It’s important to know how to say thank you. Genuinely, warmly. As a person and especially as a marketer. It’s important for two reasons.
Reason #1 – You know that feeling when you see a friend and she looks put-together. You can tell she put effort into her outfit, her hair, her makeup. So you tell her so.
“You look great!” you say. And you mean it.
And she responds with a dismissive litany of things that are wrong with her. She’s too fat, she hates her hair, she didn’t sleep well and knows she looks tired. Annoying, right? Just take the compliment and say thank you, already!
(Marketing Translation: When a customer gives you the ultimate compliment – be it giving up their email address to you or even purchasing from you – don’t take it lightly. Thank them!)
Reason #2 – You know that other friend , the one who you do a lot of favors for? He’s always wanting to borrow your power tools or asking you to water his plants when he goes out of town? You don’t mind doing these things but geez…would a “thank you, you’re the best buddy ever” kill him?
Instead…the minute he is in your garage returning your power drill, he spies your new socket set and asks if he could use that for his next project. So frustrating! It makes you a little less enthusiastic about handing over the next tool…and the next. And one day you might find yourself dodging his calls so that you don’t have to give him anything, any more.
Well, that may happen to you. If you have a happy customer, or a valuable business partner, and you don’t learn how to make them feel properly appreciated…you might just lose them.
(Marketing Translation: When a customer buys from you, don’t move on to selling them the next item without truly making them feel like you appreciated their initial purchase!)
Yes, a sincere thank you helps a new, good relationship grow into a solid, long term one.
Here are a few awesome website Thank You Page ideas to help you nurture your relationship with your customer or vendor by thanking them. Cleverly, sincerely and in a way that benefits you both!
A good Thank You Page will confirm a subscription or transaction and let the customer know that you have received their information, order, whatever it is.
But a great Thank You page will do all this in a way that exudes warmth and sincerity and maybe even a little of your brand’s “personality”.
Get Cute
The Emergen-C brand does a wonderful, fun job of this. Take a look at their thank you page when you sign up for their newsletter…
It’s simple and cleanly designed, but still manages to sneak in social share buttons and a search box. It also keeps the site’s header accessible, to entice visitors back to the rest of the site.
And see what I mean about personality? Thanking your customers with a little cute imagery puts a smile on their face and makes them warm up to you that much more.
Get Confident:
Here’s another great Thank You Page from xCube Labs. This one takes a different tact. It’s more straightforward and businesslike, but it also conveys a LOT of information. Once you have given your email address so you can receive a free whitepaper, they clearly thank you and confirm that you will receive it immediately.
But they also take an opportunity to offer up a video to watch in case you want to learn more about the people behind the brand. And they sneak in some (pretty impressive!) logos of clients they have worked with. Clever. Finally, they also make it simple for you to email, call them or interact with them on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
All in one neat, simple, cleanly designed page.
Get Daring
Do not be afraid to be yourself. One of the most important ways to ensure your customer or partner knows that you mean what you say is to say it in your own voice. For example, check out this Thank You Page from “The Marshall Fridge”, brought to you by the fine, irreverent folks of Marshall amplifiers:
Note the bold masculine type, the distressed background, the fearlessness in dancing up to the profanity line (without actually crossing it.) That’s a rock and roll thank you page if ever there was one and you’d expect nothing less from the Marshall brand.
Give A Little
You know, a thank you page doesn’t just have to be an expression of gratitude. It can be a subtle, incentivized nudge towards the cash register. One of the best way to say thanks is with a little ‘thank you gift’…in the form of a coupon code!
It may seem counter-intuitive or even pushy, but it’s not. Not if you do it right. In the example above, Shutterfly does it and does it well. Here they clearly and directly thank the customer for their order and then instantly give them a coupon code, carefully framing it not as a marketing technique, but a “thank you gift”.
Who better to offer a coupon code to then someone who’s already proven to like your product enough to buy it!?
Pry Some
I’m being facetious. It’s not really prying. It won’t feel that way, at least, to the customer if you do it right!
A thank you page is a great place to find out a little more about who exactly just subscribed to your newsletter or downloaded your whitepaper.
MailChimp does this brilliantly… with a bribe! They manage to dangle a tempting, cute free T-shirt as a thank you gift to their customers…if only they will enter their physical mailing address.
So smart, right? Start thinking of what physical free stuff you could afford to mail to your prospects and use this tactic to ‘pry’ a mailing address out of your otherwise just-online digital contact.
Home scout Realty ‘pries’ more information out of its digital subscribers as well. Once they capture the customer’s email address, they offer something of value to them – a 30-minute meeting with an industry expert:
All the customer has to do is give them just…a little…bit…more demographic information. Sure, they could ask all this on the phone but what if they never get a chance to actually talk to that person, due to scheduling problems to something? By asking at the front end, they’re not just getting a lead, they are building out a more robust profile of their prospects. Clever, clever.
So in closing, Mom was right. You should always, always say thank you. Say it often, say it genuinely. And – as a marketer – don’t waste that opportunity to brag, to assure, to get more information and to bond more with your customer.
What are some of your favorite Thank You pages? Least favorites? Did they offer you any kind of gift or discount? What do you offer on your Thank You Page? Need ideas? Comment below and let us help you think of ways to rev up your Thank You Page!
[hide_from accesslevel=‘free’]
Are You Ready To Start Doubling Your Business With Half The Effort?
If you have a business, whether it’s established or brand new, wouldn’t it be great to know how to use free and low priced modern marketing methods to boost the number of customers banging on your door and dramatically increase your profits? And with no technical degree, no sales staff and just a few minutes a day.
As a member of The Owners Club, you’ll get free access to the methods I used to bootstrap my company from zero to a million dollars in its first 12 months with no sales staff (it was actually $1,002,000). And the methods I’m using today to keep growing it beyond 97,000 customers with very little effort. Best of all, it’s absolutely free.
Go here to get started
[/hide_from]