It is a well-established fact that post-purchase emails play a major role in the off-site marketing efforts of eCommerce retailers big and small. With an average open rate of 61.7% and a 9.7% click-through-rate, it’s no wonder they are so important! In this guide, we will give you an in-depth explanation of how to use up-sell and cross-sell emails to increase your CVR and boost revenue.
After all, it costs a lot less to retain an existing shopper than it does to acquire a new one, a topic we discussed in great detail in this critically acclaimed series. That being said, the focus of this mini-guide is up-selling, cross-selling, and the best way to use these revenue-boosting techniques in your email campaigns.
The Up-Sell: A Primer
The purpose of up-selling is to get shoppers to spend a bit more on something they are already intent on buying. For example, let’s say you are ready to buy a new car from your local Bazinga Auto dealership. The model you want starts at $25,000, and you already know how you intend on financing it (you sold your BTC when it was worth 20K). The dealer offers you the following upgrade package that consists of leather seats, advanced hi-fi, and spinning rims – for just $3,500.
Dealer: “This upgrade package normally costs $5,000. I’m willing to drop it down to $3,500 if you pay for the car in full, today.”
You: “Fantastic. I’ll buy it right now. Do you happen to have an ATM?”
Dealer: “We accept all major credit cards, and we even offer consumer-loan financing from Affirm. But cash is king, and if it makes you feel better, by all means, pay us that way. Because we truly care about our shopper’s experience.”
You: “Awesome. I’m so happy you accept so many different payment options. Your competitors down the street are check only!”
In the digital realm, upselling manifests itself in the form of upgraded options packages. The following upsell example from Lenovo shows exactly how to take advantage of this technique in the sales funnel.
As you can clearly see, for just $100 more, you can upgrade the processor. Lenovo made the mistake of not explaining why you might want to do that. However Lenovo does recommend upgrading to Windows 10 Pro for $30, so they go that part of the up-sell right.
Side note: Post-purchase, the normal price to upgrade from Windows 10 Home to Windows 10 Pro is $99. The direct upgrade can only be purchased from Microsoft. In this case, $30 is a pretty good deal.
Now, what about product cross-selling? How does that fit into the story here?
The Cross-Sell: A Primer
The product cross-sells works a drop differently than the up-sell. Typically, what happens is that a retailer will show recommended accessories together with a product once the shopper is already in the sales funnel.
In this example, an assortment of relevant accessories which pair well with the main item for purchase is recommended. These accessories are all compatible, and the retailer makes it really easy to add them to the cart – all a shopper has to do is click “add to cart” and that’s it.
On-site product cross-selling is pretty easy to do. But off-site (email) product up-sells and cross-sells are a bit trickier to get right.
Now let’s see what it takes to reach perfection.
The Makeup of An Excellent Up-sell and Cross-sell Email
As we stated in the opening paragraph, post-purchase emails are an integral part of any businesses revenue stream. The key to success with post-purchase emails comes down to two core attributes.
- The Right Timing: When it comes to timing (as it relates to up-sells and cross-sells) you shouldn’t email the shopper to soon, or too late. But a day later is fine. The one exception to this rule is with regards to order-confirmation emails.
- The Right Relevance: In order to maximize your up-sell and cross-sell efforts, the featured item(s) or service(s) should be relevant to the product itself.
Did you know that personalized product recommendations can drive a 28% increase in revenue from returning shoppers!
Pictured: An example of how Amazon does product cross-selling.
Let’s look a bit deeper. Timing and relevance really go together like peas in a pod. Let’s say your shopper purchased the camera featured above but neglected to add an extended warranty. You could upsell them by sending a post-purchase email offering an upgraded warranty within 2 weeks of the purchase.
And as for cross-selling, you could send them a post-purchase email with recommended accessories that go will with their new camera. For example, if they purchased the camera as a standalone item, a nice carrying case and a 64GB SD card would go well with their new purchase.
In Conclusion:
If you implement the relevant product upsells and cross-sells techniques into your post-purchase emails, good things will happen. These techniques also work well with:
- Product Replenishment emails (Supplies, food, etc)
- Order Confirmation emails
- Cart-Abandonment emails
- Shopper Reactivation emails
Again, the right relevance and timing are the crucial components required to do this right. Doing so properly will help foster a closer relationship with your shoppers. This, in turn, will help boost shopper retention and bring you repeat business going well into the future.
Now, go out there, cross-sell, upsell, you can do it – we believe in you!
Datacrushers
Founded in 2015, Datacrushers uses Machine Learning and A.I. along with NLP to identify and recover revenue loss, cart abandonment and discover new revenue sources across any site. The revenue discovery platform completes the deep ongoing analysis of eCommerce websites by monitoring the three main focal points of any site: The User, Site, and Product.
Unlike traditional “cart abandonment platforms,” Datacrushers does not require shoppers and customers to be logged-in to conduct both on and offsite campaigns. We use a wide range of data-driven and analytics based conversion tools to target the shopper at the right time with the most accurate and effective campaign to drive the sale.
Datacrushers is platform, language, and currency agnostic and requires only a few lines of code to get started therefore delivering an ultra-fast go-to-market with minimal set-up time and tech intervention.
Based out of Jerusalem, Israel, Datacrushers has clients worldwide including, The US, China, Russia, UK, Germany, and more.
