Hey, it's Geb from Email Rev Lab!
At 6:59 PM, I entered my email into Rae's pop-up.
The confirmation screen flashed a discount code right away. Smart. Instant friction removal.
Then I waited. And waited.
The welcome email hit my inbox at 7:08 PM. Nine minutes later.
That's a problem.
The Brand Bridge:
Angie Tebbe left a 13-year career at Target because she saw a gap. Women were choosing between overpriced supplements or cheap, sugar-packed gummies. Rae was built to fix that. Affordable. Clean. Accessible.
That mission worked fast. Rae hit 1 million customers in their first year.
But a 9-minute email delay doesn't care about your mission.
By the time that welcome email lands, your new subscriber is already somewhere else.
The Pop-up Test:
Solid. Clean design, clear offer, one field to fill out. The confirmation screen even shows the discount code right away.
That part? Actually great.
The damage starts after the pop-up closes.
The Tech Test:
Nine minutes is too long.
74% of subscribers expect a welcome email immediately after signing up (Invesp). Not in 9 minutes. Immediately.
The likely cause: Rae's welcome flow is being triggered by a segment, not a list. Segment-triggered flows in Klaviyo have a processing delay of 10-15 minutes as the segment updates. List-triggered flows fire in near real-time.
That one setting change would cut the delay to under a minute.
The Inbox Test:
The email landed in Promotions, not Primary.
Subject line: "Welcome to Rae ✨, Your discount is here!"
The Promotions tab placement isn't caused by the emoji. It's the email's content signals: discount language, a product grid, and marketing imagery. Gmail reads all of that as promotional.
That's expected for a marketing email. What's not expected is a 9-minute delay on top of it. Those two combined mean most subscribers check another tab and forget about it.
The Email Creative Test:
organized
The email looks clean. Lifestyle imagery, organized layout, bestsellers up front.
But the discount code (HELLORAE) is buried inside the hero image. There's no dedicated code block above the fold. No urgency. No reason to buy now instead of later.
It's a pretty email. It's not a converting email.
The Klaviyo Fix (3 Steps):
In Klaviyo, switch your welcome flow trigger from a Segment to a List trigger. This alone cuts your delivery time from 9+ minutes to under 1 minute.
Add a plain-text code block at the very top of the email, above the hero image. Big. Bold. Unmissable. "Your 10% off code: HELLORAE"
Add a single urgency line below the code. Something like: "Expires in 48 hours." One line. That's all it takes to push people from "I'll do it later" to "do it now."
The Impact Statement:
Invesp's data shows real-time welcome emails convert at 4.01%, while delayed ones average 0.94%. That's a 4x gap. For every 100 signups Rae gets through that pop-up, a 9-minute delay is quietly cutting their conversion rate to a fraction of what it could be.
The Curiosity Hook:
Here's what I'm curious about: what does Rae's current welcome flow open rate look like? Because if it's landing in Promotions 9 minutes late, that number might be hiding a much bigger revenue leak.
The Pitch:
Rae has the brand. They have the mission. They have the products women actually want to buy. They just need the email infrastructure to match.
I send these audits daily because bottlenecks like this can be fixed in one day with the right information.
Want me to audit your Klaviyo account the same way?
Reply to this email and I'll send you a free breakdown of where your welcome series is leaking revenue.
Geb Vence
P.S. I run Email Rev Lab. We've generated $334k+ for brands by building systems that feel like conversations, not ads. I only work with 3 brands per month. Schedule your call here.