Upselling is about putting money in your pocket, but it’s also about adding value for clients. Add-ons are one of the best (and easiest) ways to add value while significantly boosting revenue. Think about it: Who wouldn’t want to add a personalized meal plan to three months of personal training, or feel the need to tack a yoga mat onto their booked class?
Add-ons and upsells can boost overall sales—if they are they’re easy to manage for you and easy to find for clients. Vagaro’s recently released Add-Ons feature makes creating add ons for your classes or services easy, and even easier for clients to book them. It enables businesses to easily attach upgrades to specific services and classes and automatically gives clients the option to select them at the time they book appointments or make purchases. The added flexibility to turn pre-existing services into add-ons also means you no longer must create your own add-ons within your service menu. Additionally, upselling high-value class packages and memberships during booking increases value for both you and your clients.
Easy upsell, minimal effort. Sound good? Read on to see how it works!
Below, we’ve listed a few more ways that add-ons help you upsell, some steps to avoid & how Vagaro’s Add-Ons feature makes the process a breeze.
How it Works
Businesses on Vagaro can easily create and attach add-ons to relevant services, packages or memberships. From there, simply set prices, descriptions, the cost to the business and select thumbnail images for the add-ons. Time duration sets from zero, meaning it’s completely customizable. This is an added convenience with add-ons like additional classes, in which duration doesn’t actually apply.
Speaking of time, you no longer have to waste yours creating your own add-ons within your service menu. Vagaro's Convert to Add-on tool enables you to seamlessly turn a service into an add-on when needed, which is assigned to specific service providers when booking online. You may be wondering if you can also set the durations of these converted add-ons to start at zero minutes. The answer is yes!
Of course, the best upsell is converting a one-time class booking into a repeat customer. By using the Upgrade to Save feature, you can sell those higher value packages or memberships during the booking process. Long-term commitment is more cost effective for the customer and ensures recurring revenue for you.
After this, the work is done! The corresponding add-ons will pop up as a suggestion for a client when they book an appointment or make a purchase. This upsell tactic takes place at just the right time—that magical moment when the credit card comes out and the client is ready to buy. Check out these helpful articles for a deeper dive into how to use Vagaro's Add-Ons feature.
What to Offer & How to Price It
Add-ons can help you introduce the services and products you offer without changing the core service itself. Just remember that what you offer, how you price it & how long it takes should be based on:
- What Your Customers Need
A straightforward way to figure this out is to ask around or take to social media. Polls, as we covered in a previous article, are a fantastic way to gauge what clients want.
- Some Old-Fashioned Competitive Research
What are some upgrades that other yoga studios, personal trainers, or fitness centers offer? You may think you’re offering the deal of the year, but what if it’s quite common?
- Cost to Your Business
In the case of a yoga studio, the amount of sanitizer used to clean mats or towels might be considered for rentals. If you’re adding a private personal training session, how much does your time cost? If you tack on a discounted product, make sure you know what the markup on that item is.
- The Value to Clients
If equipment rental is an add-on that you offer, price it in such a way that buying that piece of equipment from you (assuming you sell apparel, gear or supplements) is more economical than repeatedly renting it. The same goes for how you price individual session & classes as opposed to the value to the client to enroll in a membership at your fitness business. And, just like that, you’ve turned a would-be one-time customer into a return client.
Capitalize on Urgency
Add-ons provide logical value to certain corresponding services, classes or packages. But they increase average order values (AOV) largely because they create a sense of urgency for clients to act. As mentioned, the best time to upsell add-on services is when the iron is hot—meaning, when clients are about to book or make a purchase. This is a time-sensitive window, so clients need to know their options and should be able to make their choice on the spot. They may be turned off to add-on services if:
- They have to call you to simply add a towel rental to their hot yoga class after booking
- They’re redirected to a separate suggested add-on service menu
- They have to add upgrades manually at checkout, which is time consuming & can lead to errors
In these situations, the urgency is gone, replaced instead by annoyance. Vagaro’s Add-On feature solves this by automatically suggesting add-ons & upgrades to your clients at checkout when they add a corresponding item to their cart. It takes the hard sell out of the upsell because clients are automatically presented with things that matter to them & carry relevancy, whether the transaction occurs online or at your business.
Speaking of what matters to clients...
Individualize the Experience
By the time they reach the checkout stage, your clients have already said yes to your services. When they choose add-ons, they do so according to their needs & interests, and have chosen to invest in a more individualized experience.
Remember, customization should make sense.
People are unique and so, too, should your add-ons be. Vagaro’s intuitive Add-Ons feature provides a menu of customized suggestions for clients on the spot. If you think of a new upgrade idea, you can always add it. It should be that easy—and it is, for Vagaro businesses.
Simplify Your Service & Class Menu
It’s good that you offer a variety of class types, services, memberships & packages. However, make sure that adding upgrades to this mix doesn’t confuse clients. Creating a separate add-on service category with an extensive list of prices just annoys clients and clutters your booking pages. Here’s a bit of philosophy the wise Buddha himself could have come up with for his own yoga studio: The art of add-ons is to simplify.
Vagaro’s Add-Ons feature lets businesses put this little pearl of wisdom into practice. There are no separate categories, just the right add-ons, clearly priced, explained & attached to one main appointment for easy booking. This saves time, reduces the booking process and makes your business’s booking pages easier to navigate.
The Add-Ons feature is one of the easiest & most effective ways to improve your fitness business’s incremental sales. It makes it easier to upsell packages & memberships, and it increases average order values. With Vagaro’s Add-Ons feature, upsells require minimal effort and they’re tailored to the needs of potential clients. Check out this article for tips on how to market and sell add-ons and other services. Then, take your free 30-day trial and experience how Vagaro’s fitness management software can help you grow your fitness business like never before!
