No one wants 15 emails, four texts and two pieces of direct mail promoting a product they would never buy. Excessive cross-selling or promoting irrelevant products can annoy customers into leaving your brand for good.

When executed properly, however, cross-selling can be an effective way for merchants to increase average order value and introduce customers to new products. Buying cat food? You may be interested in this new cat toy. Need flip-flops to match that swimsuit you just bought? Leverage customer data to automatically pose these types of questions to your customers at the right time.

“It all comes down to a thousand iterations of the same problem,” sticky.io chief technology officer Brett McLaughlin told PYMNTS.com during a recent interview. “How well do I know my user, and how do I make sure everything they experience is pleasing, so they want to come back?”

McLaughlin went on to explain how merchants can implement targeted cross-selling campaigns that leverage consumers’ purchasing patterns while protecting their privacy.

“We're not storing that individual's preferences as much as we're gleaning a little bit about their purchase and we're relating it to similar purchases made on similar sites by similar profiles,” he said.

Read the full PYMNTS.com article here and connect with us to learn more about creating effective upsells and cross-sells that extend customer lifetime value.