The upsell is one of the most misused and misunderstood concepts out there in Internet marketing, but when used effectively, it can have huge impacts on your bottom line. The trick is to understand the psychology behind it and why it works. Once you have this down, you can use the upsell much more effectively.
An upsell is simply a way to take a customer that was acquired at one price point (maybe even for free) and converting him or her into a customer at a higher price point. So let’s say that you have a website that sells and information product for $17. The customer goes to your capture page, fills in his or her email address and gets sent to the checkout page. Now there are a couple of different routes and approaches here. You may have an upsell at this point or you can choose to do it after the initial purchase, or even days later – it’s all up to you. This discussion however will focus on an upsell technique that occurs at the time of sale.
The more widely adopted approach is to wait until after the customers have entered their credit card information and have been approved for the sale before presenting them with an upsell. The reason for this is pretty simple. If you present the upsell beforehand, you may risk losing the initial sale as well, something you don’t want to do. What is commonly done is that after the initial sale is made, the customer is redirected to a “thank you” page and that’s where you “hit” them with the upsell.
The reason why upsells are effective is because you have someone who just spent money with you and is still in that frame of mind. It is much easier to sell to someone when he or she has already broken down his or her barriers to spend than trying to convince someone to get over those barriers and pull out that credit card.
To have the best degree of success as far as your upsell strategy is concerned, you need to keep a couple of things in mind. First off, you can’t make the price point radically different. If you acquired the customer for free, don’t expect to upsell a $397 program – something similar to $7 would probably be much more appropriate. It all comes down to trust. If you customer has already bought from you at the $17 level, then a $47 upsell will not be out of line. Secondly, you really need to over deliver on the quality of what you are giving them. If you make it a one-time offer and make it clear that the special discount price is only valid with this transaction, for example, then you are giving them a reason to do it now.
After you get this process down, you can start making it even better. For example, if someone buys the $17 product and then says no to your $47 upsell, you can reroute them to a 50% off coupon for one last chance at getting that $47 program now for only $23.5. Maybe they liked the idea behind your product but were just not willing to spend another $47. Be creative but don’t insult your customer and you’ll discover just how powerful the upsell can be.
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