> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://conversion.club/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # How to Build a Promotional Calendar Without Betting Everything on Discounts - URL: https://conversion.club/playbook/how-to-build-a-promotional-calendar-without-betting-everything-on-discounts/ - Published: 2026-10-01T20:38:05.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-19T20:26:07.000Z - Description: Give customers reasons to come back other than price: a launch, a long-awaited restock, a limited edition, a seasonal selection, a service. The plan fits on one page and covers the year. - Author: Jeremie Werner - Tags: Increase average order value, #playbook, Acquisition Give customers reasons to come back other than price: a launch, a long-awaited restock, a limited edition, a seasonal selection, a service. The plan fits on one page and covers the year. --- ## The benchmark Count the weeks over the past twelve months when a discount was displayed on your site, permanent banners included. In September, the home page of a store we audited carried a back-to-school clearance, a free gift above a certain purchase amount and a [discount on the first order](https://conversion.club/playbook/how-to-collect-emails-without-offering-a-discount/), and none of these offers showed an end date. If that last banner stays up all year, this store's counter reads fifty-two weeks out of fifty-two, and it's the kind of message a team eventually stops seeing. Beyond one week in three, our reading is that your customers have [learned to wait](https://conversion.club/have-sales-become-a-prerequisite-for-selling-online/). That threshold comes from our experience, and the effect it points to has been observed in the field: in three experiments with a catalog retailer, Eric Anderson and Duncan Simester found that deeper discounts brought in new customers and reduced the future purchases of those who were already buying. Their study looked at discount depth; extending it to frequency is our own interpretation. --- ## The rule Set an [annual quota of price promotions](https://conversion.club/playbook/what-does-a-promotion-really-earn-you-margin-included/) and leave at least thirty days at full price between them. That interval comes from the law: [the crossed-out price of a discount](https://conversion.club/playbook/what-does-the-law-say-about-strikethrough-prices/) must be the lowest price you charged during the previous thirty days ([Article L112-1-1 of the Consumer Code](https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article%5Flc/LEGIARTI000044549592?ref=conversion.club)). If you take 15% off the whole site in early November, that discounted price becomes the reference for [Black Friday](https://conversion.club/playbook/when-should-you-start-preparing-for-black-friday/) three weeks later, and your displayed discount is calculated from it. Only successive markdowns within a single promotion keep the price from before the first one. Your pricing calendar therefore has a one-month memory, and the plan has to respect it. The rest of the year gets filled with events that don't touch price. --- ## The steps 1. The fixed key moments. Start by placing the [soldes](https://conversion.club/playbook/how-do-i-get-my-site-ready-for-the-winter-sales/), the holidays and Black Friday if you run it. 2. Your own events. Add launches, long-awaited restocks, collaborations and [limited editions](https://conversion.club/fomo-and-drop-strategies-four-schools-of-scarcity/). 3. The rhythm. Each month gets one key moment and two or three lighter ones. 4. What the site needs. For each moment, note what it requires: [a spot on the home page](https://conversion.club/optimizing-the-e-commerce-homepage-the-complete-audit/), a dedicated collection, a campaign page, an internal search that knows the new product. 5. Sharing. The plan goes to the people who run the site two months before each moment, not two days before. Copy it, then rewrite it with your own dates (the two rows below are examples): | Month | Key moment | Lighter moments | Price affected? | What the site needs | Ready by | | -------- | ------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------ | | March | Launch of a new color, previewed for subscribers | Best-seller restock, spring selection | No | Product page available by private link, then public; spot on the home page | January 15 | | November | Black Friday | Gift card, gift guide | Yes, one promotion from the quota, thirty days at full price beforehand | Dedicated collection, dated banner, reference prices checked | September 15 | And one sentence to say to your leadership, in your own words: > "This year, we're committing to a fixed number of price promotions, and the site gets each key moment two months ahead." --- ## The trap The most common trap is still a plan written by marketing and discovered by the site team the day before. We saw it happen with a brand we support, which was preparing a [three-stage launch](https://conversion.club/playbook/what-to-prepare-on-your-site-before-a-product-launch/): a product page accessible by QR code at a press event, then through a newsletter-only link a week later, then opened to everyone. The message announcing it to us began like this: > "I've just been informed by our team that we plan to attend a PR event on \[date\], for which the product page \[…\] will need to be live, accessible only via a QR code." The newsletter-only link was still in development on our side. Nobody had done a bad job, the calendar existed, but it wasn't in the same place for everyone. That launch is, incidentally, a good model of a key moment without a discount, since the benefit offered to subscribers is going first and the price doesn't move. The site still has to keep up, because a key moment with no spot ready exists only in the newsletter. #### Sources - [Anderson and Simester, "Long-Run Effects of Promotion Depth on New Versus Established Customers: Three Field Studies," Marketing Science, 2004](https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mksc.1030.0040?ref=conversion.club)