Online Marketing Strategies - Money Journal

8 Thank You Page Strategies To Maximize Growth

What is the purpose of a thank you page?

If you think it’s a place to show customers that mama raised you right, you’ve got it all wrong.

Success and thank you pages are opportunities to leverage momentum and take your relationship one step farther.

By leaving new sales and subscribers at a dead end, you’re limiting your income to a single interaction.

default thank you page template

There are a lot of things you can do with your thank you page.

Apple asks you to take a survey. Amazon gets you to keep shopping. The Obama campaign asks for donations and encourages subscribers to get involved.

obama's thank you page

The key is to determine your goals and push new subscribers and customers toward your post-conversion goal.

I spent the last two months hyper focused on one thing only. Thank you pages. It doesn’t sound like the most interesting topic, but the next 2,500+ words will give you the ins and outs of maximizing ROI, generating more leads and social shares without leaving money behind.

Here are 8 proactive things you can do to maximize growth, insight and ROI with your thank you page.

Two things to do for every goal completion:

There are two things you should do with every successful conversion.

The first is easy. Confirm the conversation on why they gave you their contact information.

confirm conversation

The second is to send a personalized email. The simplest way to do this is to use their first name in the body or in the subject line to boost open rates.

personalized email

The more personalized you can get, the better. One way that I’ve done this in a recent campaign is to get subscribers to fill out a survey.

Since no one likes filling out surveys, I worded it as “personalizing your experience.”

The survey starts with some simple questions that allow subscribers to get the content they’re interested in (blogging, recipes, home decor).

Then the more meaty questions about family, values and work which will help craft future marketing messages.

survey questions

Using this information, I was able to create tags for subscribers and send them personalized emails based on what they filled out.

A hyper-personalized email might look like this:

hyper personalized email

Personalizing emails is a great way to start off your relationship with subscribers. Showing interest in what they want helps nurture their experience down your funnel.

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s get into secondary goals you can achieve using your thank you page.

Bonus Cheat Sheet: Download a free matrix that shows you which thank you pages you should use to maximize your website’s growth. I added some extra ideas that didn’t fit in this blog post. Click here to get your copy.

1. Send them to a Survey

Surveys are cheap, easy to make and provide incredible insight from your target audience. The most common way I’ve seen them used is a hyperlink on the thank you page.

thank you page survey

I found this to be ineffective with less than 10% of new conversions leading to a completed survey.

I recently changed one of my thank you pages to a simple 4 question survey using Hotjar. Here’s what it looks like when someone opts in for my eBook.

money journal thank you page

Redirecting new subscribers to this external thank you page resulted in a 44% survey completion rate last month.

A few things to include in your survey are:

  • Simple and easy to understand questions.
  • No more than 4-5 options for multiple choice questions.
  • Duration of the survey.
  • Questions that will help you understand and help your audience.

Google forms is a free option you can use. The others are premium products that follow the freemium pricing model.

2. Get more social shares.

Studies show that friends have a great deal of similarity in their attitudes and behaviors. A lot of friendships are sparked by common interests, values, hobbies and lifestyles.

They have the power to influence others within their social networks and to be be influenced by the same networks.

This is what makes social sharing through your thank you pages such an effective tool. Visitors who subscriber to your offer will likely know others who can benefit from it too.

Getting more social shares isn’t about how fancy your buttons are. It’s about giving them a reason to share it. They don’t owe you anything.

thank you page social shares

If you want them to share it with their work colleagues, mention them. If you want them to share it with their mom, tell them.

This simple hack added 53 new visits to a landing page and 44 new sign ups in 3 days. That’s an 83% conversion rate.

growth hack thank you page

With a limit of 500 free eBooks, I had to close the campaign. Over a short 3 days, I saw an increase in conversion by 2,590%.

conversion increase

With the right lead magnet, this simple growth hack can expand your list exponentially.

The best part is that I didn’t even have a recipe book in the works. It was a way to validate an idea for a productless business.

If you want to run a similar campaign, you can steal my workflow. All you’ll need is LeadPages and an offer.

My Workflow:

  1. Send an email to your subscribers with a lead link. The lead link will add them to a new list.email subscribers with lead link
  1. You can use your lead link to send them to any page. In my case, a thank you page. The thank you page template I used from LeadPages is called “Social Share Thank You Page.” thank you page template
  1. Choose relevant social networks where your target audience hangs out. Set the share URL to direct referrals to a landing page for the same offer. landing-page-example

While organic search traffic and some WordPress plugins played a role in the influx of subscribers, you can still achieve great results with a short list.

3. Push new subscribers further down your content funnel.

If you’re generating leads through content marketing, then you know the value of creating posts that cater to your buyer’s journey.

There are 3 distinct stages in the buyer’s journey.

buyer's journey

  • Awareness – Prospect is expressing a symptom of a need or problem.
  • Consideration – Prospect has a name for their problem or need and is committed to researching.
  • Decision – Prospect has weighed out the options and ultimately comes to a decision on their preferred solution.

The kinds of offers you create are telling of where your buyers are in their journey. For example, eBooks are often offered in the awareness stage, while case studies are more effective in the decision stage.

content types for buyer's journey

If you have a content funnel in place, you can send new subscribers to the next piece of content in their journey.

content funnel on thank you page

Rand Fishkin from Moz tweeted this:

Best way to sell something – don’t sell anything. Earn the awareness, respect, & trust of those who might buy.

Rand Fishkin

Rand Fishkin | SEO Expert

Moz creates helpful content for people in different stages of their SEO journey.

They intentionally make efforts to not convert someone on their first and second visit because these visitors tend to result in high churn and low retention for their software.

On the other hand, their more frequent blog readers (10+ visits) have proven to be the most loyal customers because of their brand relationship.

Rand breaks it down on this episode of Whiteboard Friday.

Using your thank you page, you can guide your visitors down a storyboard of content. As a result, you may be able to catalyze your brand relationship by helping them through their buying journey.

4. Upsell and Cross-sell related products

If you want to increase revenue on a per customer basis, you need to start upselling.

The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20% compared to selling to existing customers at 60-70%.

selling to existing customers

Amazon leverages cross selling from the moment you hit a product page. You’ll see suggested bundles until you reach the checkout page.

amazon upsell bundle

Amazon reports that up to 35% of their revenue is from cross selling.

Sure enough, you’ll find highly related products on their success page too.

amazon success page

Godaddy can be a little overbearing with their add-on items. They start by getting you to add-on everything under the moon in the domain and hosting space.

godaddy upsell package

Don’t forget domain privacy, hosting, and anything else with a fancy name.

godaddy upsells everything

Surprisingly, the one place they don’t upsell is on their thank you page. When reaching your final destination, you’ll get a coupon code for your next purchase instead.

Another powerful option is to upsell products and services using limited time offers. This works great for upgrading to premium plans or doubling up on their original purchase.

urgency upsell

Urgency is a powerful tool for conversion. It forces buyers to act immediately and evokes a feeling of missing out on an opportunity.

The great thing about urgency is that you are in control. Your website copy, your images, your buttons, your messaging — these can all be leveraged to increase the sense of urgency on a page.

Neil Patel

Neil Patel | Content Marketing Wizard

The last thing you want to do is leave money on the table because you’re not taking advantage of selling more to your customers. It’s not just about getting more inventory out the door. It’s about offering them additional products and services they may not have known about or were on the fence.

A great way to do this is to look through your funnel analytics to see how people purchased your product. Are they comparing products before deciding? Are there common items that are purchased together?

By using a data-driven approach, you’ll improve conversion and ROI on upselling future customers.

5. Build Social Proof.

The small things like social share counters, Facebook like boxes and follow buttons can be a powerful way to engage your community in conversation.

It also adds an element of legitimacy and can even influence people to buy.

Derek Halpern from Social Triggers uses a two-fold approach with a Facebook like button and comments section.

social proof

Jonah Berger from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania explains how social proof works in coffee shops.

If the tip jar is empty, their customers may assume that other people aren’t really tipping and decide not to tip much themselves either. But if the tip jar is already brimming with money, they assume that everyone must be tipping, and thus they should tip as well.

Jonah Berger

Jonah Berger | Expert on Viral Marketing

It works outside of your coffee shop too. 84% of Millennials say user-generated content has at least some influence on what they buy.

And what better way is there than to use thousands of Facebook commenters who are showing enthusiasm about your product?

Online course creators use this tactic to provide free training videos before they pitch their course. From the moment you hit their thank you page, you’ll likely see a video, a call to action and a comments section below the video.

As you progress through the videos, you’ll see the same thing over and over again.

Throughout Brian Dean’s prelaunch sequence for his course SEO That Works, he asks people to tell him which of the 4 fatal SEO mistakes they’ve made.

And since anything Brian publishes is gold, his 1,899 comments speaks for itself.

brian dean social proof

Using Facebook comments works great for social proof. The pictures of real faces taking action instantly adds credibility and alleviates buyer paranoia.

Use testimonials from people your customers respect.

Testimonials are a great way to build social proof from both prospects and new customers. It works to influence visitors to make a purchase and gives new customers confidence in their buying decision.

Wishpond uses testimonials on their thank you page to provide assurance to other marketers.

testimonials on thank you page

The key to testimonials is to use people that influence your audience.

Neil Patel does this creatively throughout his blog using Sara Underwood, Playmate of the year.

creative advert

Sure enough, his audience confirms that they resonate with his advert.

neil patel comment

6. Expand your Social Groups

While social groups are a great source for leads, they are doubly exciting for engaging your community, expanding your reach and making sales.

Punchbowl has a simple and effective thank you page. After downloading their white paper: “How Brands Can Create Fabulous Content for Moms”, they suggest joining their LinkedIn group.

social groups thank you

Rather than using a generic group on party ideas, they keep the topic relevant by building a community of digital marketers with moms as their target audience.

Kimra Luna on the other hand does it all.

She spends countless hours helping her students which has resulted in over 26,000 members that are active, engaged and hungry.

social group engagement

Providing free help has been an effective way for her to grow her seven-figure online course. When she opens the doors to her course, her group members are ready to buy.

kimra luna influencer

7. Pixel them for remarketing campaigns

Most of the big advertising networks like Facebook, Google, Pinterest and Bing have retargeting pixels. Here’s how they work.

You add a 1 x 1 pixel image and a custom Javascript code to your website. This allows the advertising network to capture visitor information so you can retarget them with another advertisement.

Since we’re on the topic of thank you pages, there is no need to retarget the people who have already signed up or made a purchase from your website.

It would be a waste of ad spend considering you have already converted them and likely have permission to communicate with them through email.

The pixel on the thank you page is perfect for retargeting visitors who saw your page, but did not convert into a subscriber or sale.

Here’s how you do it on Facebook.

  1. In your Facebook ads manager, choose the audience option under the tools tab. facebook custom audiences
  1. Create a custom audience. create custom audience
  1. Choose website traffic.custom audience website traffic
  2. Select “people visiting specific web pages but not others.” This will allow you to target people who’ve seen a landing page, but did not reach your thank you page. Create your audience when you’re done. custom audience final
  1. When creating your ad set, add your new custom audience to your targeting. custom audience ad set

Using this strategy, I’ve seen landing pages convert new subscribers as high as 80%.

8. Get them to create a free account.

Once a customer has chosen products they want to buy, they don’t want to fill out forms to create a new account. In fact, 23% of online shoppers will abandon their shopping cart if they are forced to register a new account.

This is why 8 out of the top 10 US retailers offer guest checkout.

An unnamed company was able to increase revenue by an additional $300m by removing the register button.

But here’s the deal.

Getting customers to create an account provides a wealth of data for personalized marketing messages – not to mention being able to communicate with them via. email.

You can solve this problem by adding a simple option to create an account on your success page.

create account thank you page

The less steps you create, the greater your post-goal conversions will be. Here are some tips to maximize account creations.

  • Offer account creation by logging into their favorite social networks.
  • Parse the data from checkout to offer a one-click solution.
  • Show them the benefits of creating an account (ie. track your order in real time).

Conclusion

Thank you pages are a great place to start a relationship with your subscribers and customers. They also act as a perfect opportunity to gain reach, build a community, drive revenue and get new leads.

The important thing is to create relevant offers and content to increase your probability of fulfilling your post-conversion goals.

Keep your goals aligned with what you want to achieve in your funnels and use that momentum to gain more insight and value for future marketing efforts.

Not sure which thank you page model to use? Click here to download my thank you page matrix. I threw in some bonus ideas in the chart for every situation.

Which thank you page model works best for your business?

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Author: Sam Oh
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