5 Ways You Can Use Your Thank You Pages to Boost Conversions

Jaykishan Panchal

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Congratulations. You just closed a sale.

What now? You just made a customer happy and gave her something she is going to enjoy using, which puts her in a state of positive anticipation. Now’s a great time to get this customer more engaged with you, by either viewing other relevant products on your site or reading more about your brand, potentially turning her into a loyal, repeat customer.

That’s right, the sales funnel doesn’t end at the checkout page. With the right post-purchase thank you page, you can actually extend the funnel and use it to nurture leads and promote brand loyalty. Once a customer has decided to buy from you, it is clear that they trust you and are likely to buy more from you.

Also, they’ve already gone through the checkout process and entered their payment information, so they will readily add another product if it adds value to the purchase they just made. That is why thank you pages are the perfect post-conversion conversion strategy, letting you create a steady stream of repeat customers, as well as increasing your retention rate.

And you want that steady stream of loyal, repeat customers. After all, it's fairly well known that the cost of acquiring a new customer is 5 times higher than the cost of retaining a current one. Not only that, but repeat customers spend 67% more per order according to a study by Bain and Co.

In addition, long-term customers go on to become your brand advocates, which is a crucial asset, knowing that word-of-mouth recommendations are still the most effective form of marketing. Click To Tweet

So what can you do to boost the retention rate of your website visitors and get one-time customers excited enough to come back to your site over and over again? Yes, you can create a killer thank you page that drives prolonged engagement, gathers precious customer data, offers upsell opportunities or does a number of other wonderful things that are more than just polite, generic “Thank You” notes.

So let's take a look at some of the most creative and rewarding thank you page ideas, and pick what you want your thank you page to do for you.

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1) Gather Precious Personal Data

If you care about the fact that personalization is the key to getting customers' attention, then you understand that data is the new currency.

Knowing just what your customers like and expect allows you to create an individually personalized marketing strategy and develop offers that are hard to pass up. You need to know what they like and what they don’t like. You need to know when a good time to call them is and just how often they shop online. You need to know much, much more about your customers.

But just how do you get this data? It is a known fact that nobody likes filling out marketing surveys.

Thank you pages are one fantastic opportunity to gather extremely useful data about your customers. Since they have just engaged with you positively, either by buying from you or subscribing to your newsletter or downloading your course, they are in a very positive state of mind and will readily engage with you a little further.

So use your thank you page as an opportunity to ask some very specific questions that will help you craft a better experience for them in the future. Be careful, though, as to how far you can push your luck. One question too many may push them away. Be concise and relevant.

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2) Showcase Your Best Content

Instead of thanking your customers for the purchase they just made and letting them walk away, maybe you can stretch your rendezvous a little longer and get customers to browse through a few of your best pages.

You could, on the thank you page, invite them to take a look at your newest collection, browse through your list of other relevant courses, service or products, or spend time reading through your most popular blog posts. Whatever the lure, if they spend more time on your website, there’s a much greater chance of them becoming emotionally involved with your brand and building a relationship that lasts much longer than a one-time purchase.

This opportunity needs particular attention from you though. Use your intuition, and your best Artificial Intelligence, to create a seamless customer journey, even post-purchase. Present content that is relevant to them, either based on their browsing history or on the purchase they just made. Don’t give them a cookie-cutter list of ‘Our top articles’ or ‘recommended for you’. Make it personal, make it worth their while.

When it comes to thank you pages, Intechnic has absolutely nailed it. Their thank you page has just about everything a thank you page needs to have, and yet it is far from being overbearing.

Check out how the promise was an e-book with “Simple SEO Strategies that Will Always Work”, but they provide links to other, relevant content. In addition to that, they have embedded a video right on this page. A video is a surefire way to boost engagement and educate the customers about your offers. They’ve then added a link to a free website consultation and even included their social sharing buttons.

This thank you page is indeed worthy of a tip of the hat.

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3) Go for a Home Run and Upsell

Yes, why not? Let’s hit a home run and go for that added sale! Now’s a great time to convince the customer to part with a little more of their money, since they’ve already loosened up the stack of bills.

So go on, upsell. Think of products that will add value to what the customer has just bought and include a special discount to seal the deal. If they just bought a monthly plan, offer them an annual subscription at a discount. If they just booked a one-way ticket, offer a lucrative discount on a return trip. The idea is to make another sale that adds value to their current purchase, and hooks them to your service, making them less likely to look elsewhere next time.

One great example comes from Digital Marketer, who ask you to check out another offer while you wait for the resource you've already bought:

And when you click on the “I’ll Take A Look” CTA button, you'll see a page with another compelling offer that quickly adds on to your current order for just $7, making you think “Well, why not?”

That’s a great way of increasing the total sale value just by using a simple thank you page and leveraging the positive mindset of your customer.

Another fantastic example is this one from Amazon. Though this is not technically a thank you page yet, it's a great upsell tactic you could use on a thank you page, as it relates to the primary purchase, adds value to it, and is personalized to your address:

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4) Encourage Social Sharing

Social sharing is all the buzz in today’s digital landscape where brand perceptions are formed on Facebook and customer interaction happens on Twitter. The number of Views, Likes, Retweets or Shares that your content garners determines the mileage you’ll have with customers – old and new.

Various studies show time and again that word-of-mouth and recommendations from friends remain the top influence of customer behavior. So here’s your chance to create a very solid base of real, first-person brand advocates who can potentially bring in a number of new customers by endorsing you on their social media accounts. By Liking, Sharing and Retweeting your content, they increase your social credibility and bolster your customer acquisition efforts significantly.

Check out this thank you page from HubSpot. They’ve given customers the option to download their e-book right here without having to open their email. But what really makes this page stand out is how subtly they’ve added the option to “Email to a Friend,” increasing the social shareability of their content by giving it a one-click solution:

Another great example is this one by Kickresume. After you’ve downloaded their “Job Seeker’s Guide to the Galaxy” e-book, they tell you to hang around as the book is on the way, and also encourage you to help your friends find their dream job by sharing it on social media:

Like I've said, if they’ve just seen value in giving you their email address and downloading your e-book, they’re very likely to share it on social media, too, if you make it easy for them. And what better way to facilitate this than adding it to your thank you page.

As a spin-off of this feature, you can also encourage visitors to follow your social media accounts, to really add that layer of engagement. If you include a “Follow Us on Twitter” or a “Like Us on Facebook” icon on your thank you page, that could just take things to another level. AdEspresso does a good job of this on their thank you page:

They provide a direct access link to the e-book, increasing user comfort, and entice them to follow AdEspresso on Twitter with a one-click button. Quite ingenious!

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5) Get Them Emotionally Invested

Does it bother you as much as it does me, when people sign up for an upcoming webinar or event, but when the time comes to attend it, they just forget or the excitement just fizzles? It happens to the best of us.

However, the humble thank you page can help you change that. Using a small social media plugin, you can get your customers to commit to your event by announcing it on their social media. Using a one-click option, you can encourage them to post something like “I’m attending the XYZ event on 123” on their social pages. This helps as a prompt reminder, as well as adding a layer of accountability, which can nudge them to actually participate.

It’s what SmartBribe does on their thank you page. It announces your commitment on Twitter, increasing your chances of actually following through, as well as builds up excitement, making your friends want to opt-in too, thus increasing engagement and opt-ins.

Also, the thank you page can actually go a step further and help the customer remember to attend the event by setting a reminder. It happens every so often that users sign up for webinars only to forget about them in a moment of rush, and only remember after the event. If you can help them avoid that, not only do you ensure their attendance and raise your event’s participation level, but also make the customer feel cared for, by sending them timely reminders.

Neil Patel nails this practice when you sign up for one of his webinars. First you see this page, which thanks you for joining and offers to set a reminder for you:

When you click on “Set Reminder,” it takes you to this page:

And I chose Google Calendar, only to be amazed at how easy Neil made this for me:

If you’re looking to get more people to attend your events and not forget it in the mix, all it takes is a small plug-in, and customers will appreciate your concern and your attention to detail. After all, we all need reminders now and again.

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The Wrap-Up

So these are five ways you can make your thank you pages work harder and bring in more conversions, retention and engagement.

As you can see, lots of companies are already using this technique to greatly increase their post-conversion conversions. Don’t underestimate the value of a happy customer. If they’ve just bought from you, it means that they have placed their trust in you and now’s the perfect time to do some more business with them, or prime them up to come back to you for more business in the future.

If you do a good enough job, you could even make them bring you more business from their friends, family and contacts. Either way, a thank you page is a great tool in the digital marketer’s arsenal, and one that you should be utilizing to its full potential.