September 6, 2016 
Imagine if you could increase your sales with the data of your current customers. Say a customer currently buys products from just one of your product catalogs and is modestly unprofitable. Using customer data, if you start sending those customers catalogs for your other products; they’ll probably start cross-buying. Additionally, you could send them discounts and coupons, further increasing your sales.
It can cost four times as much to sell to a new customer as it does to sell to an existing one. By cross-selling and up-selling to the customers existing in your database, your business can sell more products and services, reduce the cost of sales, enhance customer loyalty and drive revenue.
What is Cross-selling and Upselling?
Cross-selling identifies products that satisfy additional, complementary needs.
Upselling, on the other hand, is targeted at marketing higher-end products to customers.
For example, if I am buying a set of combs on an online store, the store can also sell me other beauty products; since that is an item I have a higher likelihood of purchasing.
Oftentimes, cross-selling and upselling points users to products they would have purchased anyway, by showing them the right products at the right time, a store ensure they make the sale.
How can Cross Selling/ Up-Selling enhance customer experiences and increase revenues?
Consider this statistic –
According to one Forrester research, product recommendations like upsells and cross-sells are responsible for an average of 10-30% of eCommerce revenues.
The number one priority of customers when shopping online is to get exactly what they want, quickly and easily. Offering customers seemingly random products can just leave customers more confused.
For example, a customer looking to buy a book gets recommendations of similar books, which reduces his search time and increases sales for the retailers. He can also be shown bundles of products as per his search history –
What is PIM, and why do you need it?
PIM or Product Information Management is software designed for assisting retailers, wholesalers and merchants to manage their product information. This is what PIM can do for your business.
How does PIM enable Cross-Selling
PIM enables retailers and marketplaces to sell bundles of related products. It groups them together on basis of common attributes, promoting cross-selling and up-selling.
For example, a customer purchasing cornflakes may also like to buy milk, cereal bowl, and yogurt for their breakfast.
A PIM system helps companies create rules to indicate when and what product should be suggested in relation to the item viewed by a customer. Here, the PIM system will suggest milk, bowl, and yogurt to this customer, based on the rules defined.
PIM solutions
- Reduce time-to-market by up to 400%
- Increase in sales from 15% to more than 50%
- Result in Up to 23% fewer product returns, and
- Result in Up to 27% fewer customer inquiries (Product Information Management, Jorij, Abraham 2014)
In conclusion, relevant product content is a clear differentiator when it comes to Customer Experience. PIM solutions act as enablers of the high-quality, consistent product information demanded by consumers at every stage of the buying process.
See how Vinculum partnered with Ralali to manage their product information here.
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