4 Holiday Cross-selling Ideas For Your Post-purchase Channels

During the holiday season, Narvar retailers see a 20% increase in order tracking from consumers. How can retailers take advantage of this heightened awareness from customers? What can they do to drive customers to make additional purchases and/or increase loyalty in other ways? 

Here are our tips for leveraging the prime real estate throughout the Narvar platform, including in tracking notification emails, pages, and the returns portal. 

Using the post-purchase experience as a cross-sell opportunity

The time period immediately following a purchase from your retail store can in fact be an ideal time to cross-sell a customer. As mentioned, you have increased attention from one in five of them as they watch order tracking. Plus, your store is front of mind with all the consumers who have recently engaged with your e-commerce platform and made purchases. Appropriately crafted messaging can be perceived as helpful communication while they’re awaiting the arrival of their orders and can help to further enhance your relationship with them and build increased loyalty.

Cross-selling after a holiday gift purchase can be an opportunity to share gift items that are similar to ones just purchased or to remind consumers of ones they’ve browsed while shopping. As a more in-depth look at opportunities, here are five holiday content tips.

Highlight gift ideas

Research from the National Institutes of Health shows that people enjoy the opportunity to give in an altruistic way and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School explains how that includes gift giving. The act of giving a present activates parts of our brains associated with pleasure and reward—and so, in your post-purchase holiday content, you can reward your shoppers by giving them pleasurable early looks at new products they can buy. Our brains are hardwired to enjoy this experience, which can help with cross-selling.

Plus, we know that people seek unique gifts when shopping online (who wants to be exactly like everyone else in choosing presents?). Just a quick peek into the keyword research database at SEMrush.com reveals that 12,100 people search monthly on “unique Christmas gifts” and 40,500 search each month on “unique gifts.” So, by giving your loyal customers information about new products and sharing their uniqueness, there’s a good chance you can grab their attention as a way to give loved ones presents that won’t be duplicated under the tree.

Spread the love

You can use a gift purchased by a customer as “home base” and then provide information about related gifts in post-purchase content. 

Let’s say, for example, that a customer purchased a jersey of a professional football player in a man’s size. In your holiday message, share a piece of interesting trivia about that team or that player, and then provide links to relevant products for women, for teens, for children—even newborns. These can include PJs for everyone to wear on Christmas Eve in that professional football team’s colors/with that logo or other relevant products you offer.

You can also spread the love by cross-selling apparel and other products of the same city’s baseball team, basketball team, or hockey team. Share interesting trivia about each of these teams and position these additional products as opportunities for shoppers to create a complete gift experience for a “super fan.” Sweeten the deal by entering each of these super fan consumers into a raffle for in-demand sports tickets.

Spotlight the biggest savings

Perhaps a customer who is closely tracking their package has completed all of their main gift-giving purchases. (As we learned from 2020, shoppers were already buying gifts online in October and we anticipate that happening this year, too.) That said, a good deal is hard to resist and so you can use the increased consumer attention during the online tracking phase to highlight your very best ones. When presented with that information, shoppers may decide to add on a gift or two for a loved one or expand their shopping list when they see a gift that a friend or co-worker—who wasn’t necessarily on their gift giving radar—would appreciate.

Don’t forget gift cards

People following their order tracking are actively engaged in trying to finish their holiday shopping and, since nearly everyone has a person or two (or more!) on their lists who are hard to buy for, consider promoting the benefits of gift cards. You already know that the consumer appreciates your products and trusts your company since they’ve just bought one or more gifts from your retail store—and they can feel a sense of relief when you offer them a solution to complete their shopping. You may decide to add on to the value of the gift card (buy one for $100 and the recipient can spend $125) or offer a unique add-on with this purchase, perhaps a branded Christmas ornament. 

Consumers are primed and ready to spend their dollars during the holiday season. It’s up to you to make sure they’re incentivized to shop with you. Taking advantage of prime real estate, like package tracking emails and tracking pages, are a great way to meet your customers where they are. Wishing you great selling success this season!