This Brand Converts 50% of Website Visitors Into Email Subscribers (Here's How)

$25,000.

That's what SkinGuru generated in email revenue in their very first month of working with GrowMyMail.

The month before that? Zero. Because they hadn't sent a single email to their customers in half a year.

Wait, wrong brand. Let me start again.

50%.

That's the sign-up rate we found when we audited TootiLab's Klaviyo account.

We've audited a lot of accounts. A lot. Most brands are thrilled with 5%. Some of our best-performing partners are hitting 15-20% and calling it a win.

TootiLab is converting half their website visitors into email subscribers.

And they're doing it without a popup.

Wait, No Popup?

Correct.

Gaia, the founder, and her co-founder made a deliberate decision early on to never use one. And before you assume this is some feel-good brand principle that's quietly costing them conversions — remember the number we just opened with.

"I really hate popups. They just devalue the whole experience of trying to understand and browse and understand what the brand is about."

Instead, TootiLab uses a persistent banner at the top of every page. Bright red. Hard to miss. Present on every single page of the site. With a sign-up option in the footer as well.

The logic is disarmingly simple: if you're ready to convert, it's impossible to miss. If you're still browsing and getting to know the brand, nothing interrupts you.

The result is a 50% sign-up rate that most agencies would claim was a typo.

It's not a typo. We checked.

But Why Are People Actually Signing Up?

Here's where it gets interesting — because a high-converting sign-up form alone doesn't explain a 50% rate.

What explains it is everything that surrounds the form.

TootiLab is a curly haircare brand built entirely around education. Before Gaia ever had a product to sell, she was teaching people how to take care of their curly hair on social media. A beginner bootcamp she created went viral — 120,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok, completely organically, before the brand had launched a single thing.

By the time people land on the TootiLab website, they already know who Gaia is. They've watched her content. They trust her. They're not signing up for a discount. They're signing up because they want to hear from her.

That's the part most brands skip when they try to reverse-engineer a high sign-up rate. They obsess over the form design and the incentive and the timing of the popup. They don't ask the more important question: why would someone actually want to be on this list?

For TootiLab, the answer is clear before the visitor even lands on the site.

What Happens After They Sign Up

A 50% sign-up rate means nothing if the welcome flow loses them immediately.

TootiLab's welcome sequence doesn't open with a brand manifesto or a wall of product benefits. It opens with education — tips, techniques, and the key things you actually need to know to take care of your curly hair. Content someone would want to read even if they had no intention of buying anything.

This is intentional. And it's smart.

Because here's the thing about someone who just signed up because they trust you: they don't need to be sold to immediately. They need to be shown that their trust was well placed. The welcome flow does exactly that — it delivers value first and lets the relationship develop naturally from there.

The purchase follows. It just doesn't have to be forced.

The Email Strategy That Keeps Them Engaged

Once someone is through the welcome flow, TootiLab runs two campaigns per week.

One is product-focused — benefits, ingredients, something relevant to the season or a specific hair concern. The other is something most brands would never think to send.

It's called the Founders Edit.

Gaia's face at the top. Her name. Her words. A text-heavy email that reads less like a marketing campaign and more like a message from a friend. Behind the scenes of the business. Honest updates. Advice for their hair. The kind of thing most brands would never put in an email because it doesn't feel promotional enough.

One recent Founders Edit talked about the new European warehouse and how much more difficult it made everything operationally.

Their subscribers opened it.

"It's more like if a friend is sending you a letter and just telling you their thoughts and giving you some advice."

When Ilko asked Gaia which style was performing better — the product campaigns or the founder newsletters — her answer was the most honest thing a brand owner has said to us in a while.

"It really depends on what the email is about."

Not a definitive answer. Not a data-backed winner. Just a founder who has figured out that balance is the strategy — and that neither approach should dominate the other, because the moment it does, the list starts to go numb.

The Number That Actually Matters

Right now, TootiLab is generating around 15% of their total revenue through email.

For a brand at their stage, with this level of list engagement and this sign-up rate, the benchmark for their industry sits between 20% and 30%.

Which means the infrastructure is already there. The trust is already there. The list is already there and growing fast.

The gap between 15% and 30% isn't a traffic problem or a product problem. It's an optimisation problem — and it's one of the more solvable ones we come across.

Personalization is the next frontier Gaia has her eye on. Using hair type data collected at sign-up and through their quiz to send different content to different segments. The right tips for wavy hair versus tight coils. Product suggestions based on actual customer needs rather than blanket campaigns.

When that layer gets added on top of an already-engaged list, the revenue number moves.

What You Can Actually Steal From This

The TootiLab story isn't really about curly hair. It's about what happens when a brand earns the right to someone's inbox before asking for anything in return.

The form isn't the sign-up rate. The brand is. TootiLab's 50% conversion doesn't come from a clever popup or an irresistible lead magnet. It comes from months of showing up and being genuinely useful before anyone was asked to buy anything. Build that first.

Education converts better than promotion — long term. A subscriber who joined because they trust you will buy more, stay longer, and unsubscribe less than someone who joined for a 15% discount. The lifetime value difference is significant.

Your welcome flow sets the tone for the entire relationship. If the first thing a new subscriber gets is a sales pitch, you've already broken the promise that got them to sign up. Lead with value. The sales will follow.

Balance is a strategy, not a compromise. Mixing product emails with founder-led content isn't hedging your bets. It's preventing list fatigue, reaching different emotional states, and keeping open rates strong over time.

Let the founder's voice into the inbox. The Founders Edit works because it's actually Gaia. Not Gaia's brand. Not Gaia's marketing team. Gaia. At any size, that kind of authenticity is one of the hardest things to manufacture and one of the most powerful things you can build.

Curious what your sign-up rate should be — and what it's costing you if it isn't there yet? Visit growmymail.com for a free Klaviyo audit and 90-day roadmap. No commitment required.