You don’t have to be a huge retailer like Amazon to use cross-selling and upselling techniques to increase your revenue. And you can forget the “one size fits all” marketing strategy. By displaying the right products at the right time and to the right customers, you can greatly increase each customer’s revenue potential and their lifetime value as a customer.

But where and how do you bring in cross-selling and upselling? Here are our tips for growing your revenue through targeted, timed, and relevant techniques.

 

What are cross-selling and upselling?

Cross-selling is selling one or more additional products or services to an existing customer, such as buying an SSL certificate on top of a hosting package.

Upselling is selling a superior version of the product a customer already owns or is currently buying, such as buying a higher-spec server instead of the basic version.

There are three stages you can bring in cross-selling and upselling – pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase. But you always need to be tactful about it. Constantly hitting your customers with “buy more” on every page and every email is going to overwhelm them, damaging their perception of your brand and overall conversions.

 

Upselling opportunities during the pre-purchase stage

Upselling can start right when a visitor looks at a product or service on your site. The key here is to entice them with a more expensive product and motivate them to purchase it. By highlighting the most important benefits and features of the more expensive version, especially in comparison with the version they were considering, you can present the information in an attractive way.

Here are just a few examples of how you can entice customers to upgrade:

• Technical – “Increase your storage size for only £20 more!”
• Financial – “Pay for a year up front and get two months free!”
• Social – “Our most popular package!”
• Timed – “25% off for the next two days!”
• Psychological – “Our greenest package!”

By using different colours and badges to draw the customer’s attention to a specific product, you can present your upsell offer in a way that customers can’t say no.

Here are a few examples to draw inspiration from:

Hootsuite

Hootsuite uses colour to draw your attention to the mid-tier package. Aside from the many extra benefits compared to the Free package, the Pro package is also the only one showing the price.

Unbounce

Unbounce uses blue and the word “Best Value” to draw attention to their Pro plan. They also give you the ability to see the cost per month or per year via the Monthly/Annual buttons at the top.

Freshservice

Freshservice uses a different colour and the word “Popular” on their mid-tier package to draw your eyes to it.

Moz

Along with providing the monthly prices, Moz has included a price promotion on all their packages, giving prospects a financial incentive to pay yearly instead of monthly.

Keep in mind that not every product can be upsold. Focus on:

• Your most-reviewed products
• Your best-selling products
• Your most-relevant products

 

Increasing sales by cross-selling during the pre-purchase

When visitors are browsing your site, why not take advantage and show them additional products they might find useful? For example, if a visitor wants to buy an iPad, they might also be interested in purchasing an iPad cover, a pair of headphones, or a keyboard. By showing all these products at the same time, along with a one-click “Add all to basket” button, you increase the potential sales in a single transaction.

Amazon uses this technique to great advantage in their “Frequently Bought Together” section.

But keep in mind that the more specific and tailored your cross-selling add-ons are for a product, the more successful you’ll be at enticing visitors to buy. Showing visitors an iPad cover when they’re looking at an iPad will result in more sales than showing them a garden trowel.

Here are two ways you can present your cross-selling:

• Related products – “Add headphones!”
• Bundled products – “Buy an iPad, a cover, and a stylus and save!”

 

Cross-selling products in the purchase stage

Once your customer adds a product to their basket, you’ve gained their trust. And this is the perfect opportunity to show them complementary products they might be interested in.

For example, Amazon will show you what other customers also purchased, giving you an idea as to the potential accessories you can add to your purchase.

Ways to present your cross-selling include:

• “Frequently bought together!”
• “Other customers also bought…”
• “Add this product and save 10% of your total spend!”

 

Communicating with customers after their purchase

Once a visitor buys from you, don’t forget about them! Take advantage of the order confirmation email you’ll be sending to them.

Since order confirmation emails have a very high open rate, this is the perfect opportunity to promote additional products, upgrades, or other relevant offers. For example, airlines and other travel providers use the order confirmation email to cross-sell additional services such as priority boarding and additional luggage allowances, as well as partnered offers such as hotel booking and car hire.

 

Newsletters and email marketing

Email marketing is a fantastic tool to grow your revenue, but only if you use it the right way. If you send the same message to every single customer on your mailing list, don’t be surprised if you don’t get any results.

Instead, segment your mailing list into groups based on similar characteristics and behavioural patterns. You’ll then be able to create and send relevant offers that your customers are actually interested in. Some of the criteria you can segment your mailing list on are:

• Behavioural – Using the RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) model
• Demographic – Gender, age, income, location, etc.
• Occasion – Time-specific events, such as wedding planning, new baby, etc.
• Benefits – The benefits that would appeal the most to each customer segment

 

Event-triggered emails

You can also generate emails based on a change or event in a customer’s behaviour. Timely, relevant, and personalised, event-based emails typically have higher click-through and conversation rate.

Here are some examples of event-based emails you can send:

• Welcoming – With instructions on how to log in and manage their account, if appropriate
• Lack of activity – Engaging lapsed customers with new offers or useful content
• Basket abandonment – Alerting them when they leave a product in their basket without buying
• Personal – Celebrating a birthday or anniversary of their first purchase
• Reactivation – Exclusive offers for customers who have not purchased anything in a specific amount of time

 

Renewal notices

If you run a subscription service, renewal notices are an excellent way to increase upsells and cross-sells.

By planning in a series of reminders as the date gets closer, you can provide a range of options for your customer to upgrade or purchase additional items, as well as adding more financial incentives as the expiration date grows closer.

 

These are our ideas for cross-selling and upselling. What would you do to turn your visitors into customers and make them come back for more?