Cross-selling and up-selling are two commercial techniques that are becoming increasingly popular among businesses when trying to increase their profitability.

These two commercial strategies seek to increase the average value of the purchase ticket and, consequently, raise business profits.

When applying these techniques, keep in mind that the essence of cross-selling and up-selling is not  simply to offer as many products as possible. We must offer the right products to the right customers: products that meet their needs and provide them with value.

Let’s imagine you go on Amazon to buy a coffee maker. Amazon might recommend coffee filters and beans to go along with it.

But, how do you know what the best product to recommend is? How can you determine which of your customers should you recommend it to? Should you recommend a certain product or service, or would it be a turn-off? This is where AI comes into play.

Achieving Relevance

To recommend the right product to the right person, you must start by analyzing quality data about your customers. You can start with characteristics of your customer traffic, for example:

• number of products viewed
• frequency of visits
• product ratings

Using these characteristics, machine learning algorithms (AI) are activated and parameterized. AI activation is possible in the different widgets of the site. It can be located in different parts of the web – thus accompanying the user through the entire purchase process: on the home page, the categories page, or in product sheets.

These algorithms can be governed by customizable rules (for example, location, new or recurring customer, registered or not, etc.).

Any company can take advantage of AI applied to cross-selling to increase sales revenue and improve customer satisfaction. In B2B businesses, you can leverage AI to increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) through deeper integration in a customer’s business. As an example, Jeff Bezos revealed that cross-selling helped bring in an incredible 35% of sales. Additionally, 80% of Netflix views come from the service recommendations. AI cross-selling and up-selling can help improve practically any online sales model.

Now what??

If you’re not sure how to get started with BigQuery, get in touch with our team by shooting us an email at info@makingscience.com.

Increase Hotel Bookings By Avoiding These Mistakes

On average, hotel website conversion rates (bookings per unique monthly visitor) are only two percent. That means that for every 100 people who come to your site to book a room, only two complete their purchase, while the other 98 leave to book a room elsewhere. How do you increase hotel bookings?

The best hotel websites are continuously testing their sites to determine what works, what doesn’t and how to fix it. By doing so, many have seen substantial increases in web visitors and in bookings. Although many factors determine conversion rates, we’ve identified 4 common mistakes that many hotel websites make that can adversely affect conversions and direct booking rates. Avoiding these will sure help increase hotel bookings.

When Looking to Increase Hotel Bookings, Here’s What You Should Avoid:

Mistake 1: Focusing only on price

Price is not the only motivating factor for travelers when they come to your hotel website. Users want to know quickly if you’re offering a package deal or special offer that’s relevant to their needs. They don’t want to spend time looking for the best deals or offers for them.

A CTA button can get your website visitors to take a desired action and book a room, but you also need to motivate them to act. How? By showing them persuasive offers or incentives. Providing an easy-to-find call to action (CTA) above the fold on your homepage that is located near the offer you’re showcasing will motivate them to take action and improve your conversion rates. If the only thing your visitor sees is a “BOOK NOW” CTA without any context or persuasive offer, you aren’t setting yourself apart from the hundreds of other hotel websites that are doing the exact same thing.

Diversify the offerings around your CTAs. Are you running a special for the holidays? Have something unique or time-sensitive to offer? Creating a sense of urgency and scarcity around the offer will incentivize users to act quickly to avoid missing out. This therefore, can help increase hotel bookings.

Mistake 2: Information Overload

If users can’t keep up with scrolling photos, music, too many buttons or pop-ups, bizarre navigation or boxes of text flying at them from every corner of the site, they may get frustrated and leave the site.

Unless the information they need to book a hotel room is clean, clear, focused and easily understood, you may be sending your guests to complete their reservation with your competition.

Having only the necessary information clearly displayed and easily found on your homepage improves search engine ratings. This drives more traffic and increases direct bookings. However, providing too much information that overwhelms, distracts, or confuses the user could have a negative impact on conversions and lead them out of your booking funnel.

Mistake 3: Outdated Content

If the typical hotel website only has eight seconds to capture a visitor’s attention, then the textual and visual content on your site must be up-to-date and visually compelling. The ability of your site to tell a story – visually and with copy – is key to increasing engagement and conversions. Content, including images and multimedia, should be targeted to your user personas, whether families, couples, retirees or business elite. The more data you have about your key market, the better you can engage your guests with personalized content. That said, most people don’t read long blocks of text, but instead scan for the most important information, such as rates, availability or promotions.

The design of your site is as important as content. Some marketers would say even more so. With more and more people booking reservations on their mobile devices, it’s also time to take a look at your website to ensure it’s intuitive and mobile-friendly. Are the photos professionally done to highlight the quality of your rooms and services? Do the navigation buttons feel clunky, or are there distracting flashes that keep visitors from making a reservation? Make sure your user experience is mobile friendly to capture those bookings even if the user switches devices. This will help increase hotel booking through mobile devices.

Here’s an example of how we increased conversion rates and direct bookings for a cruise line by improving their user experience on mobile.

Mistake 4: Leaving Out Good Reviews

There’s no getting around the fact that people check ratings and reviews in the booking process. Nearly 70 percent of travelers will scour as many as 20 reviews before booking a hotel online. Another 49 percent won’t book a hotel if there are no reviews to check out. Reviews can generate trust and are one of the most vital aspects of any company’s online presence, most notably in the online travel industry.

There are a couple of things that you can do to boost positive online reviews and fix negative reviews:

• Provide great service.
• Don’t overpromise.
• Ensure that what your guests expect, your guests will get.
• Manage negative reviews and take action where improvement is needed.
• Proactively ask or incentivize guests to leave positive reviews.

Like reviews, hotels that connect with potential guests via social media can form lasting relationships. Visitors are more likely to book a hotel that is familiar. A robust social media presence can also showcase your brand, set you apart from your competition and provide you a voice to respond to comments, feedback and reviews in real-time.

Avoiding these four mistakes will sure increase hotel bookings. Make sure to check out our other blogs.

Personalization in digital marketing & machine learning

Machine learning is indispensable when it comes to personalization in digital marketing. Period.

Thanks to incredible advancements in terms of machine learning capabilities and analytics, companies can offer unique digital experiences to specific customers with virtually nothing more than a “flip of a switch.” So, instead of having a single experience for all of your users, your site can be personalized to fit the needs of each and every one of them.

This practice, known as personalization, involves categorizing customers as unique individuals rather than members of a broader customer segment.

What does this process look like?

Firstly, data is rapidly aggregated and then analyzed. Then, machine learning does what it does best. Learn. By deep analysis of the data it is being fed, relevant insights can be extracted about customers on a granular level. These insights can then be the driver in terms of deploying the optimal personalized website or app layout to the right person—in the right way.

Why should I implement personalization in my digital marketing strategy?

Each customer is unique—they want you to know what they want, when they want it and how they want it.

Personalization allows you to build deeper relationships with your users. It improves your conversions by convincing prospects that you know and understand their needs.

Furthermore, personalization allows you to micro-target prospects based on probability to convert, improve your engagement levels and grow your user community via features such as social sharing, comments and likes.

It is also important to note that combining your personalization strategy with CRO (conversion rate optimization) is a revenue-generating machine—.

How do you implement personalization on your website?

Before you can implement a website personalization program, you need to understand everything about your users. This may sound straightforward, but it can be incredibly difficult if you don’t have a clear strategy or roadmap from the beginning.

The “Who”

To get your 1-to-1 personalization program right, first establish the “who.” Who do you want to target with a unique experience? Here are some examples on how to categorize the “who”:

• Demographic attributes such gender, location, income & profession.
• Behavior of the users on-site and other marketing channels—i.e., browses awareness pages before making a conversion.
• First-time visitors vs. returning visitors, logged-in vs. not logged-in etc.
• Device types—desktop, mobile or tablet? What browser or do they use?

The “What”

When it comes to the “what”—what type of experience or content do you want to show this segment of your audience? Consider the following:

• How much of your page can you personalize? Do you need to change anything on the backend before you are able to make the desired changes?
• What part of your page do you want to personalize? Popular options include headlines, images and calls to action.
• What value will personalization create? Don’t personalize just because you can. Think of what you are trying to achieve.

Things to keep in mind

Once you’ve done the above and know the “who” and the “what”, you need to keep the following in mind:

• Don’t slice your audience too thin. Allow them to discover new things should they choose to do so.
• Make sure to measure the impact of changes before and after you make them so that you have more insight into what worked, what didn’t and why—always test.
• Use automated data collection and personalization technology (to be discussed below) whenever possible for maximum efficiency.

Tools that can help with personalization

Monetate is a global leader in personalization software for consumer-facing brands. Their technology allows brands to create a more relevant and personalized customer experience.

CommerceStack is an add-on that works with Magento and automatically displays relevant products based on shopper behavior. This is accomplished by tapping into data already stored by Magento to make its recommendations.

CNET Intelligent Cross Sell handles cross-selling and up-selling based on behavioral data and can also be customized to use data points such as product profitability or customer reviews before displaying items to specific people.

SiteApps enables you to enhance WordPress websites with a wide range of apps, such as social media widgets, extensions for analytics, forms for feedback and comments and more, all of which can be added with a click.

Zendesk and LiveChat are great tools to use if you’re looking for customer help and support features on your site. These applications allow you to offer personalized support via your website, over the phone, on social sites, by email and by using live chat. This makes it easier to personalize customer service experiences for users.

Now to get a little more technical. You can use services such as Episerver and Kentico CMS to personalize content based on rules such as the physical location of your visitor and search terms. You can also use more advanced personalization features that use data on user behavior and profiles.

Finally, if you want to integrate marketing with your 1-to-1 personalization program, consider HubSpot, Marketo and Salesforce. With these tools, you can deliver the right content that you need to show a user based on where they are in the buying process.