Promo abuse is when customers exploit promotional incentives, such as new customer vouchers, referral schemes and discount codes, in ways the promotion was not intended for.
Common tactics include creating multiple accounts to reuse a new customer voucher, referring yourself with secondary accounts to collect referral rewards, and sharing single-use codes across a group of accounts.
Promo abuse causes revenue loss, reduces the return on your marketing spend and distorts campaign performance.
Ravelin can prevent promo abuse when a customer enters a voucher code, before you apply the discount.
To do this we ask that you send us details about each attempt to apply a voucher code, and let us know each time a voucher is successfully redeemed. We’ll make a recommendation as to whether you should apply the voucher.
If we recommend preventing the voucher, only the discount is rejected. The customer can still complete their order at full price.
At checkout, Promo Abuse rules contribute to the checkout recommendation, which applies to the whole order.
Promo abuse recommendations need to be enabled on your account before they can be used. Please speak to your account manager about enabling promo abuse recommendations.
Ravelin links customers who share attributes, such as devices, into a network. When you request a recommendation, we check for the owner and users of the voucher in the customer’s network, up to a configured depth. If this total is greater than or equal to the relevant threshold, Ravelin returns PREVENT. If not, Ravelin returns ALLOW. You can either follow or ignore this recommendation.
For referral vouchers, the customer who owns the code counts as one use. This helps detect customers referring themselves through secondary accounts.
Rules let you control how promo abuse is handled for different codes, campaigns and customer segments.
For example, rules can:
Default rules are configured on your account to mirror threshold-based voucher checks. Rules can be run in live or test mode.
| Checkpoint | When to use it |
|---|---|
| Voucher Assessment | When a customer enters a voucher code, before you apply the discount. Returns ALLOW or PREVENT for the voucher. |
| Checkout Pre-auth | When a customer places an order. Rules in the Promo Abuse category can run alongside your other checkout rules, using voucher details sent in the checkout request. |
Voucher Assessment detects abuse. It does not replace your promotion logic. Before requesting a recommendation, your platform should check that:
Voucher Assessment covers voucher and promo codes entered by the customer. It does not cover promotions with no code, such as free trials applied automatically.
Learn about the promo abuse integration process
Request a promo abuse recommendation
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