Upselling Using Email Automation

Rahim

Rahim Karsan

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If you are not using upselling as a strategy to increase revenue, you’re missing out. In fact, more than half of all companies are not actively implementing an upselling plan. Upselling, or getting an existing customer to purchase additional products or services, is one of the most effective ways to bring in additional revenue. Below you will learn upselling strategies that work and how best to implement them using email automation.

Upselling Using Email Automation Upselling Using Email Automation

Focus on Your Customer’s Needs

Nobody wants to be upsold when it involves a pushy sales rep. But, people do want to be informed of other services and products that might be right for them. By simply focusing on your customer’s needs and how your offering can benefit them, you’ll dramatically increase the odds of successfully upselling to them.

As a digital marketing agency, we recommend identifying what is most important to your customer. Take the time to find out what they need from you and how you can help. Identify both short-term and long-term needs. By understanding what your client values and what their goals are, you’ll be able to identify the specific services and products you are most likely to be able to sell them.

Only Upsell When Needed

Rather than trying to upsell to all of your customers, identify who actually needs additional products. Pushing additional items to someone who doesn’t need them will only make you seem like a sleazy salesperson. If you aren’t able to show how a particular product will help them reach their goals, you should not try to upsell to them. Even if the client decides to try a product that they don’t need, if it won’t truly benefit them, you will look untrustworthy because you’ve now wasted their time and resources.

Establish Your Ascension Ladder

Using what you know about your customer’s goals and priorities, you can now develop an action plan that includes the products they need from you and when they will need them. Take the time to outline how prospects and clients will ascend from your free offers to your entry, mid, and high-level products.

Free Offers

The purpose of your free offers, such as a free ebook or white paper, is to generate new leads and provide exceptional value for your audience. Your free offers set up the sale of your paid products by showing the quality of your product offering. Your free offers should provide some of your best content and value . The reason for this is because you want your prospects to feel that what you have provided for free is of such great value that your paid products or services must be even better.

Sell One Step at a Time

Since your prospect is still unsure about your products or services at this point, they are not ready to take significant risk. It is for this reason that you want to start by selling them slightly higher priced products one step at a time.

How to Upsell Using Automation

Once your prospect has purchased your entry level product, there are different ways that you can move them up your ascension ladder and sell them higher-priced products. You can upsell in your check out process, thank you page, order receipts, or as a follow-up email sequence.

One-click Upsell

With a one-click upsell, while your prospect is checking out, you can make an additional offer that they can add to their checkout, simply by clicking add to cart. This is a simple way to increase your average order value.

Thank You Page

Another effective step in the check-out process is to make an offer on the thank you page after your client has made a purchase. This can be done as a self-liquidating offer where the client can only take advantage of the offer if they buy now. This is effective because the client realizes that this is a limited time offer that they may not get in the future.

Order Receipt Email

Transactional emails, such as ecommerce receipts, consistently have the highest open rate of all commercial emails. In fact, approximately 70-80% of people open their email receipts. It is for this reason that it is a great place to promote additional products.

Follow-Up Email Sequence

For the follow up email sequence, you can send them an email series that drives them to a sales letter. The sales letter does the job of selling them your product.

At times, you may want to use a nurture sequence or prelaunch sequence prior to your sales letter email series. The purpose of the nurture sequence is to provide additional free value to your prospects, which establishes reciprocity where they feel that they have received exceptional value for free and want to give back to you.

The nurture sequence also allows you to start your prospects on a new journey where they are getting great value that they can continue to benefit from by buying your paid mid-level product. Once your client has purchased your mid-level product, you can now start working on selling them into your high priced product.

Your higher priced product will require a nurture sequence prior to your sales letter sequence. A prelaunch sequence works very well as your nurture sequence. The prelaunch sequence communicates exceptional value in a three part email series. Each email drives your client to a landing page that provides the value absolutely free. Your content can be in the form of text or video.

After your prelaunch sequence, use a sequence of emails to drive your prospects to a sales letter or webinar to sell your higher priced product.

Map Out Your Campaign

Now that you have an understanding of how upselling works, map out how you are going to go from free offers to entry, mid, and high-priced products.

Be Clear About Pricing

There’s no reason to keep your prices a secret from your clients. During an upselling process, give your client clear pricing information including exactly what each extra dollar will give them. This will help your client feel comfortable with the idea of deepening your relationship.

Maximize the Timing

When it comes to upselling, timing is key. The best time to get your client thinking about new products is after your client has seen the benefit of the products they are currently using.

Connect with Consumers

One thing to remember is that even an automated email should make a personal connection with your customer, so you don’t want it to sound automated. Rather than using an impersonal, generic email, send a personalized email from a specific employee. Check in with the customer about their purchase, let them know that they can connect with you if they have any issues, and mention some of your favorite and most useful new products or services that they could benefit from. Offer a coupon or discount to show your appreciation for their previous purchase.

Call to Action

Make it easy for the prospects and clients to take action by providing a clear call to action and link for them to click.