“Looking for a red dress?” “Would you like this pair of shoes to go with it?” “We recommend a green scarf to add to the glam look”

Do these statements ring a bell yet? How often do you get such counter-offers? The thing is if we get something worth our attention or the thing that comes at a low cost, we could quite possibly buy it.

The aforementioned phenomena are known as Upselling and Cross-selling! If you are a seller and not cross-selling and upselling, you’re just leaving money on the table and walking away.

It’s 5 to 25X more pricey to get a new customer than to retain an existing one. And retained customers, are more likely to spend more and do purchase more often.

On the basis of several studies:

60-70% of revenue comes from existing customers, compared to the 5-20% to a new prospect.

These days, cross-selling and up-selling is one of the most widely discussed concepts and supermarkets/restaurants have turned it into live-action.

You may be curiously wondering how it can maximize profit? Well, the answer to this is very obvious. Cross-selling and up-selling, both strategies are applied to earn more revenue from existing customers. There is no need to bring your mind to cold-calling and search prospects,
driving revenue by retaining your existing customers and win the game with a huge ROI.

Let’s take a deep-dive into everything about cross-selling and upselling:

Upselling

Upselling is encouraging the purchase of anything that would make the primary product more costly. You plan to purchase hot coffee. However, you eventually end up purchasing a cold coffee because the salesman presented it with mouth-watering cookies and you got swayed away with them. 

Cross-selling

Cross-selling is the suggestion of any other product to be purchased in alliance with the primary product. For example, you plan to purchase a top worth of $50, but the salesman offered you a charming deal of buying a top with a pent, purse, bag, and footwear for $75 only and you again got swayed away. 

Benefits of Cross-Selling

Cross-Selling offers benefits to both the ends of the marketing cycle i.e. Company and customer: 

For the Company 

  • Build-up customer equity
  • Promotes diversification and innovation
  • Balances growth between new and existing customers
  • Enhance customer profitability
  • Improves customer loyalty

For the Customer

  • Indulge the brand
  • Widen choices of product and services
  • Offers convenience and flexibility through a one-stop shopping experience 
  • Increases customer satisfaction
  • Encourages better customer service

How to Cross-Sell and Upsell?

Cross-selling and upselling can be done at the point-of-sale with a salesperson, but customer segmentation, personalized email series, and loyalty reward points can play a significant role, too.

eCommerce sellers can cross-sell and upsell when they find an opportunity further in the course of time with a customer, once they’ve already purchased the desired product. For Cross-selling and up-selling, it is a must to have customer real-time insights so that you can offer personalized products just after you spot some possibilities of more purchase as the moods swing of buys are so common.   

Here are some ways through which you can do cross-sell and upsell and maximize your profit:

1. Get to know your audience.

Knowing your buyer personas is not a big deal, you can find out it with google analytics but knowing the customer journey is. It is important to know your audience demographics and psychographic information, customer feedback, their taste, and their challenges to designing the customer lifecycle in order to identify the products you could cross-sell and upsell that is most useful to them.

13% of global active Facebook users are women ages 25–34 – Statista

eCommerce automated platforms make it easy for you to be data-driven. From predictive analytics to automation and reporting, they centralize all of your data in one place and gives you the complete picture of your customer.

2. Frame your customer journey.

Pull a wire of your customer journeys to identify their liking and disliking and how they will use your product.  When your customers like your product, they’ll start telling other people about it and driving referrals.

When you’re customers are happy, they’ll likely be excited to hear your cross-sell or upsell offer. If your customers are unhappy and frustrated than don’t apply to cross-sell or upsell, just wait for the right time.

“50% of companies making use of customer behavior analytics are likely to have sales significantly above their competitors, 6.5 times more likely to retain customers, and 7.4 times more likely to outperform competitors in making sales to existing customers”.- McKinsey

3. Loyalty rewards

Encourage your customers to buy more with loyalty rewards. Send them personalized automated emails for loyalty points and push them to buy more than they planned. 
 
There are several ways to do this.

  • Gift card
  • Thank-you email
  • Referral program
  • Product discount voucher
  • Free shipping code
  • Free product voucher 

This makes customers loyal to a brand and helps you gain a consistent customer base. 

Coffee giant Starbucks claims that its customer-retention program played a key role in its 26% rise in profit and 11% jump in total revenue in 2013’s second-quarter fiscal results.

4. Offer solutions that map to products.

Before sending product recommendation emails and smart popups to attempt a sell to an existing customer, take some time to analyze your product offerings, and try to align them with your customer journey. 

Scrutinize your customers’ minds with real-time visualizations and get a clear idea of common challenges your customers face, and exactly which of your products, you can try to cross-sell or upsell as a possible solution.

5. Focus on active listening.

You might be able to cross-sell or upsell to your customers over an email exchange, so make sure to accuminate on your active listening and reading skills for understanding the signals that your customer might be waiting to hear an offer. If the customer is ready to expand his/her purchase capabilities, it might be the right time to mention your align product.  

“It really doesn’t matter if you are a 60-year-old woman or a 20-year-old man because a 20-year-old man can watch Say Yes To The Dress and a 60-year-old woman could watch Hellboy.”- Todd Yellin, VP of Product Innovation at Netflix

Extract valuable insights about your customer digital behavior and send personalized mail series and make real-time deals for your customer according to their wishes.

Create Upsell & Cross-sell Offers with PickyStory

PickyStory
 
Introducing PickyStory, the ultimate tool to supercharge your online sales. This advanced platform takes upselling and cross-selling to new heights, boosting your average order value and driving impressive revenue gains. PickyStory is your all-in-one e-commerce solution, making it simple to create bundles, offer post-purchase upsells, utilize SXGY, and access a range of other powerful features, all within a user-friendly interface. With an AI algorithm, you can provide personalized deals to every shopper, ensuring you capture every possible drop in revenue. 

Generate up to $500 for free with PickyStory.
 
Main Pros:

  • Uses AI to generate bundles, titles, descriptions, and images
  • Post-purchase upsell and checkout upsell to increase AOV
  • Create a progress bar in the cart to give free shipping, free gift, or discount
  • Fully customization on design including brand’s colors, messaging, etc.
  • Analytics dashboard to track and optimize deal performance
  • Mobile-friendly design for every offer

Try PickyStory

Summing Up

Doors will open up only for those who are knocking. So if you want to maximize your sales go the extra miles to learn your customers’ behaviors as its a great way to drive sales.

It doesn’t matter whether you have a small brick-and-mortar business or a global eCommerce platform, a customer retention strategy will help your company grow. Consider creating a personalized tiered program that rewards customers who spend the most money. 

For personalization, integrate AiTrillions’ multi-dimensional analytics and explore your data at the lightning speed to visualize your visitors and existing customers and get more ROI from upselling and cross-selling actions. Map out your strategy with your products to successfully apply upselling and cross-selling tricks, you’ll notice an increase in sales.

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