Upselling customers is a crucial and proven revenue strategy for many industries, and retail is no exception. Some common upselling techniques in retail include having a selection of products located near the cash register; displaying collections of products that pair well together throughout your store; or simply promoting deals that encourage multiple purchases (e.g., BOGO 50 percent off, three for the price of two, etc.).
These upselling techniques are extremely effective for retail companies, however with online shopping becoming more and more popular, especially throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, retail companies need to figure out how to upsell in retail markets that are now primarily digital. There are already some simple techniques for upselling in an online retail sphere, such as including a “You may also be interested in” section on your website whenever a customer is looking at a specific item or product, though this is a passive strategy that may or may not generate the success you would like.
So how can you boost your retail company’s online upselling strategy?
An automated upselling solution is able to provide a personal and customized approach to upselling your customers through the use of digital messaging tools to send personalized messages based on what customers are actually looking for and are interested in.
The benefits to this type of upselling solution are many, but here are a select few to consider if you are thinking of incorporating automation into your upselling in retail strategy.
1. Active Strategy
Whereas most retail websites may have some built-in upselling features, such as recommending related products that the client may be interested in based on the current product they are looking at, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the customer will pay attention to or click on them.
An automated upselling solution that sends messages straight to customers’ inboxes allows for greater visibility and potential engagement by customers. Customers are more likely to open a direct message from you rather than click a suggested link on your website that they might not even see in the first place.
2. Targeted Approach
Upselling in retail environments is all about knowing your customers, including their interests and purchasing habits. You need to ensure you are putting your company in the best position possible when trying to upsell customers, and this means you need to promote the products you know they will be interested in and most likely to buy.
With automation, this is an easy thing to do. Your automated upselling messages to customers can be targeted to each of their specific interests, without your staff having to tailor each message on a customer-by-customer basis. Instead, the automated solution will pull any information known about the customers from their time on your site (collected with the help of web tracking software) and automatically use this information when deciding what to include in the automated upselling messages. This way, each upselling message is tailored to each unique customer, boosting the chance that they will engage with the content and make another purchase.
3. Scalable Process
Scalability is an important thing to consider when thinking about how to upsell in retail stores. With manual upselling techniques, your staff may not be able to keep up with your customer base as your company continues to grow.
Upselling in retail can be made more scalable with automation, because the solution will be able to easily account for any increase in customers without your team having to lift a finger. As long as your customers continue to be added to your online database, whether manually or automatically through the use of online forms or other methods, the solution will be able to continue to pull the relevant information about them and send them the automated upselling messages.
4. Real-time Insights
Finally, with more manual upselling techniques in retail, it can be difficult to know just how well your upselling strategies are working. It is important that you know how successful your upselling messages are, and whether they need to be optimized at all to achieve greater results.
The automated retail upselling solution provides you with auto-generated reports for all of the upselling messages it sends automatically on your behalf, and you are able to easily analyze these reports to determine where improvements to your upselling strategy can be made. The reports provide you with key information such as the messages’ open rates, click-through rates, as well as any unsubscribes that may have occurred.
Looking to boost your upselling in retail?
These are just a few of the many benefits to automated upselling in retail. SimplyCast’s automated upselling solution combines several tools into a single platform that makes upselling your retail customers a breeze.
If you are interested in further exploring how SimplyCast can assist you with automating your retail upsell strategies, click the button below to request a one-on-one demo of the solution from one of our very knowledgeable team members!
