Cross-sell or Upsell Email Automation

What’s the difference between cross-selling and upselling? Why does it matter and why should you be doing it?

• Cross-selling is making suggestions to your customer about products or services that would complement what they’ve added to their cart or what they’ve already bought. It’s encouraging an extra purchase through suggestion: people who bought X also bought Y. An example would be: you just bought an iPhone 14, would you also like to purchase this protective case?
• Upselling is suggesting a customer might like a more expensive product or service than  the one they’ve selected. An example would be, you’ve just bought an iPhone 15, would you prefer the iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max?  

Two different methodologies but both encouraging customers to spend more with you.

You can send a cross-sell email as soon as someone has left your online shop, whether they’ve bought something or not. Of course, you’re more likely to achieve the cross-sell if they have bought something, but sometimes that cross-sell suggestion will be enough to encourage the customer to return to your site, complete the original purchase – and add in the extra product or service too! 

Did you know, one of the reasons cross-selling works so well is because surveys show, existing customers are likely to spend around 65% more with you on repeat purchases than first time buyers. This is because they’ve had the opportunity to sample your goods or services, and you have established trustworthiness – they’ve bought, you’ve delivered, and they’re happy. And because you’ve built up that element of trust – upselling is more likely to work: they’ll spend more because you now have that trust. 

You can include upsell and cross-sell suggestions in confirmation of purchase emails and they can be highly effective being sent for up to 30 days post-purchase. 

The key here, as always, is to automate the process! Build an automation that will trigger a series of cross-sell and/or upsell emails based on the actions of the customer AND on their buying behaviours. Segmentation and tagging are crucial to this strategy being at its most effective.  

If you think your business could benefit from a cross-sell / upsell automation strategy, Email-Postman is here to help.