The importance of post-purchase upsells on your customer experience

Post-purchase upsells are the holy grail of increasing eCommerce revenue without increasing website traffic.

Your customers are highly engaged with your brand immediately after purchase. This is a great opportunity to connect with them and improve their customer experience even more.

Understanding upsells and how people respond to them will give you the best chance of increasing revenue without damaging your customers’ overall experience.

Keep reading to find out what post-purchase upselling is, why it benefits your brand, best practices for implementing it successfully and the tech you can use to make it a streamlined system.

Understanding the meaning of post-purchase upsell

Post-purchase upselling is when you recommend products to someone who has already bought from you.

This post-purchase email campaign could look like:

• Recommendations in an order confirmation email based on what they bought.
• Sending valuable content to help them take the next step with your product.
• Upgrading their existing purchase with a discount.

After an online purchase, customers are waiting for updates from you.

Customers are 5.5 times more likely to opt into SMS text updates from a retail business than regular marketing, and 25% of customers click on recommended products when they are tracking an order.

From a marketing perspective, this time period is a gold mine of upselling opportunities!

Post-purchase email campaigns give you the opportunity to keep customers engaged, present even more solutions to their problem, and improve their customer experience.

Benefits of upselling for your business

Your post-purchase upselling campaign should be customer centric at all times. This is when you will start to see some of the many benefits of upselling.

Helps to grow revenue

Post-purchase experiences can lead to higher sales. On average, post-purchase upsells can help you grow revenue by 10-30%. It is always easier to sell to customers who have already converted, so start with a post-purchase strategy before moving into cross selling and upgrades at checkout.

Builds a further relationship with customers

Fostering connections with your customer should be your primary focus when building your post-purchase strategy. A natural side effect of rapport is higher sales. That’s because for 40% of consumers, the post-purchase experience makes a brand more memorable, and 73% of customers agree that customer experience drives their decision to purchase.

Reduce buyers remorse

Post-purchase anxiety is a real, documented phenomenon. A post-purchase email campaign that includes trustworthy branding and regular updates will give customers confidence in their purchase. It’s just one more way you can build rapport and loyalty!

Best practices for post-purchase upsells

There is definitely a right way and a wrong way to take advantage of post-purchase upsells. Let’s go through some of the best practices for increasing revenue without damaging your customer experience.

Customer account

An eCommerce customer account is responsible for 64% of returning traffic. You can maximise on traffic returning to check order updates by merging your customer accounts with your shipping software. A customer account also lets you segment, track and personalise their upselling product recommendations.

With Starshipit, you can do this by simply creating a branded tracking page. This allows customers to keep checking in and creates upselling real estate for you.

Having a order detail page

You can reduce post-purchase anxiety as well as the amount of shipping errors by including an order page or confirmation email. Don’t forget to include any shipping details. 74% of shoppers are very likely to repurchase from businesses that provide delivery date estimates.

Providing details on tracking page

96% of online shoppers actively track their purchase while it is in transit. Your tracking emails and tracking pages are prime marketing opportunities! 75% of customers are likely to purchase based on personalised recommendations and 25% of customers click on recommendations that are on their tracking emails.

Providing hassle-free return and refund

To keep customers happy, make sure you include simple returns policies on any upselling or post-purchase emails. This gives them confidence that you will help them if anything is wrong with their purchase and will mean they are more likely to buy from you again. Your job is to reduce any friction for them purchasing from your store.

Maintaining post-purchase communication

Don’t be afraid to be in contact with people! Think about it- once someone has made a purchase, they are actively waiting for shipping updates and communication from you. Capitalise on this time period with useful information and shipping updates.

Gathering customer feedback on the post-purchase experience

Customer feedback and reviews are crucial for scaling a successful eCommerce brand. It indicates that you care about their experience with your product and shipping. Not only does this help you improve your processes, but social proof is great for marketing.

Instill urgency in the upsell offer

Make the most of customer engagement post purchase by adding time limits to upsells. This could look like adding limited time discounts, free products if they reach a certain spend threshold, or a timed-window where they can add something to their purchase within a certain time frame. Make sure that you do upsell after checkout as much as possible as it can be distracting and irritating for a lot of customers.

Make the post-purchase offer highly relevant

Nothing is worse than getting product recommendations that are irrelevant or that you have already purchased. Take advantage of customer account data and list segmentation to make upsells highly personal to your individual customers. This may take a bit more tech set up, but 80% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a brand that offers a more personalised service.

Technology to simplify post-purchase communication

Ready to actually start upselling in your eCommerce business? Using tech to your advantage is the simplest way to start without interrupting your customer checkout and shipping experience. No matter which method you choose to communicate with customers, each upsell should have a strategy behind it.

Using the customer's preferred channel

Customers love to know exactly where their parcel is and 64% of online shoppers rate transactional emails as very important to them. To maximise the chance that they will open communications from you (i.e. maximise upselling opportunities), give your customers options for how they would like to receive updates from you.

Emails

Transactional emails have an open rate of 80-85% and this is still one of the most common ways to keep in contact with customers. No matter what platform you choose, updates need to be automated! It is not worth your time or effort to manually contact customers. That means investing in some kind of shipping software.

Push notification

Push notifications can be a creative way to engage with customers while they are on your website. However, they should be used sparingly! They should give customers just enough information to be curious without interrupting their browsing session (e.g. a secret discount if they have abandoned their cart).

SMS messaging and texts

SMS updates can be more expensive than emails, however 90% of SMS updates have a 98% open rate. This is why it is important to give customers the option to receive text updates if they want them! SMS post-purchase upsells should be highly targeted and get right to the point.

Simple post-purchase upsells with Starshipit

Starshipit is the all-in-one eCommerce shipping platform that allows you to upsell with ease. By customising and automating your order update emails and linking customers to your branded tracking pages, sharing your brand, community and product recommendations couldn’t be simpler.

Ready for easy post-purchase upsells in your eCommerce business? Book a call with our Success Team to help you ship the smart way, so you can grow faster.