By Greg Digneo
One of the most under utilized assets on your website is your thank you page.
Most thank you pages say something along the lines of “Thanks for signing up. Here’s your gift” or something along those lines.
More sophisticated thank you pages might even have a Facebook or Twitter button, but that’s about it.
However, there are ways to take advantage of your thank you page. Whether you use it to collect more email addresses, get more leads, or generate more revenue, it’s time to put the thank you page to work for you.
Referral Program
When most people think of referral program’s, they think one of two things:
- The marketing hacks deployed by the giant tech companies like Dropbox and Uber to get more users.
- Small business owners who generate most of their leads through the word of mouth of happy clients.
However, you can use a simple referral program to build your email list.
When someone signs up for your course, your lead magnet, or your program, chances are they have a friend who shares a similar problem.
Setting up a referral program and “bribing” someone to share your business with their friends is an easy way to get more customers and build your email list.
When you give someone an incentive to share your business with their friends, they are more than 50% more likely to do so. That’s why a referral program is so powerful.
Free Trial
When Snack Nation wanted to generate more leads from their blog, they turned to their thank you page.
Once again, instead of a generic “hey, thanks for signing up” message that you see on most sites, Snack Nation offered people a free trial of the product, a box of healthy snacks designed to promote employee wellness.
According to Emil Shour, Snack Nation’s blog editor, this strategy has helped Snack Nation generated 884 leads and closed over 20 sales.
(Note: Even though this number doesn’t seem high, Snack Nation mails a physical box to offices in the United States only. Many of their leads are unqualified. If they were selling a SaaS product or an online course, this may have been dramatically higher.)
Add to Social Media
As someone who emphasizes growing an email list over a social media, I am somewhat neglectful of growing my Facebook fan page.
However, there is a way for me to have my cake and eat it too.
That’s exactly what my friend Reese Evans does. After someone signs up to her list, she invites them to join her Facebook group.
She can create engaging content on Facebook while owning the asset that is her email list.
Additional Content
Let’s face it, not all landing pages and content upgrades are designed to be bottom of the funnel content.
Much of the lead magnets and content you create on your site is considered top of the funnel, meaning that you’ll need to further nurture leads before they become your customer.
If you have a blog post or case study or page that generates customers for your business, then your thank you page is a great way to promote that content!
Sell and Introductory Product
Conversely, if you have a high converting lead magnet that is much further down the funnel (for instance, an article comparing your product to another product or a case study), then you have a potential lead that may not need a lot of nurturing.
On your thank you page, you can offer an introductory product or service that isn’t the financial commitment that your core offer is.
Since it’s cheaper to resell to an existing customer than acquire a new customer, this allows you to develop that relationship very early.
In fact, there are several case studies that show having an introductory product will actually increase the sales of your core offering.
Over to you
How you decide to utilize your thank you page is entirely up to your imagination. These are simply five ideas to get you started.
The trick is to figure out what your goals are and deploy the page in accordance to them.
Your thank you page should be working for you and your business, not just acting as a placeholder on your site.
Greg Digneo is a content marketer at heart and is working on Entice, a Referral App for Bloggers. You can find me on twitter here.
