Dose #55: Increasing AOV with Upsells

Matt here with your weekly Subscription Prescription ??

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Dose #55: Increasing AOV with Upsells

In this issue, I cover different ways you can incorporate upsells into your subscription purchase experience and throughout the life of the subscription, to increase AOV + LTV—along with an upsell that I guarantee you haven’t seen before.

Upsells are an obvious thing in e-commerce. We all know we need to do it.

The tough question is how? How do you do it well, so that your average revenue from each customer increases? Improving this metric makes ad spend and other acquisition channels much more scalable.

Duh, I know. My bad.

Upselling a subscriber can happen at several points, and it’s important to understand what works best at each stage. So let’s dive in—plus, I’ve got an upsell that I can guarantee you’ve never seen before.

First, let’s keep things simple. Even if you have a hundred products (or more) you could sell to someone, you should know what top five products drive the bulk of your revenue. Focus on offering these core products.

Furthermore, you should already have an idea of what products are frequently bought together. This takes a little data wrangling to get on initial purchases and subscriptions, but it’s important.

Finally, while there is software for much of this (including the opportunity to code custom flows), we’re going to keep things basic until we know they’re working. If you’ve read many of my newsletters, you know I’m all about keeping things simple.

Then we can invest in better tech to automate!

Let’s start by imagining the start of a customer’s experience perusing your website. Where do upsells begin?

Product Page Upsells

One of the first places to start with upsells is on the product page itself. Depending on how often users scroll down the page, this will have limited success, but you can get creative and upsell additional products.

Mixhers does this in a fun way, playing on their brand identity, like this:

The product page is also a good place to upsell bundles.

Instead of just doing an add-on for the order, you can show greater quantities, opportune bundles with other key products, etc. If someone was considering a single product, you have a good chance of getting them to buy more.

Cart Flyout Upsells

Once they’ve made a purchase, you can include upsells in a cart fly-out. This is basically the only reason I like flyouts; they’re annoying (to me, at least) otherwise.

Harry’s does this well, suggesting two products to ‘toss in’ with your order:

Make it clear here if the product is a one-time option or a subscription. Don’t confuse your customers.

Checkout Upsells

After checkout, they’ll hit your thank you or confirmation page. This isn’t a common tactic, but many brands do it well.

In fact, some apps make it even easier to offer an upsell as part of the post-purchase experience. KnoCommerce has an option that looks like this: https://twitter.com/i/status/1652325665700556800

I also really like these examples of customers using a Shopify app called Checkout Blocks:

This one offers a free gift, while this one upsells socks:

Warning: don’t do all of these things!

Customers can get frustrated by too many upsell opportunities. My personal belief is that you can do a bundle/interesting items on the PDP itself, but you should only pick one for the cart flyout or thank you page.

If you have a few core products that go well together, try the thank you page method. Test to see what people are willing to add or try out for a discount.

If you are selling a single core product but have many different items to upsell, try the cart flyout method and test to see what works best.

Biggest Upsell Opportunity After Purchase

The most underutilized real estate in your online store is the order tracking email. These get opened over 80% for most brands, as people want to see when their purchase will arrive.

You can include additional offers for next time or simply use the real estate to reinforce your brand message and mission.

The initial order confirmation is another opportunity to upsell since you could add in items before they ship out. This is an opportunity worth testing but, again, don’t overdo it with the options from the purchase experience.

Upcoming Subscription Order Notifications

If you’re sending a text or email each month to let subscribers know that their order is about to process, this is another great opportunity to upsell. You can include one-time options as trials or samples or additional items to pair with the subscription.?

This one can be a bit tricky. The more times you suggest an upsell, the more subscribers will get used to ignoring it. If you have a few key bundles of products, then determining the most opportune time to make the offer is critical.

For example, let’s say it takes 2 months for someone to use the product and believe in how it works. Upselling them just before that 3rd month, and a few months after, is the perfect time.

Timing is everything—when customers trust the product, that’s when they’ll be the most open to trying more.

Product Insert Upsells

The final piece I would consider for a great upsell program comes down to samples. Avoid this on the first order—you want that initial purchase to be exceptional and all about the product they bought.

After that, however, the gloves come off. You can add sample sizes of different products if you have them or a free gift of something bigger every other month. Include inserts with QR codes to purchase or add to their next subscription, too.

This gets supercharged when a subscriber gets a free sample in Month 2’s order and then the notification for Month 3’s order includes an offer to purchase that same product.

The idea is to focus on a few key products over time.?

Dial these in and test to see what works. If people aren’t buying something, test with a different product.

The Upsell You’ve Never Seen Before (Finally)

I’ve been following this startup for a bit because of my past work in the logistics and label printing space. Can you imagine turning your actual shipping labels and inserts into ad space for your brand?

Elteve is doing just that. Look at some of these examples you can find on their website:

Imagine putting a subscription upsell onto a one-time purchaser’s shipping label and shipping insert.

Or “scan for a free gift” on the 3rd box of a subscriber.

Regardless, I’m super excited to see what Elteve does to improve the upsell space! (Note: I'm not affiliated with Elteve nor receiving compensation for the mention. I just think it's that good.)

We covered a lot there, but guess what? This dose came in answer to a question from Jennifer Sensenich. (I asked for questions on my 50th issue.) Thanks for the question, Jennifer, and I hope you enjoy that gift card!?

That’s it for this dose. If you have any more questions regarding upsells, hit reply and ask away. Stay tuned for Dose #56 next Tuesday!

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- Matt Holman ??

Head of Growth, QPilot