Increase Revenue by Upselling or Cross-Selling at Your Event

Everyone wants to make money at their event and make their attendees happy, however no one wants to put attendees off by seeming to ‘push’ extra products or services at them- they can smell it a mile away!

Upselling encourages attendees to purchase more expensive items, upgrades or add-ons, while cross-selling usually encourages attendees to buy a separate or complementary product or service. Both focus on offering additional value to customers, and obviously also offer the benefit to the event organiser of increased revenue. But how can you do it without putting your attendees off, convincing them why the additional purchase is a good idea, and what can you offer? Here we provide some tips on how to increase revenue by upselling or cross-selling at your event.

The key is customer happiness and success… once you figure out what success means to your attendees- both in the immediate and long term- you will be able to make an offer that’s appropriate for the customer to achieve their goals, and can address their needs more fully.
Here are several suggestions which provide opportunities to help your attendee make the most of your event…

• Create a special VIP Package, which offers the attendee more benefits
• Create a separate ticket to attend a networking event- for some people, networking is critical. Networking events can be a great place to meet a lot of like-minded people at one time, and the amount of first-hand connections attendees can make at networking events is incredibly valuable.
• Combine several separate sessions together at a bundled price- bundling has long been used as a way to entice shoppers to buy not just a single item, but an entire group of items that go together.
• Offer a ticket to attend a special dinner with the presenters/experts at the event
• Offer a 15-minute session with an expert at the event, who can show you how to apply the tools taught, to your business
• Sell a recording of the event or webinar for attendees to keep on hand and refer to
• Offer graduated pricing– this means that attendees can purchase more tickets for a lower cost, with a lower booking fee. This can encourage more sales, for example perhaps a company may send more staff to your event.
• You can also sell tickets to other events of yours at a reduced price at the time of purchase, by using sub-tickets.

Keep in mind that not all of these extras need to be selected or sold at the time of purchase- sometimes, depending on the event and your knowledge of attendees, it may be better to send a follow up email to attendees thanking them for coming, and providing special offers for doing so. Remember that once an attendee leaves your event, they are on their own- they might leave with a lot of information, but how do they apply that, and will they remember it all? After the event the attendees realise the value of what has been offered, and can see the benefits of your offers, which can be tailored to suit. In an email you can offer proof in terms of case studies and customer testimonials. A recording of the session may make more sense to the attendee after the event, and a follow up 15-minute Skype call may seem like a great opportunity to apply the tools they have learned.

You could also offer a reduced price to another event you have in the future, or maybe even membership at a reduced price for a limited period of time. Create a separate event page for these extras after your event, to which you can direct attendees for them to see what is offered and purchase, for a limited period (to encourage action while your event is still top of mind). You can also create discount codes which can be used to reduce prices for future purchases.

Is your event to raise money for a cause? In this case, people are feeling generous and want to help, so some tools you may like to use to upsell or cross-sell could be:

• Sell raffle tickets at the time of purchase, to be drawn on the night of the event
• Add a ‘donate’ ticket type for attendees to also donate at the time of their ticket purchase.
• Add a sub-ticket- to sell things such as merchandise at a reduced price at the time of purchase (it’s a good idea to include what the full price is on the ticket so they can see the value they are getting

Please remember that if your event is raising money for a cause, we’d also like to help. Check our our rebates to see how we can also contribute.

When you hold an event, upselling or cross-selling can be inexpensive and cost-effective ways to generate sales and increase your average order value. You can do this either at the time of the ticket purchase, or by creating a separate event after and offering special discounts, services and rewarding loyalty in a thank you email after the event has been held.

Keep in mind though that whereas it can increase revenue, cross-selling and upselling must always come second to the primary purchase, and you must always to focus your efforts on meeting the customers’ needs rather than simply pushing more products and services.

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