These days everyone has turned their attention to the importance of building a loyal and engaged list of email subscribers. If you're keeping up with this trend you know that email is the most effective and “tried and true” method of getting traffic, building trust, and let's face it – making money online today.
Most of us bloggers and other email marketers rely on AWeber as our email service provider and it makes sense.
AWeber is one of the most reliable, affordable, and down right friendly email providers around. You might already know that I am a little biased in my opinion about this because I've had a chance to meet the staff at AWeber and visit their headquarters on more than one occasion.
The Thank You Page
The initial step in the list building process is creating the sign up form. Once the person submits the form, they should be directed to what's known as the “Thank You Page”.
This page serves two purposes, the first is obvious, you want to thank the person for joining your list. The second and more important purpose is to provide instructions for the next step of the process.
They need to check their inbox for the confirmation email and click a link to optin to your list. This is commonly known as the double optin.
This double optin is important for a number of reasons, but for now I'll just say don't skip this step because you want people on your list that are truly interested in what you have to say and if they aren't willing to double optin, then most likely, you don't want them on your list in the first place.
Two Thank You Options from AWeber
AWeber provides two versions of the Thank You Page (aka double optin) for you to choose from. One of them plays an audio message and the other plays a video showing the confirmation process in detail. Both of them feature Jay Moore. Jay is the guy I call “The Voice” of AWeber. He's such a cool guy and if you ever wondered what Jay looks like, rest assured the face matches the voice. Here's a picture of Jay that I took during their Open House event back in April 2013.
The Second Option: Create a Custom Thank You Page on Your Blog
The second “old-fashioned” choice for the Thank You Page is to create one on your blog. With your own Thank You page you can track conversions using Google Analytics. It's pretty easy to set up a Thank You Page on your blog and here are step by step instructions for setting it up AND how you use this page to track the referral sources for people who are signing up for your list.
AWeber Tutorial: Create a Custom Thank You Page to Track Conversions in Google Analytics
Now you are ready to learn about sales funnels, split tests, email templates and more click here for the next AWeber tutorial.
Be sure to download this free ebook from Aweber too!
LeadPages Is the New Kid On The Block
The brand new tool you can use to create the Thank You Page for your email subscribers is LeadPages (that's my affiliate link).
I started using LeadPages last month and this is what the Thank You page I created looks like:
LeadPages is a service you can use to create all sorts of landing pages and squeeze pages that have been tested, split tested and re-tested again (is that a word?). My point is pages like this one and all of the other landing pages available with LeadPages are more effective at getting results with every type of promotion you can imagine from email optin confirmations, conversions, webinar registrations you name it! Clay Collins is the co-founder of LeadPages and if they don't have what you need, once you become a customer you can put in a request and they'll get it done for you.
One of the many reasons I like this page is that is makes it even easier for people to get to that double optin email. Notice up at the top of the page, I drew a box around the links that take people directly to their email inbox like Gmail or Yahoo! mail for example.
LeadPages are super easy to set up and they also allow you to track conversions with Google Analytics, very similar to the way I showed in the video. There's another advantage to using this service and that is you can have the page hosted on Google's servers so the pages load extremely fast.
Ready to take email marketing to the next level?
LeadPages integrates with AWeber, Infusionsoft, MailChimp, iContact, GetResponse and all of the other major providers of email marketing services. So if you're ready to take things to the next level, head over to the site find out how LeadPages can help you get there.
Have you set up a Thank You Page for your email subscribers yet?
Never knew about LeadPages since I am using a custom email provider 😉 I’ll introduce that to my clients though, they may find it useful! Thanks for the share Illeane 😀
Hi sanjay,
You should check out LeadPages. However they don’t do email delivery, they are used for creating landing pages and squeeze pages and they are REALLY good at it.
Ok so Jetpack mail service looks like a kitten in from of Aweber (Lion) 😀 As of now, I do not have any lead pages on my blog, will try to incorporate them. Nor am I building a mail list :/
Gautham,
I don’t use the full version of JetPack and you can’t really use them for an auto responder or follow-up sequence. They are only for notifying people about comments and new blog posts. AWeber can be used for all of the above and more.
Yea Jetpack for new blog posts and I use a plugin called Thank Me Later for follow up on comments and I am planning on using MadMimi for keeping a list 🙂
Gautham, what do you like about MadMimi compared to others like MailChimp or AWeber? I never heard of it before and I don’t think it integrates with other platforms or plugins.
Ileane, Thanks for this tutorial. I am just starting out with my email campaign and am using mailchimp to start with. Hoping to migrate to aweber later.
I will try out the LeadPages and see how it helps with my campaigns.
No, I don’t have a Thank You Page for my email subscribers, and THANK YOU for this post here, going to learn a lot from you!
Pitt, who email service provider are you using? I hope you have the double optin in place because it will help qualify your subscribers.
hmm so Aweber is worth trying , I guess as off now. 😉 But I still like the serivce of the default WordPress email, by jetpack.
Myles, someone else mentioned JetPack. AWeber is for list building, JetPack is for feed and comment notification.
Ok but how can i do this trick in blogger platform , i feel thank you page is important but do not know way to add it to blogger.
You can start building an email list no matter what platform you are using. In fact you don’t even need a blog or website to build an email list. You can use the first option – which is the default AWeber Thank You page or you can use LeadPages. They will host the Thank You page on their servers.
definitely thank you page is an excellent idea to welcome our subscribers. In your blog lots of worthy post enough to appreciate. this article is also helpful for me. thank for presenting it.
Email Marketing is one of the most important component of “Digital Marketing.” I’ll try AWeber.
Thanks 🙂
Great job Ileane. I have been considering getting lead player for a while but after reading your post I have it at the top of my to action list.
Thanks again for the great honest info
Hi Martin,
I first heard about LeadPages from James Schramko, but since I absolutely love LeadPlayer I couldn’t resist. Let me know if you decide to give it a try.
Hi Ileane,
I am so liking the lead pages, i got a freebie from Clay’s site a while ago and i keep saying i need to check it out on my blog. Have I done it yet, nope 🙂 Now you sharing this has put it at the top of my long task list 🙂
Blessing Janet
Janet,
LeadPages is becoming extremely popular. It’s really a great time to get started with it. Let me know if you have any questions.
Whenever I come across a well made thank you page, I immediately know that the site owner has put visitors as the priority and that makes me happy
Hi Leslie, you make a great point. I emailed a friend to let him know that his Thank You page looked really bad. His logo was so huge you couldn’t get to the message without scrolling down. He was really happy that I let him know because most people would never bother.
Thanks for your feedback Leslie.
Hi Ileane.
It’s great article ! This is really something wonderful to learn something new so thanks Ileane for this great post.
The second way that is Thankyou one comes under the category of must have one for the blog.
The Thank you page is really a cool idea…. The new subscribers will definitely feel good about it and be more comfortable….. Thank you for the share…….
Woah, these 2 ways might be old but they help so much. Aweber is a really great email service and definitely recommend it to everybody.
Hi Ferb,
I’m a big fan of AWeber so I’m happy to see that you like them too. Thanks for the comment.
Nice post! I use wp email capture plugin for thanking my readers for subscribing and making a long list.
I customize my “Thank You” to my visitors as personally as possible to make them feel welcomed and appreciated. By doing this I have a high possibility that I can turn my visitors into subscribers.
Hi Ms. Ileane,
I have my site running for almost 3 years now but I never manage to have a LeadPage in it and the sad part also is I am not good at email campaigns that’s why I opted not to have one. But, with this kind of information being posted, I guess it’s time for me to try and make my email campaigns as well as LeadPages. Thanks for sharing this.
nice article .,,, i am gonna use thank me later plugin to send a ‘thank you’ email to your blog’s commenters.
Will definitely have to try out LeadPages – we’re using MailChimp at the moment on one of our sites and it would be great to enhance the user experience of our mailing list.
That is a good thank you page you made mainly because it tells them what to do NEXT. I have found many subscribers asking for their downloads instead of realizing they have to click on a confirmation link first so it is important to let them know the process of things.
And I also do not see anything wrong with offering another bonus gift or even a nice pictorial ad for a related affiliate product on the thank you page, but I know some of you may disagree with that one.
Some marketers even promise on their thank you page that if the subscriber clicks the confirmation THEN they will get another freebie which tends to drive their confirmation conversions up. It is a bummer to buy solo ads for example and get tons of subscribers with only a hand full that have actually checked their email for the confirmation 🙁
Hi Caleb,
I’m glad you mentioned solo ads because I have a concern about them. Aren’t we promising people (most of us do anyway) that we won’t share their emails with anyone else? If that is the case then how do solo ads work? Isn’t that breaking a promise?
No. A solo ad is more like an endorsement akin to what you do when recommending an affiliate product via an email to your list.
The solo ad buyer never sees the email address because the list owner is the one mailing out the solo ad. Now a smart solo ad purchaser will ensure their landing page has an optin form so they can further build their own list 😉
Click on my name for a post on my blog that gives even more details…
Thanks for making that clear to me. I think I am getting the solo ads mixed up with list swaps. I’ll check out your article to make sure I get the terminology right.
Well a list swap or ad swap is just like a solo ad except instead of directly buying a solo ad, both parties agree to mail a solo ad for the other to their perspective lists.
I still believe that email marketing is one of the best way to promote and to gain traffic.
Hello Ileane mam, this is the first time I’m commenting on your blog posts.
I never knew about Leadpages but it looks a promising tool for good email conversions.
I use mailchimp for my blog’s newsletter and unfortunately I didn’t build any TY page but I have now builded one on my blog which will redirect when user will confirm subscription.
Maybe it’s going to help me. 🙂
Anmol, thanks for leaving your first comment.
LeadPages integrates with Mail Chimp and I think you will enjoy using it to grow your list.
Nice to see that you took action and added the Thank You page. Cheers!