What is pull-forward effect and why does it matter?

Pull-forward is when customers buy during a sale who would have bought anyway at full price, just later. A 30% off sale might generate $100K in revenue, but if $40K of that would have happened next week anyway, the truly incremental revenue is only $60K. Meanwhile, you lost the full margin on that $40K. The calculator estimates pull-forward from discount depth and category benchmarks, or measures it directly when you connect Shopify.

How is true promo profit calculated?

True promo profit equals incremental revenue at the new (lower) margin, minus the lost margin on pull-forward revenue, minus any incremental ad spend. Most brands look only at top-line revenue lift, ignoring that part of that lift was pulled from sales they would have made later at full price.

What is margin erosion?

Margin erosion is the profit you lose by discounting. On a product with 60% margin, a 30% discount does not just reduce margin to 30%, it is worse. If COGS is $40 on a $100 product, selling at $70 means margin drops from $60 to $30 (a 50% reduction in profit per unit). The tool prices this hit on every discounted order.

Are Black Friday / BFCM sales profitable?

Often less than brands assume. Industry studies suggest 30 to 50 percent of BFCM purchases can be pull-forward from customers who would have bought in December anyway. Heavy discounting combined with elevated CPMs can compress real profit. The tool models BFCM scenarios so you can compare planned vs. measured outcomes.

Which promotions are typically most profitable?

Generally: Gift with Purchase and tiered discounts tend to outperform site-wide percent-off, because they raise AOV without training every customer to expect a discount. Free shipping at threshold can protect margin. Site-wide percent-off is often the weakest because it discounts customers who would have paid full price.

Can I run this on real Shopify data?

Yes. Connect Shopify and the tool pulls your discount codes, baseline daily orders, and post-promo windows to measure pull-forward from your actual data instead of estimating it from category benchmarks.

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See how

How much margin did your promo erode?

Enter your promo inputs or connect Shopify for real order data. Decomposes lift into incremental vs. pull-forward, computes the gross-margin hit on discounted units, and surfaces a net profit verdict.

FelixForecasting

Promo name *

Promo type *

Discount % *

Promo results

Revenue *

Orders *

Duration (days)

Baseline metrics

Normal AOV *

Currency

Gross margin % *

Avg daily revenue

Industry (optional)

Baseline profit = (normal orders per day × duration × AOV × margin%). Promo profit = (promo revenue × promo margin%) minus discount cost minus estimated pull-forward at full margin. Net = promo profit minus baseline. Pull-forward share is estimated from discount depth and category benchmarks unless real Shopify post-promo data is available.