If you’re looking to attract new customers or increase the value of current ones, creating a deal/offer is the best thing you can do.
They’re ideal as they benefit both parties, the business and the customer. The customer gets an offer that allows them to get more for their money, and the business gets a new customer.
However, what works nowadays and why? That’s the important question and something that needs exploring.
Which Offer Types Are Working in 2026
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There are tonnes of different offers available, with the following being the best:
- Welcome Offers: Welcome offers are known to provide a boost in sales and increased sign ups when incentivised correctly. For example, check out Betfair’s casino bonus offers, you’ll see that their welcome bonus offers 50 free spins when users make £10 deposit. These give users a gift for signing up with their platform and making a small deposit, making the initial registration process more desirable.
- Digital Discount Codes: Digital discount codes are actually 77% more likely to be redeemed than print equivalents and are 35% more effective at acquiring new customers.
- Behaviour-triggered Emails: These emails perform 10x better than batch-and-blast campaigns. These are triggered when a user performs a certain action, like adding to cart and not purchasing or completing registration, etc.
- Mobile-first Promotions: Any promotion works well on mobile, as they’re easily accessible and redeemable. 93.8% of UK coupon code users actually redeem them via a smartphone device, making mobile-optimised offers worth considering.
- Bundle and Multi-buy Deals: If a customer feels like they’re getting a deal, they’ll purchase higher-value bundles or deals. This works well across all retail markets, both physically and digitally.
Why Some Offers Work and Others Don’t
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The difference between an offer that works and one that doesn’t comes down to the underlying value perception.
At the end of the day, the target customer needs to feel like they are getting a deal. Something that isn’t often offered and that benefits them.
For example, a welcome offer of a football to rugby fans doesn’t really make sense. It needs to be valuable to the persona you’re targeting.
It needs genuine scarcity as well. Customers research deals, and if they can just find it elsewhere easily, the value decreases.
How they retrieve the deal should also be considered. Where is your target audience most willing to spend? In the shop, on their telephone, at an event? These are all things you need to consider to make an offer work.
How to Create Offers That Convert
For UK businesses building offers from scratch, target audience research is undoubtedly the place to start.
Use the current customer data you’ve collected. Review their purchase history, channel preferences, and behavioural signals. Once this information is gathered, see how it can impact how you design, deploy, and implement your offers.
Separately, these may seem like small factors. However, once they’re all together, they create an offer that’s valuable, received positively, and claimed. Something that all businesses, big or small, strive to achieve in the busy marketplace of 2026.
David Prior
David Prior is the editor of Today News, responsible for the overall editorial strategy. He is an NCTJ-qualified journalist with over 20 years’ experience, and is also editor of the award-winning hyperlocal news title Altrincham Today. His LinkedIn profile is here.
