How much is your company willing to pay for a new lead? Maybe 20% of the average lifetime value? Or you can go up to 50%? Maybe you haven’t even considered it yet.
What if we tell you that there’s a way to get a higher return on every dollar spent on customer acquisition?
Are you willing to put in a few hours of work to increase the ROI of every conversion on your website?
By powering up your website with a well-built thank-you pages, you can increase the ROI of every single conversion.
If you haven’t yet added a thank-you page to your online conversion funnel, there’s a good reason to do it.
Source: Giphy
The low-hanging fruit of thank-you pages
Of course, you wouldn’t jump head first to spending resources on something of dubious value. It’s a good thing that thank-you pages make a strong case.
1. It’s nice and polite to thank someone
If you think about it, then surely, it’s mannerly to say “thank you” to anyone taking up on your offer. A simple “Thank you for signing up” will do the job.
2. Thank-you pages are reassuring to the user
As someone signs up for your free trial or makes a purchase, they’ll want to know the transaction’s completed.
A thank-you page validates the conversion and lets people know they’ve succeeded (which makes them feel happy about their accomplishment, and scores your brand some love).
3. Thank-you pages can strengthen your relationship with customers
A good thank-you page copy makes people feel happy about their decision and rules out any “buyer’s remorse” feelings.
An authentic thank-you message can go a long way on empowering your brand’s reputation.
4. You have a lot to share and give
Your landing page offer isn’t all you’ve got up your sleeve. There’s a good chance you’ve got some irresistible promotional offers or free helpful content to give away.
A thank-you page is a great place for sharing further offers as people are already interested in what you’ve got.
5. You can direct people to the next activities
If someone signs up for a free trial, they have lots of options: discover the product, confirm their email, read the company’s blog or talk to the sales team. With so many options, the easiest choice is to do nothing.
That’s where your thank-you page comes in and tells people what step to take next (and what to expect).
6. There’s potential for another conversion
While your thank-you page serves as a place to thank, reassure and direct people, it’s also a perfect place for an upsell. Let’s say someone downloaded an eBook. Now, it’s your chance to get their buy-in on a free trial period.
When you are creating your thank-you pages think about who’s going to read it: someone that has just filled out a form to redeem your offer or buy something from you.
They’re kind of excited about your content and your company.
It’s the perfect opportunity to reconvert them and strengthen their interest in further engaging with your company.
14 types of thank-you pages you can start using today
There are dozens of ways to benefit from a thoughtful thank-you page. It’s up to you to decide what’s the best option for each website conversion.
Keep the noise level low. If you want people to take a specific action, that’s the only thing you should include in your thank-you page. Just like the single action rule that applies to all your landing pages – use a single call-to-action and cut the unnecessary distractions. (Read more: 7 Landing Page Distractions That Killed Conversions In 2015).
Up next, you’ll find a detailed overview of 14 thank-you page types that you can quickly set up and start using.
1. Confirm the conversion
Can you guess which is the secret thank-you page message that never disappoints anyone? It’s composed of two words only, and these magical words are (drumroll please…) “thank you.”
People expect to get a confirmation that they’ve succeeded. And that’s precisely the message that your thank-you page should deliver.
It could be a simple “Thank you!”, or something more creative like “You’re now part of the crew.”
MyCopyblogger certainly knows how to please their audience. Their thank-you page confirms the sign-up, says thanks and tells you what’s to be expected next.
2. Ask to whitelist your email address
This one is particularly important for newsletter subscriptions and other types of conversions where the subscribers will receive many emails.
Use your thank-you page to ask your audience to whitelist your email address so that all your marketing emails will reach their inbox.
If you look back at MyCopyblogger’s thank-you page, you’ll notice that they ask to mark news@copyblogger.com as a “safe sender,” so that no emails will end up in the junk/spam folder.
As someone who signed up 10 seconds ago, you’re pretty likely to take this little extra step. By adding this small note on their thank-you page, Copyblogger’s able to deliver more emails successfully (check the example above). Pretty smart, right?
Read more: 12 Expensive Landing Page Mistakes That Are Stealing Your Conversions
3. Ask people to confirm their email
If you’ve ever wondered why many companies ask you to verify your email, it’s mainly a measure for avoiding spam robots.
Even if you’re not worried about fake opt-ins, you can use the email confirmation as a subsequent validation of the person’s interest in your offer.
The thank-you page of Buffer’s webinar sign-up is plain simple, asking you to take the one last step: verify your email. You don’t even need to call it an “email verification.”
Did you also notice how Buffer’s thank-you message says “We’ve sent a confirmation email to your inbox, just to make extra sure we got all the details right”? Now isn’t this nice and considerate of them!
4. Offer free goodies
Who doesn’t love free stuff, right? Even better if this free content is about the offer a potential customer just signed up for.
After someone signs up for a free trial or downloads an eBook, it’s your chance to shine and overdeliver. To do that, you’ll need a thank-you page with a free offer for extra content, consultation, or other helpful stuff.
HubSpot, for example, offers a free consultation for each person who signed up for one of their webinars.
Consider that someone has already given them their information in exchange for the webinar access- So why not take the next step and also get the free consultation.
5. Provide them with an extra promotion
Visitors landing on your thank-you page are hot prospects, so why don’t you try to warm them up even more?
Your thank-you pages are a great place to promote additional offers like:
a special discount offer for new subscribers
a timed (24-hours-only) discount offer
complementary products and services
Don’t get too caught up on the promise of higher post-conversion engagement. Whatever you offer on your thank-you page must have a compelling value offer and require just a little extra commitment.
Quicksprout’s blog displays a special offer landing page as its thank-you page. So after customers have downloaded one of their eBooks, they’ll be offered the opportunity to start a free trial.
That’s pretty straightforward, but a pretty efficient conversion.
6. Showcase & promote your product
If you’re thinking about adding a thank-you page to content downloads, here’s something to consider: showcase your product/service.
People who download free content are excited about your company and trust its expertise. So they’re a lot more qualified to become customers than an occasional website visitor.
An efficient way to introduce your product is to include a short introductory video on your landing page.
Here’s how HubSpot has done it. Check out the sharing buttons on top of the page!
7. Ask to complete the account (eCommerce)
If you’re working with eCommerce sales, here’s some stats you should know. Forcing potential customers to create an account before the purchase can cause 30% of users to abandon their cart.
So if it damages to request a sign-up before the purchase, you can ask for it after the sale. You can incentive people to create an account after the purchase by offering additional promo codes and user benefits.
Need an example? Here’s a simple one: the thank-you page presents customers the opportunity to track their order and save their details for the next time. Notice that all the benefits have been listed as no-brainer bullet points to give an extra nudge.
Source: Smart Insights
8. Conduct a survey
Have you ever wondered what brought people to your website in the first place? Or what’s their incentive to convert on your landing page offer?
After someone has already shared their name and email with you or trusted you enough to make a purchase, they’re potentially willing to share some more information.
Use your thank-you page as a tool for conducting brief surveys. Reassure the visitors that it won’t take long to fill out the survey. Say something like “It only takes 30 seconds to complete this survey, and it would mean the world to us.”
Wrike’s pretty smart about their lead qualification process. Their thank-you page survey asks people how interested they are in using Wrike.
9. Ask questions to improve the user experience
Your thank-you page is also a great place to gather information to further improve the future user experience. You could ask the customer about the size of their company, the industry, the problem they’re trying to solve, etc.
You can use the information from your thank-you page to make more personalized your users first experience with you (which, naturally, leads to happier clients and more sales!)
Hotjar’s made their entire sign-up process a funnel of several thank-you pages that ask simple questions and help to set up your account.
9. Ask to spread the word
Happy customers can be quickly turned into brand advocates when nudged in the right direction. Your thank-you page is a great place to ask people to share the news with their friends and invite them to jump on board too.
But no one will spend their time in exchange for nothing. You should offer a good reason to tell a friend then.
Warby Parker’s thank-you page reads: “Get a pair of Warby Parkers on a friend and we’ll thank you with fun surprises.”
In addition to being beneficial, the offer’s also mysterious – what could be the fun surprise?
10. Add a newsletter opt-in
While most companies automatically add all the new leads to their newsletter subscriber list, there’s also another way to do it – by simply asking. This way, you’ll attract an audience that’s genuinely interested in hearing from you.
Imagine someone took an interesting free test on your site or downloaded an eBook. Instead of asking for their email in return for the first conversion, you could give it away for free.
After they’re super excited about their 100% free download, you could ask them to opt in for an interesting series of email courses. First Round does a good job, check the example below:
11. Ask people to connect on social media
One of the ways to increase the ROI of each conversion is by amplifying the reach of your offer. If you could get one every ten persons to share your eBook or discount offer with their friends, you’d have a lot more new leads.
The easiest way to ask people to engage with your company on social media or share your offer is to include the social media icons on your thank-you page.
HubSpot’s thank-you page has all the focus on amplifying the social media reach: it features both the social media icons and a call to get a free trial for social media sharing tools. They’ve made it easy to share the content through Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
12. Add some extra social proof
After someone starts a free trial on your website, they still might not be 100% convinced it’s the best option. There are dozens of similar service providers out there, so you should put a lot of effort on building trust.
Research by Bazaarvoice found that more than 8 in 10 people say user-generated content from people they don’t know indicates brand quality. That’s why you should add social proof and client testimonials to every step of the conversion funnel, even your thank-you page.
Hotjar’s thank-you page tells that you’re in good company with over 213,451 users. That’s some golden social proof.
13. Introduce your community
If you’ve built a strong network of content, webinars, podcasts, forums, etc. around your brand, chances are you’d like more people to join in.
Listing various options to participate in the community has two significant effects of your audience: it makes them a lot more engaged, and it acts as social proofs (as it validates that there really is an active community around your brand).
Social Media Examiner’s thank-you page mentions all the various ways to engage with their community: listen to a podcast, join free networking clubs, read latest articles, etc.
14. Unleash your creativity
By no means, thank-you pages are supposed to be boring. (Although it’s easy to create a boring thank-you page)
If you put some thought into what would make people truly engage with your brand, you can come up with some widely authentic thank-you pages.
Why not include a welcome video from your CEO, or give away a free series of online courses. Do whatever you think would please the customer and contribute to increased engagement.
And if you’re hit by inspiration, make sure to share your ideas with us in the comments below!