Reporting, renewing, and upselling are vital parts of a business strategy to maintain revenue streams. These actions are efficient ways to generate continued business by skipping the early stages of the marketing funnel. Existing customers are already aware of your product, but they need to see demonstrated value to renew or expand the relationship.
What is Reporting?
Reporting is data analysis. It is looking at the metrics and presenting results to clients so that they can make an informed decision. Reporting builds trust and demonstrates the return on investment in your service or product.
What is Renewing?
Renewing is customer retention. This is where a client agrees to continue a subscription or contract. Long-term relationships come from repeated renewals.
What is Upselling?
Upselling is providing new, expanded products or services to a client. This builds revenue and value in your brand but requires understanding customers’ needs.
In a digital marketing campaign strategy, reporting, renewing, and upselling build upon each other. Investing in financial products is an intangible investment; with reporting, a client will know what they’ve received. Once they understand the value through reporting, renewing and upsells are a natural next step.
What should you be looking for with renewals and upsells?
The first thing you should be looking for with renewals and upsells is how you will demonstrate the value of your product. The client is encouraged to renew by seeing the return on their investment. Furthermore, an optimized value-driven strategy will set the stage for upselling.
Demonstrating value through reporting
The best way to demonstrate value through reporting is by using quantitative business metrics.
Standard metrics that demonstrate value and ROI are:
- Cost per click
- Cost per acquisition
- Post impression conversion
- Post click conversion
There may be other metrics that are helpful, especially in specific industries. The basic premise is that you can quantifiably prove the value of your product by the improvement in the metrics.
Don’t just present the numbers. Figures are valuable, but using those figures to tell a story of success is much more impactful. This should be coupled with a plan for further improvement and how the numbers guide that future.
Remember to report on some metrics throughout the year. A full annual report with no periodic support reflects poor customer service. Weekly, monthly, or quarterly reports allow the customer to see the constant service and timely adjustments to optimize performance.
How often to pitch or upsell?
Timing is everything for sales pitches or upselling, and the timing for one client may differ significantly. You don’t want to seem pushy, but if you know, a client would benefit from an expansion, go for it, but tread lightly. Especially if the previous purchase were substantial, you’d want to do a soft pitch. Too much upselling can look like greed to a customer. The general rule is not to try to sell anything too soon that costs more than 25% of what they’ve already purchased.
The best time to upsell is during your initial sale or at the time of renewal. Depending on the situation, you can increase the frequency.
How do you know what is working?
You know your reporting, renewing, and upselling are working using the same numbers you present to your clients.
More importantly, the entire sales or marketing team must be onboard. This means having scheduled connected data and global processes so everyone can participate appropriately.
The saying the right hand doesn’t know what the left-hand is doing is not a saying you want to symbolize your marketing team. Using AI technologies and organized marketing plans ensures that repetitive pitches are minimized, and no customer is left behind.
What products should you double down on, or how to determine what products are missing?
Embrace technology, and you’ll know what products you should continue to use, which you should get, and which can be dropped. Ensure you have a complete digital strategy to drive more conversions to your platform.
A complete digital strategy may include:
- Geo Fencing
- Pre-roll video banner advertising
- YouTube campaign
- Display ads
- Email marketing
- Long-form content
- Paid search
- SEO
- Social media
- Audio advertising
- Website development
Of course, all digital ad strategies can be customized to meet your organization’s unique needs by looking at the metrics and seeing how they perform.
Customization is an excellent consideration if you see a dip in campaign results. Creative services like graphic design or video production might be the boost needed to improve ad effectiveness. Incorporating different social media platforms is another strategy.
Finally, retargeting is an approach if your business model isn’t taking off. This is a far-sighted approach that includes demographics that were outside your original target market. It keeps open opportunities that may have been dismissed in the original plan so that you can redirect and optimize your marketing strategy.
Reporting, renewing, and upselling are complementary practices
Reporting metrics, renewing contracts, and upselling are complementary practices, and they are expected by customers who demand high-quality services. Although reporting is the first step to renewals, the process is circuitous and never-ending. Customer service means offering support as often as possible, which means responding to the client’s ever-changing needs. This means maintaining the relationship but also adapting and offering more when necessary.
It is much easier to renew and upsell than make a new sale. That is very important to remember in any business model. If a business fails to renew and upsell, they are taking the path of most resistance and missing out on the opportunity of increased revenue through known channels. It is the easiest way to the end of the sales funnel, and established businesses should respect the importance of renewals and upselling because of it.
5 Mistakes to Avoid Renewals and Upsells
As with any business process, renewals and upsells come with their best practices for success. Without a clear strategy to manage the process, you risk missing out on valuable opportunities or alienating customers who could be significant sources of recurring revenue.
A surefire way to keep your business healthy is to renew your client’s campaigns and upsell them continually. Whether you’re new or a veteran of renewals and upsells, making this process as influential as possible will help you deliver the returns you deserve.
Learn about the mistakes you should avoid when renewing and upselling while learning insights and best practices to improve campaign decisions for your clients when you download our whitepaper.
