Conversations and conversions are the bedrock of marketing campaigns. While each step in the marketing funnel is crucial to the sales process, content managers and marketing leaders too often overlook the importance of thank-you collateral – including emails, texts and webpages that thank a customer for their purchase.
When your business underutilizes thank-you collateral, you miss out on a chance to highlight actions you'd like their customer to take. This seemingly small mistake may result in lost leads, missed information and wasted opportunities to cross-sell, close sales or increase customer engagement.
We'll explore thank-you pages, why they're important, and how to create a thank-you page that continues the conversation with your customer.
What is a thank-you page?
After customers buy something from your website or e-commerce storefront, they'll see a page thanking them for their purchase. This thank-you page is a way to express your appreciation to your customer for the sale. Thank-you pages are also common after a lead or prospect takes another kind of desired action, such as signing up for a newsletter, subscribing to a podcast or downloading a white paper.
The thank-you page is a final touchpoint with your customer, prospect or lead. It's an essential step that fulfills the tone and feeling you want them to experience and associate with your brand.
But an effective thank-you can do much more than express gratitude: A well-executed thank-you page will empower your businesses with added opportunities and calls to action that may lead to additional revenue.
For example, an effective thank-you page can encourage prospective customers to provide information on their purchase behavior or personal preferences, leading to a more tailored marketing campaign.
Importance of a thank-you page
While a thank-you page is an important way to show your appreciation for a customer's prospects, thank-you pages can help you with these other essential functions:
- Increase customer satisfaction. An effective thank-you page can decrease the post-purchase dissonance that patrons often experience after buying a product or service. Increased customer loyalty and satisfaction can directly impact your company's profit and loss statement.
- Drive repeat conversions. An effective thank-you page can drive repeat conversions by encouraging future transactions between your organization and the customer.
- Transition new or cold leads. An effective thank-you page can transition cold leads into warm, active sales leads.
- Boost email subscriptions. An effective thank-you page is a way to build your email list, boost your email subscriptions and create effective email marketing campaigns.
When you think about thank-you collateral as a tool for increased sales, conversions and engagement, you open up the possibilities of these pages in endless directions.
How to create a thank-you page
Every time you use marketing collateral to communicate with your current customers and new prospects, you must provide value. Email marketing best practices include tailoring material to the unique needs of your prospects, leading to higher conversion and subsequent purchase rates.
With the idea of providing value in mind, we'll explore six tips for building effective thank-you pages that meet all your marketing objectives.
1. Go above and beyond a simple 'thank you.'
Thank-you pages must generate a feeling of excitement, so leveraging active words and phrases is key. For example, in a page designed around downloading gated content – such as a white paper – companies often ask for a name and email, and then finish by adding a simple "thank you" beside the Download button. This plain and passive approach misses a huge opportunity to drive participation.
Instead of just placing "thank you" above the data-input area where prospective customers type their personal information, companies and marketing teams could do more. For example, they could add a message expressing how commendable it is that the reader is committing to development within their sector by choosing to read this white paper. This message could also reiterate why the paper is essential to read and understand.
2. Make a CTA request.
In thank-you collateral, an action is always advisable and should be expressed, whether it's as straightforward as asking for a sale or as subtle as providing awareness of a social media presence or campaign.
In marketing, this imperative is often known as the call to action (CTA). The key is to communicate further actions as clearly as possible; it's a bonus to do so in a witty and memorable way.
In this step, it's essential to clearly explain any rules or guidelines to the reader. For example, what can the reader expect next, and how long will it be until that step occurs? Internally, it's vital to ascertain what information marketing and campaign specialists want to gain – and why.
3. Don't turn 'contact us' into a 'Where's Waldo?' situation.
Too often, companies overlook the need to place contact information in a consistent and prominent place on thank-you pages. Changing the placement of the Contact Us button on different pages leaves the reader feeling like they're on a scavenger hunt trying to call, email or text subject matter experts, marketing managers or sales team members.
When a prospective customer gets prompt answers to their questions, it can make the difference between a completed or lost sale.
4. Don't miss a chance to reinforce the brand.
When designing an extensive marketing campaign, there are often so many details that it's easy to overlook the importance of proper brand management, especially on thank-you pages. Thank-you pages often rank lower on the priority list than other aspects of a marketing campaign and don't get the brand treatment other campaign elements carry.
Companies and marketing teams should focus on providing the same look and feel on thank-you pages as on other campaign pages, including the overall company brand, product logos and color palettes.
At the same time, thank-you emails and pages should look different enough from other marketing collateral so that the reader feels the piece is unique. One way to do this is to limit large images and pictures throughout the campaign until creating the thank-you pages and emails.
5. Test thank-you emails and pages.
Many marketing teams create A/B test pages for key campaign pages and collateral like emails. Then marketing teams test the different versions during campaigns to determine the highest-converting content pages and designs.
However, most marketing personnel stop short of conducting these tests on thank-you collateral. On the surface, this approach makes sense. It saves time, money and effort. But not testing thank-you pages potentially sacrifices short-term and long-term revenue by keeping lower-performing material in circulation.
6. Increase social media engagement.
You should provide your social media presence in thank-you emails and pages regardless of the campaign type or purpose. In many instances, providing social media information is regarded as an extension of the Contact Us portion of the page, leading to broader coverage and awareness.
Elements to add to your thank-you pages
Marketing teams who wish to extend their thank-you page functionality with more value for users and prospects should consider these actions:
- Request referrals. Thank-you pages are excellent channels for referrals – especially when partnering with a third-party vendor or another company, which is often seen in event marketing. Consider asking for referrals on your thank-you page.
- Cross-sell services. Thank-you emails and pages are also effective vehicles to cross-sell other products or add complementary services. For example, you could tout consulting services when selling IT solutions; or suggest complementary services when someone downloads a thought leadership piece, such as a white paper.
- Display and gather testimonials. Thank-you pages are an excellent vehicle for highlighting testimonials, which builds brand trust. You can also solicit testimonials and ask customers for reviews to use in your marketing materials.
- Obtain feedback. Thank-you pages are also an effective way to gain feedback and intelligence by crowdsourcing. Consider asking readers to offer their ideas on how your business can improve services or products.