How to Leverage Conjura to Reduce Your eCommerce Returns Rate

If you’ve been anywhere near LinkedIn lately, you’ve probably seen the ASOS story that sparked a flurry of debate: a wave of customer account shutdowns targeting so-called “serial returners”. It wasn’t long before screenshots surfaced, hot takes piled up, and the internet started drawing lines between what’s fair customer policy and what’s just bad UX wrapped in a legal disclaimer.

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But here’s the thing: this story isn’t really about ASOS. It’s about a much bigger issue hiding in plain sight across the retail industry - returns management that’s reactive, not strategic.

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Returns are one of the thorniest challenges in eCommerce. They drain margin. They bloat warehouses. They frustrate customers. And yet, despite their massive impact on profitability and customer experience, most brands still treat returns as a post-purchase inconvenience instead of what they truly are: a rich source of insight.

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Banning customers might seem like a quick fix for reducing return rates, but it’s really just a symptom of a deeper problem - not understanding which products, sizes, regions, or customers are driving the issue in the first place.

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This is where smart brands set themselves apart. They don’t react, they investigate. They use returns data not just to plug leaks, but to steer the ship into metaphorically profitable seas…

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And that’s exactly where Conjura comes in. The platform is a rich source of insights that can help your brand reduce return rates. Here are a few use cases on how to do that!

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Product Intelligence That Protects Profitability

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Conjura’s Product Table acts as your SKU-level lie detector. It cuts through surface-level assumptions and vanity metrics to tell you what’s really going on beneath the sales figures. Just because a product sells well doesn’t mean it’s profitable, and Conjura helps you expose the SKUs that are silently draining your margins.

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First, it identifies your return magnets - the products that consistently come back, no matter how many units you sell. These aren’t always obvious. Sometimes they’re hidden among your “top performers,” camouflaged by volume. Conjura makes it easy to spot them instantly and take corrective action, whether that’s fixing a product issue, updating your PDP, or retiring the SKU altogether.

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Next, it digs into size-specific return patterns, helping you pinpoint if certain variants (XS, S, M, L, XL) are underperforming due to fit. Are customers constantly sending back size small? Is your XL running too big in one product line but too small in another? Conjura gives you clarity here, so you can adjust your sizing charts, product descriptions, or even your product development pipeline accordingly.

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Returns don’t look the same everywhere. That’s why geographic return analysis is another powerful layer in Conjura’s toolkit. You can break down return rates by country or region to understand if certain markets are experiencing higher friction. This could be due to fit preferences, shipping delays, or even cultural differences in shopping behaviour, and once you know, you can localize your strategy.

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One very cool Conjura feature is how it calculates true profitability. Instead of stopping at gross margin, it factors in the probability of a return. That means you get to see the real contribution profit for each SKU, so you’re not fooled by products that look good on paper but lose you money once refunds roll in.

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So what?

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One retailer using Conjura uncovered that a so-called “bestseller” was actually bleeding profitability due to sky-high return rates, something they’d never noticed using traditional tools. Another found that a spike in returns was driven by one size of one product in a specific country. By tightening up their sizing and limiting distribution of that variant, they reduced returns and increased customer satisfaction almost overnight.

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Key takeaways from Conjura’s Product Table:

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• Identify return magnets and stop them from quietly killing your margins
  
  
• Spot size-specific issues to fix fit-related return patterns
  
  
• Uncover geographic trends in return rates to tailor international strategies
  
  
• Calculate true profitability after factoring in return probability
  
  
• Rank products by return rate to prioritize your interventions
  
  
• Assess supplier performance using SKU-level return insights
  
  

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Customer Intelligence That Builds Loyalty

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Not all returns are the same, and neither are the customers making them. Some shoppers might send the occasional item back but still generate thousands in revenue over the course of a year. Others return half their orders and barely break even for your business. The challenge? Knowing the difference before you lose money, or worse, loyal customers.

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That’s where Conjura’s Customer Table becomes indispensable. It goes beyond surface-level return rates to uncover who your customers are, how they behave, and what their long-term value really looks like after refunds, costs, and discounts are factored in.

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Start with LTV after returns. Traditional Lifetime Value calculations often overestimate a customer’s value by ignoring return behaviour. Conjura calculates LTV based on actual contribution margin, factoring in refunds, COGS, shipping, and even marketing costs. This gives you a clearer picture of which customers are truly profitable, and which are just noisy.

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With customer profitability segmentation, Conjura enables you to break down your customer base into clear, actionable groups. Who are your VIPs? Who’s sitting on the edge of profitability? And who’s burning through your margin like a clearance sale on shipping labels? This clarity allows you to prioritise retention efforts, manage risk, and craft policies that strike the perfect balance between customer satisfaction and sustainable growth. With this level of customer insights, you can use these segmented lists, export to CSV for your email marketing tool and send hyper-personalised messages that hit the spot!

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Smart Moves You Can Make with Conjura’s Customer Intelligence:

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• Reach out proactively to high-return customers with size guides, fit tips, or additional product imagery
  
  
• Design tailored refund policies based on customer segment, striking the right balance of flexibility and profitability
  
  
• Offer VIP treatment to high-LTV customers, even when they return now and then, because their loyalty pays off
  
  
• Identify your most profitable customers and double down on retention strategies that work

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Strategic Returns = Smarter Business Decisions

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Returns aren’t just an operational headache - they’re a strategic advantage in disguise. While many retailers still view returns as something to minimize or manage, the smartest brands are flipping the script: using returns data as a decision-making engine across inventory, customer strategy, and product assortment.

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Let’s start with inventory planning. Traditionally, brands plan purchases based on sales velocity and gut feel. But if your fastest-selling products are also the most frequently returned, you’re walking into a profitability trap. Conjura helps you surface return-prone products early, so you can stop overstocking items that just boomerang back into your warehouse. Instead, you can make smarter, data-led buying decisions, adjusting purchase volumes based on not just how much a product sells, but how often it stays sold.

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Returns data is also a powerful lever for customer retention. Losing a loyal customer over a single poor experience, whether it’s a sizing issue, late delivery, or unclear product images, is an avoidable tragedy. With Conjura, you can identify high-value customers who hit a rough patch and intervene before they churn. Better yet, you can uncover common return triggers and fix the root causes at scale. The result? Fewer friction points, better NPS, and happier customers who stick around.

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Then there’s product assortment optimization. Not all products deserve a second (or third) chance. Some SKUs consistently underperform in customer satisfaction, driving up return costs and dragging down profitability. Conjura gives you the clarity to phase out these return magnets with confidence. On the flip side, products with low return rates and high satisfaction scores become prime candidates for promotion, bundling, or doubling down in your merchandising strategy.

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In short, returns aren’t just a cost to reduce, they’re a lens to refocus your entire business strategy.

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 Key takeaways:

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• Use return rate data to avoid dead stock and wasteful buying decisions
  
  
• Build smarter forecasts with return-adjusted inventory planning
  
  
• Retain valuable customers by identifying friction points early and addressing them
  
  
• Resolve root causes like poor product imagery or inaccurate sizing to reduce future returns
  
  
• Clean up your assortment by retiring SKUs with consistently high return rates
  
  
• Double down on winners - products with low returns and high customer satisfaction

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Returns don’t have to be a drain on your business, they can be a competitive advantage. With Conjura, returns data becomes a source of clarity, helping you optimize products, retain high-value customers, and make smarter strategic decisions across your operation. Stop reacting and start predicting!

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Want to turn your returns into revenue? Book a demo with Conjura today.

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Already a Conjura customer? Book a returns guide session with one of our team.

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