As a DTC business, we know one of your top priorities is getting the most out of every purchase by increasing your average order value (AOV). One of the best strategies for encouraging your consumers to buy more of your inventory is product bundling, which is a tactic where multiple products are grouped together and sold as a single package. For those of us who went to McDonald’s as kids and are deeply familiar with Happy Meals — that’s a great example of product bundling.
When it comes to your eCommerce business, there are multiple reasons why implementing a bundling component will help boost your brand — and with Smartrr, there’s no need to go looking for a separate bundle app. With the ability to enhance your subscription program through personalized build-a-box-like offerings, bundles enable you to add customization and variety to your consumers’ recurring purchases all while boosting your revenue. We’re exploring some of the key product bundling benefits and strategies for your Shopify brand, as well as why Smartrr’s Bundle Builder is the best tool to support your efforts.
Before you’ve convinced yourself this isn’t for you, let’s quickly dispel a common myth: you don’t have to be a build-a-box brand to offer product bundling. Even if it doesn’t end up being one of your core offerings, so long as you have at least two products, you can utilize and benefit from product bundling.
Glad we cleared that up.
Let’s dive in.
This benefit is a bit of a paradox that really works in your brand’s favor.
One of the clearest benefits of utilizing product bundling is increasing your AOV — and the primary way this works is by incentivizing your consumers to buy more than they’d originally intended on buying.
Say your consumer is planning to buy peanut butter for $5 and you also sell jelly for $5. By offering them a product bundling option of both peanut butter and jelly for only $7, your subscriber feels like they’re getting significantly more for only $2 beyond their initial budget. Your AOV spikes, their sense of savings spikes — and it’s a true win-win for everyone. Plus, by getting your subscribers to engage with more products, you’re increasing the likelihood that they’ll love and start to rely on your brand — thus boosting customer retention and brand loyalty.
💡 Smartrr Strategy: Make sure to clearly advertise the discount your subscribers get by bundling — because the more your audience feels like they’re getting a great deal, the better they’ll feel. There’s actually scientific evidence that the perception of saving money boosts your customers’ oxytocin levels, and increasing the number of products that your consumer is getting for a good price will only heighten those positive feelings.
🧠 Smartrr’s Bundle Builder: As you’re promoting your bundle options, you want the user experience to be as smooth as possible. With Smartrr, you don’t have to worry about any costly custom builds or separate PDP pages. Our onsite modal can be seamlessly linked to any existing subscription program to save you both time and resources, and it can be put on your site anywhere that makes the most sense for your consumers. We make it easy for you to style your modal with custom brand colors and fonts so it fits in with your overall business. This is all to say: we set you up for instant success so you can get started boosting your AOV immediately.
Offering your consumers the chance to customize their own bundles is an excellent way to boost their engagement and give them a sense of control over their experience. 56% of online buyers report that they’d go back to a website that personally recommends products, and 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a business that provides a personalized experience. Customizable bundles are a prime opportunity to make the shopping experience feel more tailored to the user, and your consumers walk away with only the items that they really need.
The ability to alter bundles also makes your consumers feel as though your brand understands them — which most subscribers expect nowadays. 66% of consumers have expectations that brands should understand their individual needs. Convenient bundling options that enable people to make specific adjustments will leave your audience feeling understood and increase the likelihood that they’ll keep returning for more.
💡 Smartrr Strategy: Leaning on your analytics is a great way to identify two products that would be great candidates for a bundle. Keep an eye out for items that are commonly bought together (like, say, a razor and shaving cream) to suggest to your consumers. This is another great opportunity to play up personalization. Learn your consumers’ tastes and shopping habits to inform tailored recommendations, whether that be a pre-built bundle or a bundle they create themselves with a “you may like” section.
🧠 Smartrr’s Bundle Builder: Choosing to prioritize personalization only matters if your software enables you to do so. With Smartrr, we put personalization at the forefront — which means you can offer multiple bundle sizes, cross-sell variety packs, and empower your consumers to pick whatever variants they want. Taking it a step further, customers can edit their bundles to try new products or stock up on their favorites when it’s time for their next subscription order.
Human psychology once again plays a huge part in how brands develop marketing strategies and create deals. Just as bundles can make people feel as though they’re getting a great deal, they can also prevent your buyers from feeling ripped off — even if the amount of money they pay stays roughly the same.
Here’s a commonly-used example:
If you pay $750/night for a fancy hotel that then charges you $10 for a bottle of water, you’ll likely feel cheated and annoyed. However, if the hotel bumps the price of the room up to $760 and includes a complimentary bottle of water with your purchase, that discomfort goes away — even though you’re ultimately spending $760 in both situations.
If people tend to view some of your less-expensive products as “bad” deals, they could be a good candidate for bundling. Your consumers will still feel like they’re getting more for less, and you’ll be able to mitigate any negative feelings about the individual cost of each item.
💡 Smartrr Strategy: Proceed with caution when pairing cheap products with your premium offerings. In fact, we don’t typically recommend it. Returning to the hotel example, throwing in the free water doesn’t make consumers feel like they’re getting a great deal so much as it protects against agitation from having to pay even more for something so small. And of course, you want your bundles to genuinely be saving your customers money — not just masking the price of cheaper goods. Strategizing by pairing some of your less-popular cheaper items with medium-priced popular items, while still offering a real discount, will go a long way to get rid of your inventory and sell some of your perceived “less valuable” items.
🧠 Smartrr’s Bundle Builder: While we’re on the topic of inventory — we know inventory reporting with bundles has traditionally been a big pain with 3PLs. With Smartrr, you can set your bundles up as Custom Attributes or Line Items. This means you can either opt to send your 3PL a single product SKU with custom attributes or individual line items for each product in your bundle. By being the first subscription app to prioritize post-purchase inventory reporting, we’re helping you strengthen your overall business operations and minimize any headaches.
By regularly asking your consumers to interact with and edit their bundles, you can quickly ascertain which products people are loving — and which just aren’t flying off the shelves. If you’re noticing that 85% of your customers are opting to remove one product from their bundle or regularly swap it out for something else, you might decide to retire that product altogether — or perhaps that product really doesn’t belong in that bundle.
While there are a lot of reasons a product might not sell outside of bundling (consumers aren’t aware of the product, it’s too expensive, they just aren’t interested in it, etc), bundles eliminate many other confounding variables and leave you with some vital data: your consumers aren’t interested in the product and actively go out of their way to avoid buying it. This level of interaction and frequent feedback will help you tighten your overall business and make crucial adjustments to optimize your strategy.
💡 Smartrr Strategy: Offer two different bundles at two separate price points. One can be your regular-sized product and the other can be a travel-sized product to help attract two different segments of your customer base: those who are familiar with the product and those who want to sample the product. From what we’ve seen, brands that try this out attract many net new subscribers — which is a great way to grow your brand while simultaneously increasing AOV.
You can also test new products by offering them as part of a bundle. If you’re marketing something new and have no reviews yet, this is a great chance to get experimental and increase the likelihood that your consumers will try out and provide feedback on new (and maybe riskier) products.
🧠 Smartrr’s Bundle Builder: With our bundles, you can easily offer multiple sizes at different price points to help figure out which your customers prefer.
Ultimately, product bundling is an excellent way to increase customer convenience and personalization, boost your AOV, strategically sell tougher inventory, and continue improving your brand with frequent customer feedback and data. However you decide to implement bundling for your Shopify brand, Smartrr’s Bundle Builder is here to help.
Wondering how to get started with Smartrr’s Bundle Builder? Click here to get a demo — or click here to visit our bundle builder help doc.
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