How Do You Go About DOING an Upsell?
Listen on the go by downloading the audio of today’s video here.
- In this video, I explain what an upsell is and why you want one for your company with stats and step-by-step directions.
- I also feature several examples of upsells from high-profile companies like Amazon and GoDaddy.
Hey, Matt here, the founder of AutoGrow.co. Welcome to another episode of Matt Hacks, where in 10 minutes or less, I help you to be more awesome at marketing, take your sales to the next level, and otherwise accelerate your creativity and entrepreneurial spirit.
Today, I'm tackling the topic of upsells. You might know what an upsell is, but how do you actually go about making your own?
The Definition and Application of Upsells
As we've talked about numerous times on our blog in the past, if you're not familiar already, an upsell is a next-level service you offer to your existing customers or clients. It can be something complementary, but technically though, that would be a cross-sell. In the marketing community though, the words are kind of used interchangeably. Upsell, cross-sell, it can often mean the same thing when you say an upsell.
In either case, upsells work, and if you want proof of that, just ask Fuzzy Yellow Balls, a company that doubled their average lifetime value instantly with one small tweak to their checkout funnel, which was including an upsell.
I'm going to talk more about that and the story behind it in an example coming up later this week. Another example, or another person you could ask, would be Amy Porterfield, who generated $170,000 with one upsell added to the checkout from her webinar products.
We’ll discuss that more in an upcoming article very soon, so we're going to showcase that story completely at that time as well.
The fact is, they work, and I can vouch from experience, too, because we are experimenting with a number of new upsells, as we lengthened our checkout funnel and our upsell funnel, and created new, more personalized products.
I'm finding very quickly they really do work. If you're doing upsells, it's like an instant, compounding effect where you're increasing the value of each new customer because they already trust you if they're already buying something from you. So if you offer something that fits, that's complementary, or that's next-level, and maybe you give a special discount or a bonus, very often, those people who are already buying from you are much more likely to then checkout as a result.
How and When to Do Upsells
How do you do upsells and where or when do you do them? Let's talk about that.
There are two major ways I know of right now that we're practicing to effectively do upsells.
(I’m currently looking for new and interesting experimental ways. I'll let you know what I discover in future videos, and you should subscribe if you're not already. There is a link in my description to get our newsletter.)
The first way is by offering an upsell during checkout. There are a couple of examples of this from major players like GoDaddy, which is obviously a very successful multi-billion-dollar company.
The idea is that if you're already buying a website, chances are you also need hosting for that website. Maybe you also want other complementary products and services, like additional support for maintaining your website, if it's a WordPress website for example, or maybe you need an email system similar to what Google Apps offers. There are a variety of services they will directly try to upsell to you on at checkout.
GoDaddy is famous for this. It is probably the largest company that I noticed, that was one of the first ones to do this. If you're looking for an upsell process to study, go look at theirs.
The other big example is Amazon, the biggest retailer on the planet. I believe their market cap is something like about $200 billion to $300 billion, or maybe that's actually just the net worth of founder Jeff Bezos.
In either case, they are one of the biggest companies on the planet, and they A/B test the hell out of their website. So if you want an example to study, this would be another one of them. You can see that on a physical product you're buying on Amazon, they might offer some sort of a warranty as an upsell, or insurance, for instance.
So that's what I would call a short upsell. A long upsell is like an email autoresponder where, over time, you're nurturing people and working to bring them back to a sales page they have left, after you've given them educational content to build the relationship, and show that you're trustworthy. This is what you do using drip campaigns, email sequences, autoresponders, they all mean the same thing.
And now, getting to the question of, how do you actually do an upsell? Well, with a long upsell using email autoresponders, the tool I recommend is ActiveCampaign. For the price and the value, they have pretty good support. I've been a customer for three years now and I'm very happy.
There has been the occasional bug, but actually, they're less and less of a startup every day. So that's actually become more of a thing of the past.
Now, as far as doing upsells at checkout, let me show you the tool that I recommend for that: SamCart. I reviewed them in a recent video where I compared them with ThriveCart. It actually drew a bit of controversy.
In either case, I won't go into too much depth except to say that SamCart really gives you a lot of flexibility as far as doing upsells immediately at checkout for customers who are buying them, including the ability for one-click upsells, as well as down-sells if someone rejects an initial upsell offer. You can really make your upsell quite long and detailed, with up to five sets of upsells at the time of this video. Also, the interface just is fairly user-friendly and not complicated.
One Action to Take Right Now
Here's the one action to take and execute on from this video to start getting results.
Brainstorm what your upsell could be. I think for most people watching this, you might be saying, "Well Matt, like, I don't have an upsell, you know, I have a service I'm currently offering."
Regardless of what it is you're selling, think about what exactly you can offer. If you're selling products, you can offer some sort of a beginner plan or you can create a super pro-version with tons of extra bonuses and add-ons.
If you're selling a service, maybe there's a light version of your service. In the case of product businesses, this is known as a product splinter. In the case of service businesses, I call it a service slice.
In either case, it's where you take a core product and you kind of slice off a part of it that you can offer as its own focused offer. That way, if you have a tripwire, it's more of a graceful upsell, because if you're selling a tripwire for $7, $10, $19, whatever, and then you try to move people into your core-offer, which might be $200, $2000, $10,000, or whatever it is, it's not very graceful. From $7 to $1000, it's not a very graceful incline in terms of price, and most people will reject that.
Instead, you want something in the middle that's going to work. So, consider doing a service slice. That's really just part of your service, all right? And in the case of a product, it will be a product splinter.
So your homework is to brainstorm three ideas for upsells from this video for your business. As soon as this video finishes, go take a notepad and turn off the laptop so you can focus, and take about five minutes to write down your ideas. Don't censor yourself, just brainstorm. You don't have to get it right, right away, but write down three ideas, okay?
So that's it for today's video. If you never want to miss out on another Matt Hack, be sure to subscribe. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can subscribe via email using the link in the description directly below this video. If you're watching this on our blog, there's a link in the yellow box directly below this video as well.
So tune in next time, when I tell you the story of a little-known company called Fuzzy Yellow Balls. I mentioned them in the introduction. Fuzzy Yellow Balls, funny name, but a serious business. They're a multi-million-dollar company. I'm going to tell you how they doubled the average value of a new customer to their business coming into their funnel wire.
So once again, as always, my name is Matt Ack in the Matt hat, delivering your daily dose of Matt Hacks. Keep hustling, stay focused. I'll see you in the next video.
