Congratulations, you just made a sale! However, the real work is just getting started. Making that initial sale is one thing, but that one sale per customer alone may not keep your business afloat for very long. What you want is to boost your average value per customer. This is where upselling comes into play.
Upselling is essentially the act of selling, for example: a higher quantity of the same product, complementary products/services, and more.
An example of a complementary product would be if you sell you a t-shirt with a funny image of a dog on it, then you could also sell you a coffee mug with the same image on it.
An example of a higher quantity upsell would be If you sell consumables, you can sell more of the same at a discount. If you buy one bottle of wine, they would offer 2 more bottles at a discount.
Here we will take a deep dive into how to build out a full upsell sequence that can skyrocket your bottom line, all with zero additional marketing costs.
Upselling Sequence
A basic upsell sequence follows this formula:
- They purchase the product on the order form page
- Upsell Offer #1
- Upsell Offer #2
- Thank You Page
Why You Want To Use An Upselling Sequence
There are a number of reason why you would want to use an upsell sequence. Here are some of the most important ones.
Increase Average Customer Order Value
Essentially, you are increasing the average value that each customer pays you for your products or services. This is critical for making the economics work, especially with paid traffic.
The higher you are able to make from each customer order, the more money you can invest to acquire a new customer, build better products, expand your service line, improve the experience for each customer that comes into your store, and so on.
Increase Indoctrination Touch Points
The upsell sequence will potentially make the customer more receptive to your sales messages over time. The more they say “yes” to your offers now, the more likely they will say “yes” to your future offers.
Decrease Refund Rate
Refund rates go down as customers take advantage of more upsell offers. This number drops by as much as 10-15% per upsell they take advantage of.
Identify Hyper-Buyers for Segmentation
If you have your email sequences set up correctly, you can quickly identify and laser-target your hottest buyers so you can keep providing value to them at an accelerated rate.
What Else Would They Want, Need, or Value?
In marketing, wants come first.
Most people will not buy things they need until it becomes something they want. Needs are logical, and most people do not by from a position of logic. The only place logic usually comes in is when they are justifying the emotional purchase decision.
For example, one may need a new laptop, but few people really need a high-powered gaming laptop that’s valued at close to $3,000. But it looks awesome and it performs like a sports car running on rocket fuel.
Because of this want, people are more than willing to pay that premium price for that gaming laptop, and then justify the purchase with logic such as “I need that power for editing videos and photos. I can use it to do my job better.”
If you see a need, find a way to position it as something they want.
Types of Upsell Offers
There are many different types of upsells you can offer to your customer, depending on what is relevant to the initial offer. Here are some examples:
- Increase speed of results
- Make using the product more enjoyable
- Make getting results easier
- Automate the work required
- Reduce risk of error
- Equips customer for next step on the journey
People (especially business customers) pay primarily for one thing: time.
They want to find ways of shaving time off of the work they do, shaving time off of the learning curve to get those results, cutting time requirements of having to do all the work themselves.
Find ways to save your customers time and/or to leverage that time better to get the results they want, and watch your sales spike.
Offer Page Elements
Eye-Catching Headline
Have a headline that says something along the lines of “STOP! Your Order Is NOT Complete…” This will keep the customer in the upsell process mentally.
Progress Acknowledgement
This lets your customers know that there is light at the end of the tunnel. It lets them know where they are in the process and eliminates uncertainty of where they are in the sequence.
Most often (if not every time) you will want to do this graphically, with either a bar that lists the locations in the sequence (with the section where they are being highlighted) or a progress bar, both on the top your page just below your headline.
One caveat to be aware of: DO NOT use this before you start the upsell sequence, or else it will telegraph to the customer that an upsell sequence is coming and they will come in with their guard up (if they continue to make the initial purchase at all).
Offer Messaging
Your messaging will depend on the pricing of your upsell offer.
For lower priced offers you will want to use a sales letter, and for higher-ticket items (mid-tier and up) you will want to use VSL (or video sales letters) for higher priced offers.
If you’re using a VSL, and not a text sales letter, the video should be less than 5 minutes long.
However, a sales letter can have a one-minute video at the top of it that explains what the customer can expect to see on the upsell page.
Buy Button
The Buy Now button can be simply “Buy Now”, “Add to Cart” etc.
Or it can be more descriptive, such as “Yes, upgrade my order for $197” or something along those lines.
Have a message on the buy button that acts as a call to action button. Phrase the message on the button in a way that elicits a positive emotion that you want the customer to think when they are excited to buy from you
Again, almost all purchases are made based on emotion. The more you can elicit buying emotions at each step of the journey, using every tool at your disposal, the higher the chances of your customer buying more and more from you.
“No Thanks” Link
The “No thanks” link should have negative languaging on it, like “I know that I will never see this amazing offer again,” “I know I won’t have these secrets at my disposal, but my competitors will” etc.
Use this opportunity to remind them what they will miss out on at an emotional level. Look further than the surface level of them purchasing your product; think of what they will lose out on in the outside world, on an emotional level if they don’t buy, with messaging like:
- “I know I will not have these strategies at my disposal, but my competitors will.”
- “I know I am walking away from learning how to attract the mate of my dreams. I am perfectly okay with my dream lover being with another man.”
Twist. The. Knife. Being nice won’t cut it here.
Offer Following High-Ticket Offers
For mid to high ticket product offers, you will want to have an offer that is priced at 60-80% of the initial purchase. This converts much higher than offers that are 3x+ the price of original value.
Offer Following Lower-Ticket Offers
For mid to high ticket product offers, you will want to have an offer that is priced at 2-3x of the initial purchase. 2-3x the price of the original offer is perfectly acceptable for lower-ticket items.
The Perfect Upselling Sequence
Use this upsell sequence with a mid-price product, NOT a low-end tripwire offer
- Reverse Add-On – Price: 60-80% of initial offer
- Soft-Offer Add-On – Price: 2-3x of initial offer (pay nothing for 14 days)
- Mid-Tier Add-On – Price: 10x of initial offer
- Thank You Gift Offer – Price: Continuity w/ Free Trial
The Thank You page is a video thanking them for the purchase, and rewarding them with a free offer, like a trial to a continuity offer.
If you get 2 no’s, take your customers out of this sequence.
Offer Language
You want to make sure that the customer feels great about their purchases with you every step of the journey. Here are some tips on helping to keep that bond going between you and your customer:
Recognize the customer when they purchase or take a step forward in the process.
It’s no secret that people love to get recognized, especially when there is a perceived sacrifice being made by said person looking for recognition. Let that customer know that they made the right decision by taking that step with you.
You should do this even with lower-tier products, but this is even more critical for upper-tier purchases. They made more of a stretch to get to that point and deserved to be recognized accordingly.
“In ten minutes you’re going to get…”
The more certainty you can give the customer after making a sale, the better. Also, this gives them something to look forward to. Whenever possible, you want to train your customers to anticipate great things from you in future communications and to look forward to them.
Compliment them on a good decision to buy
Give them encouragement that they did a great thing for themselves. Say things like “Great job for being an action-taker!” A little encouragement goes a very long way.
“You have everything you need to GET STARTED on your journey to…”
This touches on a couple of key points.
First, you give them the certainty that they have what they need to get started on their journey, so they can take those baby steps with confidence.
Second, you also open the door to an opportunity to give people a chance to run instead of walk, meaning to help them reach the end of their journey that much faster through your upsells.
But here’s the thing: you want to be sure that the upsell amplifies the initial offer, and that it’s not mandatory for the initial product to be of any use at all. That would be like selling a
Ferrari to someone, and then upselling them on the key to get it running. For obvious reasons, that’s a terrible idea. Don’t do it.
Segue – “Most of my new customers ask me this simple question…”
Among other things, this helps keep the flow going in your sales letter. The particular segue above helps them with a question that they may be asking themselves. If you can address that in your sales letter or video, your chances of making an upsell just skyrocketed.
Compel them to “join others” who got it done faster/easier, etc.
This is powerful if you have some testimonials you can share with your new customer. If you have real testimonials you can share in text or in video, use them.
Advanced Upsell Tactics
Here are some advanced tactics that will give you an even greater edge with your upsell sequences:
Thank You Page Gift Offer
Here you can give your customers a free gift, like a trial to a continuity offer as discussed before.
Second Chance Offer
If they don’t take advantage of your offer originally, go back 48 hours later and give them a second chance to take the offer. This can add 10-15% to your top line revenue.
How you want to set this up is to send the customer back to a one-click page where they can add that upsell. This way they don’t have to redo the order form.
Bump Offer
With a simple check box, they can add that item to their order immediately. Should be an extension of the main offer and a no-brainer to get. Think of it like a candy bar at a checkout at a supermarket. It takes real extra effort to sell that candy bar, and it can provide a nice jump in revenue. It’s the impulse buy, reinvented.
Add these to your order form whenever possible; they are EXTREMELY powerful.
Advanced Pricing Tactics
Offer a full credit for what they just spent on previous purchases.
Deduct what they just spent on previous products to then get them to purchase an upper-tier product. This way, in their mind they got the other purchases for free and they’re only paying for that high-ticket offer.
Offer a reduced price on the main product if they take the continuity offer.
This will make the decision to buy both items that much easier to make.
Offer to add cost to the end of a payment plan.
If you offer a payment plan, you can offer an upsell that divides the payment into multiple payments.
Wrapping It Up
We have just covered a lot when it comes to creating an upsell process, why you would want an upsell process, and how to run that upsell process to its fullest potential. Take what you learned here, apply it immediately in your business, and you will be pleased with the results.
STOP! You may not be using your sales funnels to their highest potential, potentially leaving thousands of dollars on the table. Take our sales funnels quiz now to make sure this isn’t happening to your business.
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