The Secret for Tripling Your Welcome Flow Conversions

Hey, it's Max from the Inbox Newsletter.

Most brands just throw up a welcome offer of 10% OFF and never touch it again.

They pick "10% off" because that's what everyone else does, build the pop-up, and move on.

Months later, it's still running the same offer with no idea whether it's actually the best option for their audience.

Meanwhile, they're losing potential buyers every single day.

Different offers convert at wildly different rates depending on your product, price point, and audience.

The only way to know what works best is to test offers like a mad scientist.

Let me show you how and why you need to do this

Key Takeaways:

• How we took a brand from 3.3% to 10.7% conversion by switching their offer type.

• Different offer types (% off, $ off, free gift, mystery discount) convert at very different rates.

• The offer that converts the best depends on your brand.

• How to create a high-converting pop-up for your website.

• If you haven't tested your pop-up offer in the last 6 months, you're probably leaving conversions on the table.

Four Offers. One Clear Winner.

This brand had been running a Free Gift offer on their pop-up for years. It was the first pop-up they every used and it was converting at a measly 3.3%.

They didn’t know what was possible because they never tried anything else.

When we took over, we decided to test different offer structures against each other to see what their audience responded best to.

We tested these four variations:

• 10% OFF

• $25 OFF

• Mystery Discount ($25)

• Free Gift - Their original offer

The results weren't even close.

$25 OFF → 10.7% placed order rate
10% OFF → 8.6% placed order rate
Mystery Discount → 7.6% placed order rate
Free Gift → 3.3% placed order rate

($300 AOV Brand)

By switching from Free Gift to $25 OFF, we more than tripled their welcome flow conversion rate. 

(We took a look at profit numbers too… it is a significant increase on the prior offer)

The same prospects were entering the welcome flow but actually bought 3 times more frequently. 

The only thing that changed was the offer in the pop-up and the email.

Why Free Gift Underperformed

Free Gift offers sound appealing in theory, but they often underperform because the perceived value is unclear.

When someone sees "Free Gift with purchase," they're thinking: What's the gift? Is it something I actually want? Is it worth giving my email for?

That uncertainty can create friction.

Free gifts can work well as an add-on to a discount offer, but the value needs to be overtly clear… What free gifts are you getting? Are they actually valuable? And how much are they worth?

With a discount, the value is immediately obvious. With a free gift, you're asking people to trust that the gift is worth it.

But this brand is a high AOV store… a $300 AOV.

What if we did a 10% OFF offer but framed it as what the value is… $25-30.

Telling someone “hey here’s $25 for free” often performs pretty damn well and it did so here.

Offer Types Worth Testing

Here are the main offer structures you should consider testing for your brand:

$ OFF

Best for higher AOV products where the dollar amount feels substantial. "$25 off" or "$50 off" creates immediate, tangible value without requiring any mental math.

% OFF

The default for most brands. Works well for lower AOV products where a percentage can make a small dollar discount feel bigger. "20% off" sounds better than "$6 off" on a $30 product.

Mystery Discount

Creates curiosity and drives higher opt-in rates because people want to find out what they won. Works best when combined with a quiz that also collects segmentation data.

Free Shipping

Particularly effective for high-ticket products where shipping costs create real friction. For a $2,000 chair, free shipping removes a legitimate objection.

Stacked Offers

The right way to do free gifts. Combining multiple incentives (% off discount + free gift) can outperform single offers, but cost lower margins may be a limiting factor for smaller brands.

How to Create Pop-Ups Like These

The best performing pop-ups we use are all built on Alia.

It's the tool we use for clients when we want to test different offers and collect segmentation data at the point of opt-in.

The setup is straightforward…. Create multiple pop-up variations with different offers, split the traffic evenly, and let it run until you have enough data to see a clear winner.

Alia can handle the split testing and the data flows directly into Klaviyo so you can track which offer leads to the highest welcome flow conversion rate.

The key is measuring placed orders, not just email submissions. A mystery discount might get more people to opt in, but if those people don't convert in the welcome flow, the higher opt-in rate doesn't matter.

You want to optimize for revenue, not just list growth.

If you haven't tested your pop-up offer in the last six months, you're probably leaving conversions on the table.

This brand was running the same Free Gift offer for months thinking it was fine. One test revealed they could more than triple their conversion rate by switching to a $25 OFF offer.

The difference between 3.3% and 10.7% compounds every single day. More welcome flow conversions means more revenue from the same traffic you're already paying for.

Pick two or three offer types from this list and test them against what you're currently running. You might be surprised what your audience actually responds to.

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Email Inspiration Of The Day

Brand: Focl

Email Design:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ebe42tCQ49hT7elJsQG7nuYsi2XMeUwT/view?usp=sharing

Notes:
Flowcharts like this are how you nail good email design, skimmability, and making the email feel personal to the customer. It’s easy to read which is crucial for busy inboxes.

Reply to this email if you have any questions or further content you want covered.

Cheers,

Max Sturtevant | Well Copy

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