You’ve planned the promo, built the flow, and queued the campaign – but what happens when bots beat your customers to checkout? In digital commerce, the same tools that drive engagement can also open the door to abuse.
Fake accounts, promo stacking, automated bots, and referral manipulation are easily scalable without the proper safeguards in place. And with the rise in use of AI agents, deciphering between good customers and bad bots is even more of a challenge.
For digital teams, the challenge is clear: deliver seamless, high-performing promotions without compromising trust, performance, or accuracy. Let’s break down how to do it right without giving fraud a foothold.
What Promo Abuse Looks Like Digitally
Promo abuse isn’t always obvious, but in digital environments, it can snowball before you know it — here are the signs of promo abuse you might digitally in your business:
- Fake Accounts: Created to repeatedly claim new customer discounts
- Promo Stacking: Where multiple codes are applied in ways not originally intended
- Referral Code Abuse: Consists of users referring themselves or bots to rack up perks
- Automated Bot Traffic: Floods your site the moment a campaign goes live
The effects spread beyond your promo budget. When abuse creeps in, it skews your data – making it harder to tell what’s working and what’s not. When bots crowd the system or the same users repeatedly circle back, things can lag — and real customers end up wondering why the promotion isn’t working for them.
What Customers Notice (Even If You Don’t)
Promo abuse doesn’t always show up as a red flag in your system, but that doesn’t mean that customers are immune to feeling the effects — whether that manifests as a slowed down site, discount codes not working, or a limited time offer selling out in seconds.
Behind the scenes, your analytics take a hit, too. It’s hard to trust A/B tests, conversion data, and campaign ROI when you’re not sure which transactions were genuine customers and which were actually fraud.
The result? Misguided business decisions after promos, degraded experiences during the hype, and lost trust — all caused by a few blind spots that only become obvious when the customer journey starts to break down.
How to Secure Your Promotions in 5 Steps
We all know the goal: make your promotions perform without adding unnecessary friction for the customers they’re meant for. And that starts with building smarter systems that can recognize abuse without disrupting the journey.
- Verify Digital Identity: Tie offers to real users, not just emails or device IDs, to help prevent fake accounts from slipping through just to grab a discount
- Analyze Behavior: Use behavioral data and signals to spot patterns like excessive promo stacking, referral abuse, or suspicious activity across multiple accounts
- Mitigate Bots: Integrate bot detection tools early on that can identify and block automated traffic before it overwhelms your system and your promo budget
- Enable Real-Time Decisioning: Catch anomalies at key points, like checkout or account creation, before abuse becomes a bigger issue
- Use Adaptive Thresholds: Adjust limits based on user history, promo type, and risk level because not every offer needs the same level of scrutiny — with everything running quietly in the background, your best customers never notice a thing
Forter helps digital teams strike this balance — protecting promotions with identity-driven insights and flexible logic that keeps experiences smooth, fair, and scalable.
Making Promotions a Win-Win
When promotions are actually working, the results speak for themselves:
- Customers get reliable experiences, hassle-free
- Your team gets clean data you can actually use
- Your budget supports real people, not bots or loopholes
When offers feel fair and consistent, trust builds and loyalty follows. And conversion rates? They climb – not because you gave more away, but because everything worked the way it was supposed to. The best promotions don’t just attract customers; they build trust, subtly. With the proper safeguards in place, your team can deliver high-performing campaigns without compromising security.
Forter helps digital teams protect the experience so every promo works as intended for both your business and your customers.
