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Systematic Scam of Millions of Emails to Detect Inflections

  • This week our system detected unusual activity in: CBRL, CRI, LEN, LULU, PZZA, SIG, ULTA, W
  • Our process helps discover brands that are struggling to move product and resorting to changing keywords in campaigns
  • Robust panel access helps reveal discounts sent to specific cohorts that are ‘invisible’ to coupon clippers on the sell-side
  • 8 year history enables comparisons vs other outlier periods such as COVID

Consumer Preferences are Shifting is Your Investment Process?

FEBRUARY 13, 2025

Are your research dollars  allocated to detecting real inflections or have your overspent on predicting the present?

> Explosion in alternative data has led increased precision in predicting KPIs such as current quarter revenues and same store sales.

> Sudden share revaluations in brands such as DASH, MTCH, BROS, SIG, MODG and PLAY indicate  significant opportunities remain in detecting organic inflections.

Missing the Forest

The above advertisement from 1996 was prescient, but our promotional ensemble data can help investors better understand the tidal wave of changes that are occurring in real-time.

Institutional investors’ thirst for edge has led to overconsumption of complex ‘information’ that often misses the bigger shifts in preferences.  Random Walk focuses on uncovering more actionable inflections based on changes in core demand for products and services through our Promotional Ensemble.

Stay Home and Swipe.

Perhaps mostly driven by 5G and engineered addiction of smart phones consumers are moving away from activities popular in the past. Dating, courtship, buying engagement rings and the products of Signet and marriage appear to be substituted by ordering Wingstop delivery on DoorDash and betting on sports with Draftkings.

Getting together and going out for in person entertainment at Topgolf or Dave & Busters is being replaced by swiping through Insta.

Random Walk Promotional Ensemble

When brands are struggling to generate demand the easiest and most cost effective band-aid is to blast out email discounts. This is where the Random Walk process provides unique edge. We have been capturing, categorizing and classifying millions of email promotions from leading brands for more than 7 years. If decaying inventory isn’t moving quick enough, without spending much on advertising, brands just push out escalating discounts to leads. Conversely, when organic demand is growing brands slow email campaigns.

DraftKings (DKNG): New deposit confirmations explode higher as consumers stay home and bet on sports.
DoorDash (DASH): You’ll eat in.  Doordash will bring food to you so you can stay inside. Our promotional ensemble indicates reduced incentives and email discounts as diners continue to grow rapidly.
TopGolf (MODG):  Interest in going out to TopGolf and shanking balls is waning as our promotional ensemble detects rapid growth in game play related gift cards and discounts.
Dutch Brothers (BROS): Take it home no need for a cafe.  Reduced promotional email volumes from Dutch Brothers

Alternative Data Podcast- Promotional Ensemble History

Random Walk has been serving investors for 14 years. After years of focusing on clicksteam, foot traffic data and other online measurement, in 2017 we shifted to focusing on creating the most quantitatively accurate promotional ensemble in the industry. As others used tractional data to incorrectly assess demand in department stores such as JC Penny, our process alerted investors that these sales were just a result of liquidation coupons.

Listen to learn more about our methodology is different than other big data providers below:

Greg’s chat with Mark Fleming-Williams on Apple Podcasts

Below: skyrocketing steep discounts and a rise in the effective discount uncover the inflection.

Promotional Ensemble for JC Penny: 2017 Liquidation coupon explosion inconsistent with a rebound in organic demand.

Random Walk Ensembe via Maiden Century

Uncover gross proift and gross margin inflections

Our promotional ensemble indices are now available through Maiden Century. For many brands spikes in email promotional activity have meaningful relationships with gross profit and gross margin.

https://maidencentury.com/article/predicting-the-impossible

Crocs Promotions Accelerated Through the End of September

We’re capturing increased promotions from Crocs and Crocs wholesalers.

Promotions from Shoe Carnival containing “Crocs” were up 600% Y/Y in September. We also captured a new “Up to 40% off” Crocs promotion from Walmart last week.

We continue to capture significant email volume from Crocs.com containing “price drop” and prices have dropped,” language we didn’t capture at all last year.

Random Walk Promotional Outlier Focus: Nike Partners Sending Record Discounts

Random Walk New Keyword Tracker Launched.  Our new technology helps investors instantly detect changes in the promotional intensity brands are using to communicate with leads. Detect inflections in core demand through tracking of desperation keywords in emails such as “extra”, “extended”, and “one more day”.

Keyword tracker uncovered the largest ever spike in “Nike” related keywords from key wholesale partner email correspondance over the past two weeks.
 
PREVIEW: Promotional Outlier Focus: Nike Partners Sending Record Volume of Discount Campaigns
 ASO, DKS, FL, M, NKE, SCVL

Last quarter, Nike reported slowing revenue growth as consolidated revenue increased year-over-year by 5%, down from 14% year-over-year growth in the prior quarter. While total promotional activity direct from Nike is stable, we are capturing record breaking volumes of Nike coupons from wholesale partners implying lagging organic demand. We also anticipate a weak quarter for Foot Locker, which purchased 65% of its athletic merchandise from Nike during the most recent fiscal year.
 
NIKE PARTNER PROMOTIONAL HIGHLIGHTS
 Foot Locker (FL) sent record volumes of “Nike” focused promotions in July. We have tracked a 67% year-over-year increase in email volumes containing “Nike” for the May-July period

.Academy Sports & Outdoors (ASO) sent greater volumes of “Nike” focused promotions this Summer. We tracked a 49% year-over-year increase in email volumes containing “Nike” for the May-July period.

Shoe Carnival (SCVL) Shoe Carnival “Nike” focused promotion volume increased by 2,783% on a year-over-year basis for the May-July period.

Macy’s (M) We captured a rare “Special 20-25% off from Nike”.

NEW: Promotional Heat Maps by Subsector

June 28

We recently launched a new product that examines trends of promotional activity within subsectors.

Highlights:

  • Footwear promotional volume continues to accelerate higher. 9 of the 13 tickers in our footwear index exhibited a “worsening” promotional trend last week with 12 of 14 worsening on a monthly basis.
  • Luxury Retail demand appears weak as significant promotional volume has worsened on a YoY rate of change basis at several major companies in our subsector index.
  • The Sporting Goods subsector has emerged as another addition to the worsening list. All 8 companies in this index have sent out substantially higher promotional volume in the most recent week compared to the prior year.
  • Outdoor Apparel promotions continue to stand out as significant promotion volume YoY growth for this subsector exceeded 100% in three consecutive weeks recently.
  • Demand doesn’t appear to be returning at home improvement retailers. Promotional volume is substantially higher at all 5 companies in our index compared to the prior year.

AEO, ANF, GES: Promotional Ensemble Reveals Sharp Decline in Discounting

Our promotional email ensemble helped investors better understand and quantify the magnitude of changes in the intensity and aggressiveness that apparel brands such as Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF), American Eagle (AE) and Guess (GES) are sending. As weather has warmed, our promotional ensemble reveals robust demand growth as consumers previously stuck at home load up on “going out” summer apparel.

Our promotional ensemble quantifies the changes such as key declines in the volume of email campaigns, the distribution discounts offered.

ANF: 93% decline in discounting email volume this May
Significant Promotion heat map measures changes weekly

Successfully channelling rebounding demand for swimwear, AEO’s Aerie has further throttled back its promotions.

Our tracking on an sector basis reveals AEO has become one of the least aggressive promotors compared with its peers compared with just a year ago.

For Guess, our email intelligence allows investors to quantify the exact campaign frequency and intensity. As can be seen below, Guess is pushing out significant promotions and discount coupons much less frequently than a year ago as organic demand has rebounded.

DOCU, WIX, FVRR, UPWK: Unique Data Sets Uncover Secular Changes before the Street

Tracking New Customer Acquisition: 2020 was our most successful year in uncovering demand changes undetected by ‘big data’ credit card and transactional sellers. As COVID forced Americans inside, consumers discovered existing virtual solutions were superior to legacy in person dependent platforms.

For Docusign (DOCU), Fiverr (FVRR), Upwork (UPWK), Wix (WIX) our email intelligence captured exponential explosive growth in new customer acquisitions a full quarter ahead of pricy ‘big data’ transactional providers. By focusing on unique leading indicators such as “Welcome to Docusign” and “Your Wix site is published” instead of chasing coincident revenue proxies such as receipts we provided our investor subscriber parters a big jump on their competition. Docusign (DOCU) shares have appreciated more than 150% since growth in consumers receiving these confirmations triggered our identification in MARCH. Similarly, our methodology identified Upwork(UPWK) to start May with shares quadrupling.

If consumer preferences changes again as Americans leave their homes our investor partners will be the first to know.

The Promotional Spotlight:

We recently made substantial upgrades to our email categorization system. As as result of this, we can now better understand which brands and businesses are changing how they communicate with consumers and leads.

Our weekly ‘Promotional Spotlight’ report highlights the brands whose discounting and promotional activity have diverged the most since the prior year. We can provide custom analysis for investors in brands of interest. Which brands increased their steep discounts? Which brands are sending their seasonal sale related email offers more frequently? Are brands slowing their sending pace based on strong demand.