Upselling has long been a tried and true strategy for boosting a brand’s bottom line. By convincing customers to spend more on an upgraded product or service, companies can simultaneously boost revenue while delivering an improved experience for their customers.
At the same time, though, upselling efforts sometimes have a bad reputation for being pushy. In other words, there’s a fine line between being aggressive and presenting a strong offer. And upselling without crossing that line is an art in and of itself.
By following these 6 steps, you can perfect your upselling efforts and increase customer value for the long run.
1. Get To Know Your Customer
Granted, a critical part of selling anything is having a strong understanding of your customer, but this first step is particularly crucial when it comes to upselling. For your offer to be instantly enticing — without any pushy tactics — it needs to involve a product or service that your customer genuinely needs. The only way to do that? By paying attention to who they are.
Everyone is unique. Getting to know your customers means actively learning about the details that make them special. That knowledge can then be leveraged to deliver messaging and recommendations that will hit the mark.
The best part is that there are so many ways to learn more about your customers. Their purchase history is an easy place to start. We’ve seen personalized upgrade offers, like the one above, prove immensely successful. But you can also leverage demographic data, user-provided data and more to further fine-tune your upselling strategies.
Trend alert: While third-party data is still important, there’s a definite shift towards gathering and using first-party data in marketing. Learn more about why it matters and what to do about it in our guide to leveraging first-party data.
2. Focus on Relevance
The insights you gain from learning about your customers directly enable you to imbue your upselling efforts with a powerful quality: relevancy.
Relevancy is the currency you need to capture the attention of your audience. When your message and offer have details that apply to a customer’s situation, their interest is piqued and they are encouraged to make that upgrade.
In the most ideal cases, relevancy can even reframe how a customer views upselling efforts. When you recommend an upgrade that perfectly matches what the customer needed, the offer then becomes a solution rather than a sales gimmick.
The Personalized Video below is a great example of how you can tap into customer information in order to make your offers relevant. Knowing that Marie-Hélène just bought a new car, KBC recognized that it was the prime opportunity to promote their customized car insurance options.
By leveraging customer data and personalizing your upselling messaging, you can deliver highly attractive offers that are sent to the right customer right at the perfect moment.
3. Be Authentic and Human
No one likes to be treated like a quick cash grab. Successful upselling efforts have a human element to them, with brands showing that they care by communicating with customers like an actual person.
That personalization is important to establish a positive rapport between you and your customer as you upsell your products or services. Something as simple as addressing them by their first name can make a big difference. Then, go the extra mile by sprinkling in personal details to emphasize that the message is tailored to their unique situation. In a video, you can even use logic to show different scenes to different people.
National Grid, for example, included energy use statistics and helpful tips for each customer before promoting their energy efficiency program in the closing.
A similar approach can be made with upselling. Be honest about your offer and highlight how the upgrade will add greater value for your customers.
4. Make It Easy To Say Yes
How you present your offer is almost as important as what your offer is. Upselling is not the time to be vague. Make it as easy to understand as possible so that there’s no confusion or hesitation for your customers.
Our biggest tip for this step is to take advantage of the power of visual media. With the rise of visual online culture that’s occurred in the last decade or so, thanks in large part to Gen Z, a text-dominated Internet has made way for the domination of visual media like videos.
This development has been great for consumers and businesses alike. Information presented through video is typically much easier to comprehend and retain than text.
By combining all these elements together — including creative graphics, text and sound — upselling video campaigns can showcase the value of an offer more effectively. Check out some of the results we’ve seen Personalized Video marketing campaigns deliver:
- 8x increase in conversions
- 22x higher engagement
- 6x uplift in CTR
- A 24-point increase in Net Promoter Score
5. Have a Clear Call-to-Action
As with all campaigns, you’ll want your upselling offer to have a call to action that is crystal clear and easy to execute. Don’t make accepting the upgrade any harder than it has to be. Remove any obstacles that may deter your customer from going through with the sale.
Use strong, actionable language and eye-catching visuals to drive your customers to the CTA. For all online campaigns, the CTA should also be clickable, whether it’s sent through an email, shown on a website or even presented in a video.
Tip: Making interactive videos with clickable elements is now easier than ever with Living Video features. No more separate links or unclear directions — viewers can click right on the CTA button (or any interactive element) in the video.
Try it for yourself with the Personalized Video below, offering Peter a special bonus.
6. Strengthen Customer Loyalty and Trust
Underlining upselling efforts should be an investment into building strong relationships with your customers. The more loyal someone is to your brand, the stronger their trust in your products and services.
Alternatively, bad experiences could end in customers abandoning you completely. PwC found that a third of consumers will leave a brand they love after just one bad experience, while nearly half would completely abandon a company after 2-3 negative interactions.
So how exactly do you inspire customers to trust you? By taking customer care as seriously as advertising. Data-driven personalization is an effective strategy for marketing efforts, but don’t just stop there. Let your insights drive how you design their brand experience and interactions.
From onboarding communications to support interactions, put effort into delivering personalized experiences that exceed expectations at every touchpoint. For many (65% of U.S. customers, to be exact), those positive brand experiences are even more influential than great advertising.
And a happy and loyal customer base is the perfect foundation for successful upselling.
Achieve Your Upselling Goals With Video
From collecting data on your customers to elevating their experience with your brand, Personalized Video can be used in diverse ways to boost the effectiveness of your upselling efforts. With our Next Generation Video Platform, Idomoo makes the creation and distribution of dynamic, data-driven video easy for companies across industries, from banking to retail.
Want to learn more about how Personalized Video can help grow your business? Get in touch today, and we’ll show you how Idomoo can help you reach your upselling goals.
