Recent work with a client saw a 25% increase in the value of sales due to the tried and tested method of upselling.
In this case, an educational provider offering specialised lectures also sold their own printed resources. Although the company had offered these printed books as incentives or extras, they’d never bundled them and sold them together with the lectures.
A revamp of the marketing materials included an upsell option. Students could enrol in a $80-$100 lecture or enrol in a lecture and buy the accompanying book valued at $25. Free resources were also thrown in to sweeten the deal.
So the two options looked like this:
- Lecture only costs $80 – plus $47 worth of free study resources
- Lecture and book costs $100 – plus $86 worth of free study resources
About 50% of the people who enrolled took the upsell option. This resulted in a 25% increase in revenue to the company.
Even without the free resources thrown in, it’s likely that many students would still opt for the upsell.
It may seem obvious, but is your business missing out on your version of “Would you like fries with that?”
Are there products or services you can bundle together to increase the value of each customer transaction?
But be careful.
The secret of successful upselling is to bundle together options that fulfil the need of the customer. For example, it makes sense to bundle software with free upgrades for five years, a dinner set with a free set of glasses, or a financial planning service with free tickets to an exclusive investment expo.
It does not make sense to bundle free steak knives with an investment loan, a USB stick with a blender, or fries with a low sodium vegan meal. Or even the ubiquitous iPad with just about anything!
Have you noticed how many vendors try offering iPads even if their products or services have nothing to do with tablet hardware? Good for Apple. But not good for their own businesses.
My client in the above example HAD tried an iPad offer in the past. The result is inconclusive because he did not implement a way to measure whether the iPad increased response. But he did say there was no noticeable difference in enrolments that he could attribute to offering an iPad.
But the book upsell worked well because this resource was directly related to the lecture subject. It helped to fulfil the need of the customer, which was to learn quickly about a specific topic.