How to Protect Your Spring Sale from Bots

What we did for a global retailer – and how your team can do the same

Seasonal sales are massive brand moments – high traffic, high stakes, and high expectations from loyal customers. For one global retailer we worked with, these sales were not only about driving revenue, but also about reinforcing trust and delivering delight.

But while shoppers waited for the drop, bots were already gearing up.

Malicious automation was targeting inventory and loyalty programs, which affect site performance and customer experience. That’s why the retailer brought in Kasada: to efficiently and effectively stop bots, keeping the big sale seamless and fraud-free.

Here’s how we helped them pull it off – and what your team can take away before your next big sales event.

The threats lurking behind every hype sale

Modern bots are stealthy, persistent, and built to win. We worked with this retailer ahead of their spring sale to analyze how bots were bypassing their defenses – and how they were harming both revenue and user trust.

Here are the 4 most critical automated threats we observed:

1. Scalper bots: Sniping limited-edition inventory seconds after it dropped.
2. Credential stuffing: Hitting loyalty accounts full of rewards and stored value.
3. Content scrapers: Copying product details and pricing to fuel knockoff sites.
4. Fake account creation: Abusing welcome offers and referral codes at scale.

If this sounds familiar, here are four steps we took that you can learn from:

1: Align early, across teams

Before the sale, we sat down with their eCommerce, marketing, and security teams. Together, we reviewed past attacks, anticipated new adversarial tactics, and made bot defense part of the launch plan rather than a last-minute add-on.

Recommendations:

• Bring security to the launch or sale discussions early on.
• Collaborate with threat intel, GTM, and fraud teams to plan.

2: Proactively stop bots

Instead of relying on static detection or friction-heavy CAPTCHAs, we deployed Kasada’s modern bot defense across the retailer’s website and mobile app.

Recommendations:

• Detect malicious bots and unwanted traffic, including scalpers, credential stuffing, and scrapers.
• Prevent retooling and reverse engineering, even from bots with emulated devices, spoofed telemetry, and rotating IPs.
• Eliminate the overhead of tuning and maintaining detection logic.

3: Protect your loyalty program from automated attacks

Loyalty logins were a high-value target. We locked them down using Kasada’s real-time credential stuffing protection and client-side integrity checks.

Recommendations:

• Block mass login attempts across thousands of IPs.
• Flag high-risk behavior and trigger step-up authentication.
• Preserve a seamless experience for legitimate users.

4: Use real-time threat intelligence to stay ahead

During the sale, we monitored fraud forums and dark web chatter. We saw resellers pre-selling inventory, bots targeting mobile APIs, and attackers adapting their tooling in real time.

Recommendations:

• Ensure there are live updates to bot defenses.
• Share intelligence findings with fraud and customer support teams.

The results

✅ Protected key endpoints during high-traffic events
📉 Reduced inactive sessions by 33%, preventing crashes and boosting site stability
🛡️ Blocked bots that bypassed legacy defenses
🔐 Cut password reset volume from 200K+ to just 100/month
⚡ Zero downtime, with faster checkouts and smoother shopping
💬 Positive customer sentiment across all customer-facing channels

And perhaps most importantly, the retailer reinforced brand trust with loyal customers by delivering a fair, seamless experience.

Your spring sale playbook

If you’re gearing up for a big event, here’s what we recommend based on this success story:

• Detect bots and automated attacks early without introducing any friction for real customers
• Align with GTM teams to ensure security is a part of the launch
• Use real user telemetry instead of behavior models
• Protect loyalty accounts from automated fraud and abuse, leveraging unique threat intelligence data sources
• Invest in real-time adaptability vs. static rules that need to be manually updated

Final word: Don’t let bots steal the moment

Your next seasonal sale should be a win – for customers, your brand, and your bottom line. We helped this global retailer make that happen. Let’s do the same for you.

Want to learn more about how we stop modern adversaries? Let’s talk.