Those bots sending discounts to your email is dynamic pricing in action. Get revenge on those bots by abandoning your cart

We know how it works: You load up a cart, get cold feet, and close the tab, and within hours, sometimes minutes, your inbox fills up with a subject line that feels almost personal. Did you forget something? You didn’t forget, but now it turns out that waiting is worth money. New research from web data company Decodo, which tracked more than 1,500 products across 120 retailers in over 40 countries throughout 2025, found that cart abandonment discounts follow highly predictable patterns by retail category, and that shoppers who understand those patterns can use them to their advantage. But the catch is that the same algorithm designed to win you back can also work against you, depending on how you’ve been browsing. “You can both win and lose,” Decodo Senior Product Marketing Manager Gabriele Vitke told Fortune. “It really depends on the category you’re shopping in.” If you’re buying fast fashion or beauty, don’t wait long For fast fashion retailers, the first discount typically lands within four to twelve hours of abandonment. Beauty brands follow within about 24 hours, often bundling a sample with the offer. Both categories peak early—Vitke says the window is roughly 48 hours—after which the discount either disappears or stops deepening. If you’re eyeing a dress or a serum, a brief pause is worth it, but not a long one. The decision-making process for big home purchases is longer however. Direct-to-consumer brands in the furniture and mattress space tend to escalate their offers gradually, with the deepest discount often arriving in the third or fourth email—sometimes a week or two out. “The offer might come along a bit later,” Vitke says, “since it normally takes someone longer to pick a sofa rather than a t-shirt.” Waiting here isn’t indecision. It’s leverage. If you’re booking travel, you have about 15 minutes Travel is the exception to almost every other rule. De