The Vanity Metric Trap
A lot of email marketers will tell you to never display a discount code on the success screen of your pop-up. Their argument is simple: if you force someone to open their inbox to retrieve the code, your welcome flow engagement spikes and Klaviyo attributes the sale to the email. It makes the marketer look great on paper.
That is an agency vanity metric.
Roughly 90% of the revenue credited to welcome flows comes from people who were already intending to buy. The coupon code is simply there to nudge the remaining 10% over the line. Inflating your email attribution numbers at the expense of on-site conversions helps no one.
What Happens When You Send Shoppers to Their Inbox
Consider the actual customer journey when you hide the code behind an email confirmation. A shopper is on your site, browsing a product page, ready to pull the trigger with a 10% discount. You ask for their email, and instead of giving them the code right there, you tell them to check their inbox.
Now they have left your store. They open their email app, land in their promotions tab, and get immediately bombarded by twenty other brand offers. Maybe they get distracted by a message from a friend or a newsletter they forgot they subscribed to.
By forcing them off your site, you introduce unnecessary friction. In my books, your primary job as an ecommerce brand is to make it as easy as possible for people to give you money. Chasing them away from your checkout does the exact opposite.
How to Structure the Form Step by Step
Putting the code on the final screen does not mean you sacrifice list growth or data collection. You just need to build your form logically across multiple steps.
- Step one: Ask only for the email address. Keep friction low, show the incentive clearly, and include your terms.
- Step two: Collect zero-party data or an SMS number while the intent is high.
- Step three (Success): Display the discount code clearly with a direct call to action.
Make sure you also maintain separate desktop and mobile versions of your form. Shoppers interact with forms differently depending on screen size, and splitting them allows you to optimise the layout and track conversion rates accurately.
Use the Extra Steps for Smarter Segmentation
Once you capture the email address on step one, you can use the second step to ask quick profiling questions. Ask what products they are interested in, or who they are shopping for (such as buying for themselves, buying a gift, or buying for a business).
This zero-party data can be passed directly into Klaviyo profile properties. From there, you can build trigger splits in your welcome flow to deliver personalised content. If someone selected gifts, your follow-up emails can feature gift guides and curated bundles rather than generic brand messaging.
It takes more work to set up, but the engagement rates on tailored journeys are significantly higher.
The Golden Rule: Auto-Apply at Checkout
When you display the discount code on the success step, do not just leave it as plain text for the customer to copy and paste. Include a prominent button that sends them straight back to the shop and automatically applies the discount to their cart.
Every major ecommerce platform supports auto-apply discount URLs. If a shopper has to manually copy a string of letters, navigate back to their cart, and paste it into a checkout field on mobile, some will abandon the purchase.
Remove every possible barrier between the opt-in and the transaction.
Final Thoughts
Showing discount codes on your pop-up might slightly decrease your welcome flow revenue in Klaviyo reporting, but it increases your overall store revenue. Always prioritise total cash in the bank over email attribution numbers.
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If you want high-converting pop-ups that gather rich zero-party data without hurting your conversion rate, take a look at our sign-up forms service to see how we build them for growing brands.
