I am submitting a form in my php application using the `.ajax()` function. If the form is successful I am changing the submit buttons text from "SUBMIT" to "MESSAGE SENT SUCCESSFULLY". 

It works great, but I'd like to animate the button's value change instead of it just 'popping' to the next value. 

I saw the `fadeIn()`, `fadeOut()`, and `fadeTo()` functions but I don't think these would work. 

How can I do this? Thanks!