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BlueConic Lifecycles can be used to effectively implement upselling and cross-selling strategies, providing you with a comprehensive view of customer behavior and preferences. Upselling involves encouraging customers to purchase a more expensive or upgraded version of a product they are already considering, while cross-selling suggests complementary products that can enhance their original purchase. BlueConic centralizes customer data from your channels, enabling you to create personalized and timely product recommendations, which can improve customer satisfaction and increase revenue. By leveraging these insights, companies can target the right customers with the right offers, maximizing the potential for both upselling and cross-selling opportunities.

CDP Use Case: Creating upselling or cross-selling customer campaigns

Value-Based Outcome

All BlueConic use cases are associated with one or more Value-Based Outcomes, which are defined areas of focus that help you measure the value of a CDP to your overall business. This use case can be closely related to the Value-Based Outcomes of Smarter Customer Engagement and Increased Agility and Flexibility.

Case Studies

• ANWB Delivers Successful Cross-Sell and Upsell Campaigns

Before You Begin

Before you begin implementing cross and upselling tactics, make sure you are familiar with what a CDP use case is and all of the components that will make yours more successful. Once this is done, you can start defining your “Before You Begin” requirements, which includes identifying key stakeholders and target audiences, gathering data sources and credentials, and defining what success looks like.

For this use case, example “Before You Begin” requirements may look something like this:

• Key stakeholders: Sales, Marketing, or Product Management
• Target audience: New and existing customers
• Data types: Product information, Customer behavioral data
• Platforms: eCommerce systems, Website analytics tools
• Measurement and ROI: Average order value, repeat customers, revenue

Use Case Configuration Steps

Step one: Collect data

There are two types of data that should be collected for this use case:

1. Customer data: To be able to segment customers based on their shopping habits and identify potential upselling or cross-selling opportunities, make sure that the following profile properties are created and collecting data in BlueConic:
   • Purchase history: A record of previous purchases, including product categories, amounts spent, and purchase frequency
   • Browsing behavior: Data from site visits, pages viewed, and products interacted with (e.g., products clicked on or added to cart).
   • Engagement data: Interaction history with marketing campaigns, emails, or advertisements
   • Customer preferences: Interests, favorite product categories, or brand preferences, often collected via surveys, questionnaires, or inferred from behavior
2. Product data: To be able to recommend specific products in an upselling or cross-selling campaign, it is important to set up your Product Collector in BlueConic to collect the following data:
   • Product categories: Groupings of products (e.g., electronics, apparel, beauty products)
   • Complementary products: Data on products that are often purchased together (e.g., accessories for a phone, or furniture sets)
   • Upgrade opportunities: Information about higher-value products in the same category or related premium features
   • Inventory levels: Availability data to avoid promoting out-of-stock products
   • Discounted or promotion-eligible products: Special offers or discounts that could incentivize customers to make additional purchases

Step two: Activate data

1. Select Lifecycles in the BlueConic navigation bar and click the Add lifecycle button. The Add lifecycle gallery window appears, with a set of templates you can use to create a customer Lifecycle. Choose the Upsell lifecycle template.
2. Once the lifecycle template page opens, give it a name and hit Save. At the top of the page, you can show or hide the metadata section.
3. Define the lifecycle entrance audience: Once you have the lifecycle set up, the first configuration step will be to define the audience that should enter the first stage. Here, you can set up different criteria that will determine if a profile is qualified to enter the lifecycle, or qualified to enter a specific stage, or if the profile has completed the lifecycle.
   • Building the audience for a lifecycle is similar to how you build BlueConic segments, by filtering profiles using properties, segments, and objectives. Click Select criteria (or Change criteria if they are already defined).
   • Click Select condition to choose conditions for profiles to enter the Lifecycle.
   • For the upsell or cross-sell use case, the starting condition can be all profiles in BlueConic. However, you can refine this further, for example, by requiring certain profile properties or narrowing down based on segments. Once you’ve added all of your conditions, click Close.
4. Configure lifecycle stages and define their audience: The BlueConic Upsell lifecycle template comes with prebuilt stages that can serve as a starting point. Each stage has a name and a set of audience criteria that determine which profiles are eligible for this phase. Feel free to customize these settings according to your marketing plan, but the prebuilt stages are defined below.
   
   
   • Stage one: Profiles not assigned
     • This contains all profiles that meet the initial Lifecycle criteria but have not yet joined a stage.
   • Stage two: Convert
     • Definition: This stage is to determine who qualifies as a candidate for upselling or cross-selling.
     • Audience: For the purpose of this article, our conversion audience will be customers that have made a purchase. To do this, click on the audience icon underneath the stage name. A pop-up will appear for you to select conditions similarly to building a segment. Choose the condition that tracks your customers’ most recent purchase.
     • Additional considerations: Do you want to restrict customer purchases to be within a certain timeframe and/or within a specific product category?
       
   • Stage three: Engage
     • Definition: This stage is to determine who is ready to be targeted for an upsell or cross-sell.
     • Audience: For the purpose of this article, our engagement audience will be customers that have a known email address or are actively revisiting a shopping-based channel. To do this, click on the audience icon underneath the stage name. A pop-up will appear for you to select conditions similarly to building a segment. Choose the condition that verifies that a profile’s email address is not empty and the condition that tracks a customer’s visitor activity.
     • Additional considerations: Do you need to incorporate any consented Objectives before engaging?
       
   • Completion criteria: Upsell/Cross-sell
     • Definition: This stage is to determine who has successfully completed an upsell or cross-sell behavior, and thus, exit the lifecycle.
     • Audience: For the purpose of this article, our upsell or cross-sell audience will be customers that have made a purchase. To do this, click on the completion criteria icon in the top right corner. A pop-up will appear for you to select conditions similarly to building a segment. Choose the profile property that imports the most recent order data and confirms the customer made a purchase.
     • Additional considerations: Should customers be able to re-enter this lifecycle?
       
   • Notes to keep in mind:
     • You can click on any stage to customize its name.
     • Stages are mutually exclusive, so be sure to set your stage criteria to have at least one criterion that differs from one stage to the next. If a profile qualifies for multiple stages, it will be placed in the highest stage.
     • To add an additional stage, click the plus icon to the right of a stage, name it, and define its audience. You can add as many as ten stages to a lifecycle.
5. Add touchpoints for each lifecycle stage: Once you have defined all of the audience criteria, you can add touchpoints to your lifecycle. Touchpoints are the marketing interactions, either Dialogues or Connection goals, that you can assign to profiles at each stage in a lifecycle.
   • Stage two: Convert
     • For the purpose of this use case, our conversion touchpoint will be a product recommendations dialogue. When creating this dialogue, the goal will be to recommend products to these customers that are related to their recent purchases or browsing history by either showcasing related products or suggesting higher tier versions.
     • To add your touchpoint, click Add touchpoint at the bottom of the stage. A pop-up will appear that lists all eligible touchpoints to choose from. Select your product recommendations dialogue. When you’re done, click the Select button to close the window.
   • Stage three: Engage
     • For the purpose of this use case, our engagement touchpoint will be a timely, personalized email campaign using a send email to visitor dialogue. When creating this dialogue, the goal will be to provide an incentive, such as a discount or free shipping, that encourages the shopper to complete an upsell or cross-sell purchase.
     • To add your touchpoint, click Add touchpoint at the bottom of the stage. A pop-up will appear that lists all eligible touchpoints to choose from. Select your send email to visitor dialogue. When you’re done, click the Select button to close the window.
   • Notes to keep in mind:
     • You can add as many touchpoints as you like to each stage.
     • A single dialogue touchpoint can appear in more than one stage.
     • Connection goals placed inside a lifecycle stage apply only to the profiles in that stage. They cannot be used elsewhere.
     • You can apply stage thresholds to limit over-exposure to marketing touchpoints for profiles in a particular stage.

Step three: Measure outcomes

There are two ways to measure the outcomes of your upselling or cross-selling lifecycle:

1. Using the Lifecycle report mode
   • To open the reporting view in your lifecycle, click the Report mode icon at the top of the page. Report mode shows the historical profile movements between lifecycle stages for the given time period, as well as the number of profiles in a lifecycle (stage) at the end date.
     
   • Next, select the time period for your reporting in the top left-hand corner. The statistics in the Lifecycles reporting view are based on the time period you select. If you change to a different time period, all the lifecycle and stage metrics shown are updated. Save your settings to see statistics for the chosen time period.
     
   • Once you have your time period set, you can take a look at the following metrics specific to your upsell or cross-sell lifecycle:
     • Number of profiles in the lifecycle
     • Number of profiles in each stage
     • Number of profile entries to the lifecycle
     • Number of profile entries to each stage
     • Number of stage progressions, regressions, or dropouts
     • Number or percentage of lifecycle completions
2. Creating a Lifecycle Insights Dashboard
   • Start by creating a new Dashboard by navigating to More > Insights and clicking the Add dashboard button. Name the dashboard something associated with the use case.
   • Now, click the Add insight button and choose any or all of the Lifecycle insight options:
     • Lifecycle KPI Insight
     • Lifecycle Performance Over Time Insight
     • Lifecycle Stage Transition Chart Insight
     • Lifecycle Stage Transition Table Insight
   • Save your dashboard.

Next Steps

• Implement Lifecycle best practices
• Define Lifecycle reentry criteria
• Set Lifecycle stage thresholds