Lessons in Cross-Selling to Your Customers Effectively

Are you annoyed to receive emails with offers for products you already have? Are there suggestions for non-relevant products?

They are considered to be the most loyal generation to brands and their loyalty often comes from interactions that are relevant and specific. However, it’s not just the case with Millennials. GenXers as well as Babyboomers are awestruck by contextualization in the same way. “Send me content and offers I’m interested in and only that.”

A healthy client base shows a significant demand for your item or service not capitalizing upon your understanding of the existing customers and capitalize on cross-sell possibilities can stifle the growth of your revenue. Successful companies look beyond the acquisition process and focus on increasing their customer’s longevity worth (CLV) by keeping their clients and then continuing to market to their customers.

Particularly, financial services companies are aware of the importance of cross-selling. Customers typically have 8-12 financial products, however, only 2-3 of them are offered by a single institution, according to the Financial Brand. In an age when cost-cutting is a major issue and the main source of revenue in the future is the acquisition, cross-sell/upsell, companies are often not doing a good job of interacting with their customers in a personalized and promptly.

In the case of cross-selling skills, bigger isn’t always better. Actually, credit unions and mutual insurance firms (mutuals) offer more services to existing members, which means they can earn more of their cash-flow share. What’s the reason? Mutuals and credit unions have smaller (read smaller) marketing departments, and more important, loyal customers. Customers feel secure and trust in their bank and are more likely to engage with them in contrast to their rivals.

Cross-selling and retention of customers are crucial in all industries including financial services, but not only but it’s often overlooked. A lot of companies concentrate on acquiring the prospect of acquiring new clients, yet don’t make the same efforts to retain the customer, or even increase sales to existing customers. In addition, since keeping and cross-selling customers is less costly than getting the new one, implementing strategies to retain customers can help improve your company’s profit. Here are three essential elements to cross-sell effectively to your customers:

1. Send timely, relevant responses

How can financial institutions as well as other marketers generate engagement that leads to greater cross-selling? It’s all about personalized and relevant messages. Think about this: the majority of customers of banks feel that the messaging that they receive is generic and often irritating. A Gallup study indicates the 66 “fully satisfied’ customers believed that the messages they receive were general in nature. In addition, 41% of them found the offer irritating and 53% already knew about the product being advertised. This results in disengaged consumers who are unable to respond or choose to not receive emails. However, when customers are offered prompt offers on products they’re currently considering to the stage of purchase they’re in, their engagement and conversion rates increase.

To attract buyers the digital communications must be not “batch or blast” and instead become more like real-time conversations. This involves “listening and responding” which calls for automation that monitors for the presence of explicit or implicit (behavioral) signals, records the information (listens) in an extensive behavioral database, and then applies the information to create a unique reaction (responds).

A good example is a bank that is listening to customers who have visited the rates for car loans page and responds by sending an email with a personal quote for a brand new auto loan. The sending of this email to all customers is not effective, however, if it’s targeted to specific behaviors that are specific to them, it could be effective. This can be accomplished for your company by observing the customer’s interactions with certain content from other websites or products, and sending out triggered responses based on these actions to ensure that they are engaged. In reality, triggered emails could double, or even triple emails’ open and click rates. This is logical since it’s dependent on the timing of actions rather than on preconceived notions.

2. Content is Important

The majority of people who are considering purchasing an investment product of their choice do their research prior to the time. In reality, the customers who conduct their research make purchases to a greater percentage than those who buy products on impulse. This holds true for all sectors, as the majority of consumers conduct their own research prior to engaging with your company.

Making informative, non-sales content that responds to customer queries and helps them navigate the decision-making process could have an enormous difference in getting the right customers who are in search of details. It also creates credibility and confidence and encourages engagement. In addition, consumption of content can be an obvious signal to buy behavior, which allows marketers to effectively respond by delivering targeted messages that are suitable for the buyer’s stage and the type of product they are interested in. A bank customer who downloads content that explains how to prepare for college savings for their child displays an obvious interest in a particular collection of financial products, possibly the 529 or student loan plans.

3. Apply science to it

The people who are most successful in cross-selling combine the art and science of marketing using digital. There’s a fine line to be drawn between the right time to offer and annoying marketing and knowing the buyer’s timing is essential to discern it. Therefore, marketers must constantly improve and refine their customer experience by using Testing with A/B and nurturing and metrics. The content plan you implement is essential in attracting new customers and marketing to current customers. However, you must know the way you determine the success of your strategy. Are you measuring it through how much engagement your content generates? Percentage of upsell or cross-sell achievement? How much revenue is generated by your program? There are many ways to determine this however you should set clear goals and be agile in your approach.

Whatever your industry Don’t let your hard-earned customers in the darkness. Engage in two-way discussions which listen and respond to every interaction. The two-way dialogue should be extended to your internal teams and you should inquire about outcomes and track results to constantly improve the customer experience.