Among the millions and millions of website pages out there, one kind of page is often wasted space just begging for some marketing think. And no I’m not talking about the About Us page, but it might be close second.

Most businesses online understand the need to capture leads through ebook, seminar and email newsletter sign-ups. Depending on the service you use the technology that drives these forms almost always redirects the subscriber to a success or thank you for joining kind of page. More often than not these pages are default generic pages created by the email service provider and left so by the user.

Allstate’s thank you page gives some nice instruction on what to expect next.

In my mind this is some prime wasted web real estate. Think about it, the person just decided what you were offering on your site or landing page was worthy of them paying with their email address (even free is more like paying these days.)

You haven’t produced the kind of trust that would call for an all out sales message, but you can use that thank you page to gently talk about a few more things you think the reader might like or make a low cost offer with some special one time bonuses to move them into the buyer category.

It’s also a great place to set the expectations for what’s to come or give out some bonus information. This is your subscriber’s first experience so make it rich, add audio and video instructions so you can make a deeper connections. Here’s an example of a nice instructional thank you page. AWeber does about as good a job as any email service provider with this kind of functionality.

Adding some personalization to your thank you page by passing the name of the person that enrolls can be a nice touch. Some services offer this but it’s pretty simple to do with a bit of JavaScripting – here’s a tutorial

You might considering using the form to ask for feedback, particularly if this is a thank you for your order kind of page. Survey.io is a tool that help create this tool

This is also a great place to offer the free ebook or newsletter subscription of a strategic partner – in return of course for the same. Or, you even monetize your page by showing ads using a service like AfterDownload. The key is to keep this relevant and not too over the top, but still use it as a marketing tool.