer incentives such as “extra 10%” or “free”. In the first half of the year VS send nearly 200 fewer email campaigns than PY!
Not to our surprise, this promotion shift resulted in a 240 basis point expansion in the gross margins with notable strength in merchandize margins and greater full priced selling . At Random Walk, our investor partners have been alerted to this outlier but through our data feeds and specific call outs.
Victoria’s secret further validated our conclusions by specifically citing a “promo detox” strategy that reduces promotions and markdowns in favor of “compelling emotional messages” to drive a healthier, brand-led
| RH: Promotional Email March Madness MARCH 31, 2026Restoration Hardware (RH) reported worse than expected sales, earnings and provided a tepid outlook. Since our system uncovered and alerted investors to the inflection in late January, shares have collapsed 50%. Most aligned with our process, RH guided Q1 revenues nearly $90 mm below consensus. Our promotional ensemble revealed a reversal in the controlled promotional volumes we tracked late last year. This Spring, we uncovered rapidly ramping campaign volumes and discounting language. Instead of 1-2 campaigns a week, in March we tracked near daily push offers. Intensity also ramped, with our systems capturing escalating language with more 70% discounts, culminating in near daily offers the past 14 days. Random Walk Promotional Dashboard As can be seen below, our ensemlbe triggered a code ‘red’ incicating steep 70% or higher discount language in the subject line. |
‘March Madness’ Promotional Calendar
Our heat map detects the explosive growth in blasts and campaign frequency to leads with a disastrous end of March panic
The signal we are typically most focused on providing our investor partners is when brands change how they communicate with their leads and customers. Ramping up email marketing is often the cheapest and easiest way to engage customers. When brands are struggling, instead of posting a discount publicly on the website, they can target specific segments and cohorts.
For the case of brands like Crocs, we see this often in the form of “we miss you” type emails. Growth in these type of emails helped us uncover a structural slowdown in demand for Crocs in the Unites States.
Above we note that prior to 2024, Crocs never sent these type of storewide 30% off coupons. This inflection was missed by the street because transactional data, and website scraping failed to detect this behavioral change.
Looking at another example this year, we see below our our promotional ensemble detected new escalating discount intensity from Peloton. Despite noise about a turnaround and confidence to investors, behind the scenes management was escalting the discounts.
Above we see rare growth in $1500 off for Peleton bikes and treadmills.
Sometimes changes in keywords are more sutble. But this is often the most interesting use-case. Many premium brands present themselves as not having to discount. However, again, behind the scenes they are escalating their promotional intensity.
Here we can see Canada Goose, as they were likely noticing slack demand, they ramped their Winter promotional campaigns.
Another unbelievably strong quarter from Tapestry as consumer preferences further shift towards Coach. This has been an exciting one for Random Walk as continued sharp declines in email promotional campaigns have predicted this robust growth.
From the time our system tracked declining volumes of clearance emails and steep discounts shares are now up more than 110%!
Today’s Q2 results featuring 25% growth in Coach and strong gains in margins further validate our mission: when brands see robust organic growth, they quickly respond by reducing promotional email campaigns.
Our new dashboard shows every critical category from significant discounts to our clearance index in sharp decline. What an outlier!
With rampant inflation continuing to chew into consumers purchasing power, we continue to see a shift away from demand for discretionary knick-knacks towards critical household staples including food and clothing. The diverging promotional growth patterns in BBWI and WMT make this trend apparent.
> BBWI forecast high single digit declines for the critical Q4 holiday quarter, noting a challenging start to holiday shopping beginning in Q3 … highly competitive environment”.
>. BBWI management’s final comment directly aligns the the email campaigns we tracked “…our customers are waiting for deeper discounts before making purchases.”
> Gross Profit Rate declined 220 basis points as management noted “increased promotional activity to clear inventory”.
> Walmart (WMT) vs Bath & Body Works (BBWI) Not all retailers are exploding their promotional campaigns and email volumes. As seen below WMT total volumes actually declined into peak shopping season as consumer preferences shifted towards cost effective core needs and away from discretionary scented candles and bubbles..
We captured explosive growth in 75% off campaigns from BBWI
Additionally BBWI was forced to grow BOGO campaigns by nearly 300%
