7 effective cross-selling techniques you can use

Maximizing your revenue is the goal of every business - but it’s not always easy to do.

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Both upsells and cross-sells are a crucial part of your sales process, but it can be hard to know how to get started.

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In this article, we’ll define a cross-sell and show you some cross-selling techniques you can implement to start building effective cross-sell products that increase your revenue.

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What is a cross-sell?

A cross-sell is an offer made by a business to its customer that provides an additional product or service on top of the primary purchase. It aims to increase average order values by getting customers to spend more money on complementary products while also improving the customer experience by saving them time or money.

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Cross-selling is similar to upselling, another effective sales strategy, but recommends additional products instead of encouraging an upgrade to the order. Both are often used together in flows to achieve the best return.

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Elements of an effective cross-sell

Cross-sells are effective sales strategies to implement, but they have to be done correctly for the best results.

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Relevance

One of the most important elements of cross-selling techniques is the relevance of your offer. Because a cross-sell focuses on providing a more complete shopping experience for your customers, your offers need to include relevant and complementary products or services that make sense. For example, your phone accessory recommendations should include products for that specific model and bundles should include items around a similar theme rather than whatever you’re having trouble selling.

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By ensuring your offers are relevant to your customer’s primary purchase, you can avoid the chances of coming across as too sales-y while increasing the odds that the average customer will accept your offer.

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Value

A good cross-selling offer should also make sense financially. In some cases, you can make an offer for a regularly-priced cross-selling offer. However, most of the time your main selling point is going to be providing value with a discount on cross-sell products and services.

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A 10% discount on pairs of products like paints and brushes or a suite of multiple software programs at a discounted rate compared to each individually would be good ways to demonstrate value.

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Accessibility

Your cross-sell offers won’t be successful if they can’t be found. When placing your offers on your website, be sure to stick to the pages at the end of the sales process. The cart, checkout, and post-purchase pages are locations where customers are beginning to or already committed to spending money, so it’s easier to push them over the edge to accept your offer.

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Consider using alternative styling or other eye-catching design elements to draw the eye to your offer and make each customer aware that it’s available to them.

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7 cross-selling techniques you can use

Looking for ideas on potential cross-selling techniques you can use to increase your AOV? Here are 7 of our favorites.

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Collect them all

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Collectibles are a huge market - and particularly good for cross-selling.

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If your business sells products from a line or collection, building cross-selling offers around the idea of collecting a whole set can encourage your customers to spend more. You don’t even need to cross-sell the whole set - just expanding their collection may be enough.

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Complete the look

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From fashion to phones and their accessories, people like to feel complete.

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Clothing brands may cross-sell a pair of pants with a top purchase to create a complete look. Alternatively, phone buyers may want to deck out their phone with a styled case.

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Add a side

“Do you want fries with that?” is a phrase most people have heard before - and it’s a common form of upselling in food-based businesses.

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Selling coffee? Offer a breakfast product from your catalog. Do your products use dips or sauces? Bundle them and cross-sell that.

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Accessorize

Most products have some kind of accessories that help provide a more complete experience. Whether they’re essential like batteries for a toy or a charger for your phone, or optional like headphones for your cell phone or a keyboard for your new computer, you can easily create cross-sells that make sense.

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Frequently purchased together

If your customers are frequently buying the same types of products together, there’s probably a reason. Whether your Shopify upsell app provides you with this insight automatically or you discover it manually, be sure to trust the crowd and use this information to create effective bundles.

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Build your own bundle

Everyone likes to build their own bundles. When you can get exactly what you want without having to settle for the “extras” that fill in the rest of the bundle, it’s going to feel like more value is being offered.

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For example, you may offer an additional 10% off each item purchased as part of a custom bundle for things like skincare, food boxes, or software.

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Warranties and insurance

Machines, electronics, and household items of all kinds can break. When you offer warranties or insurance for your eligible products, you can provide customers with added peace of mind in case something goes wrong. Combine this cross-sell with an upsell of discounted rates for longer warranties or annual savings for monthly insurance plans to secure more money upfront.

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Make the most of these cross-sell techniques with UpsellPlus

When it comes to creating and implementing effective cross-sell offers for your Shopify store, you should only be limited by your imagination - not your Shopify upsell app.

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UpsellPlus makes cross-selling easy. You can build all kinds of bundles and make offers for cross-sell products based on the built-in algorithm’s recommendations that use real customer data to find the best combinations. It’s also easy to make sure your offers are relevant by using conditional logic to only show offers where they make sense for the best results. You’ll even be able to track the success of your offers with A/B testing and advanced analytics so that you can refine your process over time for increased AOV.

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Get started today with a free trial and put our cross-selling techniques to the test.

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