Are you struggling with low order values, or worse, high customer acquisition costs? Is the lifetime value of your customers stagnant?

When you’re already spending a hefty amount to bring customers to your store, your goal should be to increase their Average Order Value (AOV). Along with that, you should be looking to give them a great customer experience with product recommendations that will elevate their customer loyalty and increase their Lifetime Value (LTV) with your brand over time.

That’s the power of effective cross selling. It helps your customers discover products they might want and creates a smooth customer experience, leading to an increase in revenue for your ecommerce store. Cross selling also enhances your value proposition by highlighting relevant benefits and features that meet your customers’ needs, making your offerings more compelling.

Cross selling is a marketing strategy that encourages customers to purchase a range of complementary products to the items that they’re going to purchase or have recently purchased. Cross selling and upselling work together as complementary strategies to maximize revenue and customer satisfaction throughout the customer journey.

But why does it matter?

It increases average order value (AOV) by getting customers to check out with more items. Plus, exposing your customers to a wider variety of products also helps in brand building and should lead to increased retention as a result. The key benefits of cross selling include increased revenue, improved customer value, and a better overall shopping experience for both customers and businesses.

The good news: You don’t have to spend extra money to increase your average order value or sales. This means higher profitability for your store as there’s no added CAC and other costs like shipping and packaging remain the same.

Introduction to Cross Selling

Cross selling is a powerful sales technique designed to encourage existing customers to add complementary products or services to their initial purchase. Rather than focusing solely on the original item in a customer’s cart, cross selling looks for opportunities to enhance the customer experience by suggesting items that naturally go together. For example, if a customer buys a digital camera, recommending a memory card or camera case can add value to their purchase.

This approach not only helps customers discover products that improve their overall experience, but also strengthens customer relationships and increases customer loyalty. By understanding a customer’s purchase history and preferences, businesses can make relevant recommendations that feel helpful rather than intrusive. Over time, these personalized cross selling strategies can significantly improve customer lifetime value, as customers are more likely to return to a brand that anticipates their needs and offers thoughtful suggestions. Ultimately, cross selling is about creating a win-win: customers get more value from their shopping journey, and businesses see a boost in revenue and long-term customer engagement.

Cross Selling Vs Upselling

While cross selling is a strategy that focuses on suggesting complementary and related products, upselling focuses on getting the customer to check out a more expensive product, often referred to as a premium version or premium product.

Let’s suppose a customer added a mobile phone with 64 GB of storage to the cart. Upselling would mean suggesting a more expensive version, probably the same mobile but with a storage option of 128 GB, which is a typical example of offering a premium version or premium product, while cross selling would mean suggesting complementary products such as headphones, and other mobile accessories such as a mobile cover. Here are a few upselling techniques that can be used in ecommerce, such as personalized recommendations, bundling, and limited-time offers.

The focus of cross selling is improving the customer’s experience with your brand and products by exposing them to a variety of products that work well together. It’s both a revenue driver and a retention strategy as a better experience and more loyalty will keep customers coming back.

With upselling, you still want to improve the customer’s experience with your product, but you do this by getting them to replace the lower-priced item with a higher-priced one by presenting it as a better or more “premium” experience/result. An effective upselling strategy might use AI or analyze customer data to suggest the right premium product at the optimal time, increasing the likelihood of conversion. Upselling and cross selling together can maximize customer value and revenue by offering both enhanced product options and relevant add-ons.

Benefits of Cross Selling

The advantages of cross selling go far beyond simply increasing sales. When done right, cross selling can lead to higher customer satisfaction, as customers appreciate being offered complementary products that genuinely enhance their original purchase. This not only increases the average order value, but also encourages customers to make additional purchases, driving up overall sales revenue.

By presenting relevant product suggestions, businesses show that they understand and care about their customers’ needs, which helps to build trust and foster customer loyalty. Stronger customer relationships mean that customers are more likely to return for future purchases, reducing churn and improving retention rates. Additionally, cross selling can help maximize the value of every order, making each customer interaction more profitable. In short, cross selling is a key strategy for boosting average order value, increasing customer loyalty, and ensuring that customers feel valued and understood throughout their shopping experience.

Cross Selling Tools in Peel

Many of Peels top retention tools are great for crafting your cross selling strategy. Here’s a shortlist of the top tools that can help you cross sell like a champ:

Purchasing Journey

The Purchasing Journey feature gives you a visual map of your customers’ purchases. It shows you what products your customers are most likely to buy in subsequent purchases, based on what they first purchased. By analyzing customer data and purchase behavior, you can identify cross selling opportunities and tailor recommendations to maximize sales. Learn how to optimize your customer journey for even better results.

Need a great way to map out what product recommendations appear on what pages and carts? Purchasing Journey is the perfect place to start.

Market Basket Analysis

Yup, that’s right. We automate Market Basket Analysis. If you’re not familiar with it, Market Basket Analysis shows you what combinations of products are most commonly purchased on your site.

Ecommerce teams have traditionally done this by hand, which means manually pulling and cleaning tons of data, creating complex formulas, and tons of time spent in endless spreadsheets.

But now, Peel automates Market Basket Analysis for ecommerce teams, which provides the perfect signals for cross selling. Product recommendations? Check. Bundles? Check. Insights from past purchases can inform cross selling initiatives and help you deliver targeted recommendations that drive customer loyalty and revenue.

LTV by Top Products

Here’s a cool hack you can find in our Cohort Analysis. Take LTV by customer, choose our “Combined Cohorts” option in the filtering options, choose all the months you want to look at, and then you can select your top 10 products.

That’ll show you the lifetime value of customers who first purchased each of your top 10 products in their first purchase. If you’re using cross selling as both a customer retention tool and a means of driving up LTV, this is the move!

It’s a great way to help you determine what products you’re pitching in your cross selling efforts.

So there’s what you can use to back your cross selling decision. Here are some practical moves you can make to execute on your site.

How To Cross Sell

Here are 5 strategies you can use to leverage the power of cross selling for your ecommerce store. Using effective cross selling techniques and cross selling promotions is essential for achieving cross selling success, as they help balance increased sales with customer satisfaction. Well-timed cross sells, such as recommending complementary products at checkout or post-purchase, can enhance the customer experience and boost your revenue.

1. Cross Sell At Multiple Touchpoints

Understanding the customer journey is crucial for identifying optimal touchpoints where cross-selling can be most effective. By mapping out the different stages of the customer journey, you can tailor your cross-selling strategies to enhance the customer experience and drive more sales.

There are three key areas where you can make use of cross-selling:

• Pre-checkout
• During checkout
• Post Checkout

Pre-checkout

The purpose here is to cross-sell different products while customers are still figuring out what to add to their carts.

Displaying 'frequently bought together' items is another effective pre-checkout strategy, as it encourages customers to add more products that are commonly purchased with their current selection.

‍Lula Fox does this by adding a “Shop the Look” option on their store where customers can choose to shop the whole range of makeup products that go with a particular look.

During checkout

When shoppers have already added items to their cart, they are in a better place to act on the cross selling options you show them.

‍Crate and Barrel does that by showing cross-selling options when an item is added to the bag.

That’s not all. At the final stage of the checkout process, the brand first shows the product someone is about to buy, followed by additional items a shopper might like to purchase. Suggesting complementary items during checkout is an effective way to increase order value and encourage customers to consider related products.

Post-checkout

You can showcase cross selling options on your thank you page after a customer has finished placing an order. Consider using post purchase offers to present additional or related products immediately after checkout, increasing the chances of upselling and cross-selling.

Lucyd, a smart sunglasses brand, did that and the result was an average thank you page order value of $100+ and a 5.6% boost in their net revenue. You can also send a follow up email with personalized recommendations to encourage repeat purchases and ongoing customer engagement.

2. Offer Product Recommendations

When cross selling doesn’t feel like you’re just pushing products, it will result in more conversions.

One way to do this is by displaying options that are essential to a product’s performance. Incorporating personalized recommendations based on the customer's preferences can further increase the likelihood of a sale. For example, here’s how Instax recommends different film products when a person is shopping for a polaroid camera. The film is a complementary product that is essential for the product and so it has a better chance of selling. Understanding the customer's preferences and purchase history can improve the effectiveness of these recommendations.

This strategy can work for a whole lot of other items such as electronics, clothes, bags, and even pet products.

3. Create Bundles

Bundling is an effective strategy to package items that go well together to increase AOV. These bundles are often presented to customers at a discount to encourage them to click on the “Add to Cart” button. Bundles are typically created around the primary purchase, offering complementary products that enhance the value and convenience of the main item the customer intends to buy.

Here’s how Look Fantastic creates bundles with relevant products:

4. Make Use of Free Shipping Thresholds

Many ecommerce stores put a free shipping threshold of $25 or more to qualify for free shipping.

You can then strategically place cross selling options to get them over this threshold and increase AOV in the process.

If not free shipping, you can activate a free gift card for orders over a threshold. That’s what Licorice does by showing different product recommendations and highlighting the amount required to qualify for a free gift on the top.

This strategy helped Licorice lift their AOV by 17.16% with 1 in 3 orders coming from product recommendations.

5. Trigger Email Campaigns

Nearly 22% of all emails are opened within the first hour.

This shows that your cross selling email campaign can bring great results if devised effectively. These campaigns can lead to more sales and more money for your business by encouraging customers to purchase additional products.

Here’s an example by Dollar Shave Club where the customer receives an email like the one given below just before their order is sent.

They ask their customers if they want to add a few more products to their box before it ships. Why does this work? The customers are still in the buying zone and they can add these value-adding products to the cart by just tapping a button instead of going through a lengthy process. This strategy helps increase sales revenue and boost revenue by maximizing the value of each transaction.

Cross Selling Examples

Cross selling strategies can be adapted to fit virtually any industry, and some of the most successful businesses use creative approaches to encourage customers to explore complementary products. For example, an electronics retailer might suggest a laptop sleeve, wireless mouse, or extended warranty to a customer purchasing a new laptop. These cross selling tactics not only increase sales, but also improve customer satisfaction by ensuring the customer has everything they need for their new device.

In the fashion world, a retailer could recommend a matching belt or jewelry set to go with a dress, helping customers complete their look while increasing the average order value. Even in the hospitality sector, cross selling is common—hotels often offer guests the option to add breakfast, airport transfers, or spa treatments to their booking. These cross selling strategies not only generate additional revenue, but also enhance the overall customer experience, making customers feel cared for and more likely to return.

Best Cross Selling Apps

Cross selling tools help you make sure that your strategies don’t end up being too salesy or ineffective. These apps demonstrate how cross selling works in practice by automating personalized product recommendations and optimizing the customer experience throughout the shopping journey. Here are three tools you can use:

• ReBuy: With ReBuy, you can make use of AI-powered recommendations for cross selling and deploy them at key decision points.
• Privy: With Privy, you can create simple cross selling pop ups that increase AOV without the need for offering a discount.
• ReConvert: Without making it feel distracting, ReConvert helps you showcase targeted product recommendations after a customer has made the purchase.
• Slide Cart: You can motivate customers to increase their order value by setting thresholds, placing cross sell items in the cart drawer, and much more with Slide Cart.

Measuring Cross Selling Performance

To ensure your cross selling strategies are effective, it’s essential to track and analyze key performance metrics. Start by monitoring your average order value and customer lifetime value—these indicators reveal whether your cross selling efforts are leading to larger and more frequent purchases. Customer satisfaction scores and feedback can also provide valuable insights into how customers perceive your cross sell offers.

Leverage analytics tools to dive deeper into purchase history and customer behavior, identifying which cross selling tactics are driving results and which may need adjustment. Track conversion rates on cross sell promotions, click-through rates on recommended products, and open rates for cross selling email campaigns. By regularly reviewing these metrics, you can refine your cross selling strategies, personalize recommendations, and make data-driven decisions that lead to increased order value, improved customer lifetime, and greater overall success for your online store.

Increase AOV and Revenue with Cross-selling 

With tactics such as cross selling, you can capitalize on the shoppers and customers your store already has and increase your AOV and sales in the process. Cross selling is a proven way to increase revenue, especially when targeting your existing customer base. By implementing effective cross selling strategies, you can achieve increasing revenue, increased customer lifetime value, and increased customer loyalty. Analyzing customer purchases across many customers can help you identify opportunities to offer complementary items that enhance the main purchase. For example, an electronics store can increase revenue and customer satisfaction by cross selling accessories or protection plans alongside major products.

But how do you decide if your cross selling efforts are bringing the results you want?

For that, you need to track your AOV, LTV, repurchase rate, total sales, and revenue. Peel helps you do just that, so you can experiment and improve your cross selling strategies in the process.

Try Peel free for 7 days** and set your new cross selling strategy in motion.**

‍