Last week, I didn’t send you emails. Two reasons.

One, I wanted you to have a break from me (read – ‘miss me’).

Two, we had Diwali here in India, and I decided to spend some time away from the key-board.

I got something nice for you today.

It’s about what I learned by doing a cross-sell email campaign for a client.

So here we go.

About the client

The client is a coach, who sells products related to personal development.

What is cross-selling

If you are not aware, cross-selling refers to selling a new product to an existing customer. This new product is usually an add-on to the product that was sold before. The classic example that is used here comes from Mac Donalds –

“Would you like some fries with your burger?”

Cost of the initial product

This is a low-cost product, sold at approximately $20.

Cost of the new product

The cost of the new product that was being cross-sold was $10.

The execution was simple.

Write an email.

Plug the product.

Keep looking at the payment gateway dashboard.

Cha-ching!

Here’s the performance of the campaign

Total recipients – 483

Email open rate – 41.3% (say whaaaaat)

Conversion rate – 2.6%

This means that 2.6% of the total recipients bought the product.

Here are the learnings from this process –

1. How many emails should you send for cross-selling?

Should you be sending a single email? Should you be sending 5 emails?

It depends on the cost of the product. In this case, the cost being low, we decided to go with a single email, with a link to buy. If the product cost is more than USD 200, then 3 emails work best. For products worth more than USD 499, a series of 5 to 7 emails can do the job.

2. Relevance matters

Remember, we were selling a new product to an existing set of customers. And you gotta treat different people, differently. The email was written by keeping this persona in mind. Enough effort was put in, to ensure that the reader, feels that this product is actually an add-on to the existing product. Writing random product emails won’t work. Empathy is essential.

3. Brand matters

This might be a hard pill to swallow for hard-core direct response marketers. The client has a really strong brand. He is a well-known figure, who consistently adds value to his TG through different channels such as Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

Which in turn, gets him a lot of love and respect.

Which in turn, affects the email campaign positively. As you can see, the email open rate is way higher than the industry standards.

So for god’s sake, stop treating a ‘brand’ like this ‘soft’ thing that doesn’t matter. Having a trusted brand can have a huge impact on the performance of your direct response channels.

That’s it from today.

Enough about me.

How are you doing?

Last week, I didn’t send you emails. Two reasons.

One, I wanted you to have a break from me (read – ‘miss me’).

Two, we had Diwali here in India, and I decided to spend some time away from the key-board.

I got something nice for you today.

It’s about what I learned by doing a cross-sell email campaign for a client.

So here we go.

About the client

The client is a coach, who sells products related to personal development.

What is cross-selling

If you are not aware, cross-selling refers to selling a new product to an existing customer. This new product is usually an add-on to the product that was sold before. The classic example that is used here comes from Mac Donalds –

“Would you like some fries with your burger?”

Cost of the initial product

This is a low-cost product, sold at approximately $20.

Cost of the new product

The cost of the new product that was being cross-sold was $10.

The execution was simple.

Write an email.

Plug the product.

Keep looking at the payment gateway dashboard.

Cha-ching!

Here’s the performance of the campaign

Total recipients – 483

Email open rate – 41.3% (say whaaaaat)

Conversion rate – 2.6%

This means that 2.6% of the total recipients bought the product.

Here are the learnings from this process –

1. How many emails should you send for cross-selling?

Should you be sending a single email? Should you be sending 5 emails?

It depends on the cost of the product. In this case, the cost being low, we decided to go with a single email, with a link to buy. If the product cost is more than USD 200, then 3 emails work best. For products worth more than USD 499, a series of 5 to 7 emails can do the job.

2. Relevance matters

Remember, we were selling a new product to an existing set of customers. And you gotta treat different people, differently. The email was written by keeping this persona in mind. Enough effort was put in, to ensure that the reader, feels that this product is actually an add-on to the existing product. Writing random product emails won’t work. Empathy is essential.

3. Brand matters

This might be a hard pill to swallow for hard-core direct response marketers. The client has a really strong brand. He is a well-known figure, who consistently adds value to his TG through different channels such as Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

Which in turn, gets him a lot of love and respect.

Which in turn, affects the email campaign positively. As you can see, the email open rate is way higher than the industry standards.

So for god’s sake, stop treating a ‘brand’ like this ‘soft’ thing that doesn’t matter. Having a trusted brand can have a huge impact on the performance of your direct response channels.

That’s it from today.

Enough about me.

How are you doing?

Intro music credits: Dan O songs.