How To Upsell/Cross-Sell To Your Segmented Student Enrollment Database

When it comes to up selling or cross-selling your courses, your student enrollment database is your biggest asset. If your existing students are happy with your service, they’ll likely be open to further supplementing their education and career prospects through your RTO.

Upselling is the strategy of selling higher-value course packages to prospects, or additional services that integrate into their chosen course. This encourages students to complete their qualification, as they’ll have access to supplementary resources and better quality educational experience overall. Cross-selling, on the other hand, involves suggesting additional courses that may complement the student's original course. For example, if a student has studied business administration, they might be interested in leadership and management courses.

Benefits of segmenting your database to upsell/cross-sell

When attempting to upsell or cross-sell to your current database, the more information you have about the customer the better. Here are a couple of reasons why segmenting your database is the key to an effective cross-selling or upselling strategy.

• A segmented database gives you a clear idea of whom you are targeting. For example, male college students who are interested in technology. With this information, your sales team is in a far better position to upsell relevant courses that are of interest to this segment, rather than approaching them with generalised marketing or advertising.

• Never try to upsell something to a customer that they don’t want or need. A segmented database will help you pinpoint the needs and challenges of each segment. Once you have established these, your sales team will be in a better position to create personalised campaigns. Personalised, engaging and relevant content has a far better chance of upselling your courses than generic messaging.
• A segmented database will help your sales team identify opportunities. For example, when they see that a student is approaching the end of a course, they can approach them with information about additional qualifications – this could be an upsell or a cross-sell opportunity.
• With a segmented database, your RTO’s sales team can spend more time on lucrative opportunities managing leads and increase their win rate.

How to upsell or cross-sell to your segmented database

To upsell your RTO’s courses successfully, your sales team should:

1.  Ensure the upsell or cross-sell is relevant: The upsell or cross-sell must be relevant to the student’s original course. There’s no point in persuading a student to try an accounting course course if they’ve only expressed interest in IT.

2.  Encourage your students to upsell themselves: Often, all your sales team needs to do is educate students on the benefits of additional courses. The students will more than likely go for the upsell with little need for sales tactics.

3.  Be available for clarification: Choosing the right course is a big financial decision, which can make it difficult to upsell a more costly option. Often your student will need to take some time to research and consider their options. Follow up your initial conversation with a personalised email - or even better, a warm call where you can discuss any issues or questions they may have. Warm calls enable you to establish a strong one-to-one relationship with your lead. Once they see you as a trusted advisor, the upsell or cross-sell will be considerably easier.

Lupo Digital is an inbound marketing agency that specialises in inbound marketing and lead nurturing for RTOs. We create personalised campaigns appropriate to the segments in your student enrollment database to upsell courses that are relevant to a student’s stage in their admission or learning cycle. For more information on how inbound marketing work for RTOs,

download our lead management guide.