How to Cross Sell Products on Amazon?

Amazon uses different automated tools to the entire users to increase order size, from product recommendations at checkout to ‘frequently bought together’ widgets on the product listing. These are great tools for Amazon to cross-sell, but not for ideal sellers given that Amazon could be recommending a competitor’s product alongside yours.

It is clear that Amazon is not the best platform when it comes to sellers wanting to cross-sell other products within their portfolio. There is no specific tool or feature that allows sellers to make recommendations or give visibility to other products in their range on a specific product listing. Instead, sellers need to be creative. Today, I’ll explore some ways to cross-sell your products on Amazon.

A+ Content - There are a couple of modules that allow you to add in different products, such as comparison charts. These are great modules to show alternative options and additional products in the range that might complement one another or that could create a set, for example, a treadmill and an elliptical.

Images - Despite Amazon having strict guidelines when it comes to the main product image, brands can get more creative with secondary images and display additional products within their range.

Videos - Similar to the images, at the end of the video you could highlight the family of products. Make sure it is clear to the customer that they will only get the one product and that there is no way of them being misled into thinking they are buying multiple products or a set.

Packaging - Some brands add leaflets or flyers in their packages that introduce the customer to their wider portfolio of products. If you do this, just make sure you adhere to Amazon’s Terms of Service. For example, you cannot offer customer incentives to purchase additional products in the range through coupons or redirect them to your website.

Amazon Sponsored Brands - This ad option allows you to display three different products from the range. Instead of having three competing products in your range you could offer different products that complement one another.

Amazon Brand Store - This is where sellers have the greatest space and freedom to highlight the full range of products to the customer to cross-sell and upsell. This can be done through the use of graphics, content and product images across multiple category pages.

Amazon Product Targeting - Select products from your range that you want visible on your other product pages. While this comes at a cost, this is a good way to get exposure to certain products that might complement other products in the range.

Variations - Amazon has strict guidelines when it comes to variation creation. Products should only be added to a variation if they are the same product but just vary slightly, for example in size, flavor, color or scent. By displaying multiple variants, a customer might opt to buy more than one variant.

Amazon Bundles - An easy way to cross-sell is by creating bundles and putting different products together as one single set. The only downside is that Amazon doesn’t support virtual bundles on the seller side and the item must be pre-packaged before arriving at the Amazon Fulfilment Center if you are selling via FBA.

Offering Promotions - To introduce other products in the range, sellers can create a promotion. For example, buy X product and get product Y free or get 5% off X when you purchase Y.

As you can see there are lots of ways to cross-sell on Amazon for both resellers and brand owners. Many sellers focus heavily on driving sales on an individual item, but with a few simple tricks they could end up doubling the size of the customer order by cross-selling.

Email Segments to build for Marketing

Segmenting your list can be a successful way to target your audience and ensure your contacts remain interested. This can help direct your marketing sends to be more thoughtful and less aggressive, preventing opt-outs and resulting in a lift in overall engagement and revenue. Create a better subscriber experience by sending contacts engaging emails that are relevant based on their browse behavior, purchase activity, demographics, and/or acquisition source. Here are top 11 segments to consider building today.

Based on Overall Account Status

Master Segment - Narrow down your list from all subscribers to all active users. In most cases, best practice is to send to at maximum, contacts that have engaged within the last 12 months. Avoid sending to contacts who haven’t heard from you in a while as this will lead to a spike in complaints and unsubscribes. Filter out addresses that are suppressed due to previously unsubscribing, marking as spam, or bouncing repeatedly.

Based on Purchase Activity/Frequency

Non-Purchasers - Educate this segment about your brand and promote key differentiators from competitors. In addition to offering them a small incentive in your Welcome Series, consider providing steeper discounts in promotional campaigns to motivate their first purchase. 

One-Time Purchasers - Begin to build a relationship with new customers by keeping them informed from the moment of their first conversion through a simple post-purchase series, thanking them and building their knowledge of your brand. Encourage a repeat purchase by providing recommendations on how they can expand their collection. If they don’t convert a second time within your standard repurchase period, consider a triggered win back campaign to drive a repeat purchase.

2+ Purchasers - These customers are loyal to your brand. Now is the time to capture additional information on their interests through surveys, click tracking, purchase history, and browse behavior to support a more tailored experience through personalization.

Product/Product Category - Create segments for your top-level product categories, or for key hero products that are commonly purchased. Target these audiences with cross-sell messages to promote additional accessories coordinating with their past purchase or other specific products within their category of interest.

AOV - Knowing average order value is especially helpful if your brand offers a wide range of products at various price points. Segmenting based off of this data point can help determine upsell opportunities by allowing you to send details on products within slightly higher price ranges.

VIP - Tie together a combination of the above purchase data to determine an “above average” customer (contacts who’ve purchased 2+ times or spent above a particular threshold) and reward them with sweet treats like early access to promotions or new product launches. This often equates to around 15% of your total active list.

Lapsed Customers - Factor in time since last purchase to determine win back opportunities for customers who haven’t purchased in a while as a nudge to convert again based on average re-order timing for your customer base.

Based on Engagement Level

Non-Openers - This can be over time period or for a dedicated campaign. Minimize level of effort and maximize reach by simply updating Subject Line and Preheader from a previously sent creative. Keep in mind that this audience often generates lower revenue.

Unengaged - Before categorizing a contact unengaged, implement a Reengagement Series to give them one last opportunity to engage by highlighting what they’re missing out on, such as new product releases. If they remain dormant on your email list, consider retargeting these contacts on other channels.

Based on Demographic

Demographics - Consider a contact’s location for a few key reasons:

Compliance Regulations: Consent, data collection and retention, mailing regulations, and violation penalties vary based on country, and in some cases state-by-state. Ensure you’re including or suppressing contacts in compliance with CAN-SPAM (United States), CASL (Canada), GDPR (European Union), and CCPA (California).

Seasonality: Winter in Florida is not the same as winter in New York. Use a contact’s location to serve content relevant to the season or climate.

In Store Opportunities: If you have a brick and mortar presence, use a contact’s location to serve up their nearest store location, or printable coupons for in store offers.

The future of Search

The Future of search begins with a “V” as in Voice and visual search. While ‘voice search’ hasn’t taken off, as we enter the era of “ambient computing”, it’s clear that voice will be the universal interface for an increasingly diverse array of connected devices. In 2016 Google said, “in the Google app, 20% of searches are now by voice.” Since that time, the adoption of voice and virtual assistants has grown significantly.

Google and Bing visual search advancing rapidly. Visual search is less mature than voice but offers another compelling alternative to inputting text into a box. Google has been rapidly developing its visual search tool Lens, which now has a wide array of capabilities: translating text, searching restaurant menus, scanning barcodes, searching objects in the real world and driving commerce.

Most recently, Google introduced “style ideas,” where users can search on items of clothing in stores or otherwise IRL and see similar items with the opportunity to buy many of them. This kind of visual search is built on computer vision, object recognition, and machine learning. Microsoft has also done a great deal of work in this area since at least 2009 and been making steady upgrades and improvements to Bing visual search. It also makes visual search available to third party app developers.

Pinterest Lens. Pinterest’s visual search efforts are a bit more under-the-radar than Google’s and Bing’s. But the company is doing pioneering work in the area. Pinterest enables users to isolate items in pins and search on them visually to find similar objects or use the smartphone camera to identify objects in IRL and shop them online in the Pinterest app. The latter offering is also called “Lens,” setting up a potential naming or trademark dispute at some point with Google.

Most recently, Pinterest introduced shoppable Product Pins, connecting Lens image search results to e-commerce information (price and retailer link). In addition, saved photos from Lens can be saved to boards and become a source of future recommendations for those users.

Local visual search. The ability to use a smartphone camera to search for objects, products or places offline is another form of local search. In other ways too, image search and the smartphone camera are making their way into local. Google’s recent “search by photos” is one example. Another is the incorporation of augmented reality into Google Maps' walking directions.

Why we should care. As a general matter, retailers and product marketers need to optimize for image search and local marketers need to ensure that their various local profiles (GMB, Yelp, Facebook, etc.) have a rich supply of images — profiles with optimized images significantly outperform those without.

I can say something like “the search box is expanding;” SEO and content discovery are becoming more fragmented and complex. And while it may not be today, marketers need to start preparing for a time when consumers use voice/virtual assistants and the smartphone camera as much as they use text in the traditional search box to access information and express buying intent.