Upsells for a membership site
Q: Can you help me think of ways to upsell, cross sell and reduce refunds for our software membership website? We do upselling, cross selling and saving refund/cancellation via inbound calls of our existing members who has questions regarding billing, technical concerns and other inquiries.
Frances Meris
Izonetech-ph.com
A: Hi Frances — Great question! You've already got a good start in that you handle much of this though your inbound call center. Here are a few more ideas:
1. Use your shopping cart to create a special one-time offer for another product/service when:
- someone signs up for your software
- someone signs up on your prospect list
- someone purchases another product
2. When someone calls to cancel their service (if they have been a short-term subscriber), give them a "rural refund". This is a trick that I've seen other Internet marketers use for physical products. When a customer calls to return a physical product, they will ask the customer is they live outside a city where it might be troublesome to get to a post office or mailing center to return the product, or just ask if the return process would be troublesome regardless of location. Assuming the customer will say yes, they offer to refund the customer half of the purchase price if they'll try the product another two months before returning it. If they want to return it at that time, they can do so and get the remainder of their money back. I'm told this decreases cancellations.
This could also work for a membership subscription by asking the customer to continue to try the membership for an additional 2-3 months at no cost (you extend their membership at no charge). This also decreases cancellations.
The key in any of these upsells/conversion tactics is to not to try and fool the customer. Make sure that they fully understand what/if they're being refunded and how much they're being refunded, or if it's an upsell, what additional charges will appear on their card. By being transparent, you'll avoid having nasty chargebacks levied against your merchant account.
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About the Author Donna Gunter
Best-selling author Donna Gunter works with successful business owners who are experts in their fields and established in their industry and are seeking a way to stand out from their competitors. Using her Ideal Clients on Autopilot System©, she helps them determine the exact strategies to generate more qualified leads and better-paying clients with automated systems. This proven system makes all their marketing easier and more effective and they find themselves positioned as the only choice for their clients.
