The image above, lamenting Amazon’s relentless toilet seat emails, is hilarious, relatable, and a perfect illustration of a multi-million-dollar problem in e-commerce: mindless automation.

In the fast-paced world of online retail, automation and speed are non-negotiable. We rely on algorithms for everything, from inventory management to personalised email flows. But, many brands are leaving substantial money on the table because their "set-it-and-forget-it" product suggestion widgets and email templates are running on outdated, low-IQ algorithms.

The Double-Edged Sword of High-Volume Selling

As we enter the high-purchase season (e.g. Black Friday Cyber Monday), the stakes and the potential for waste are higher than ever. Your marketing spend is peaking, making it critical to maximise the value of every single customer interaction. The goal isn't just to increase sales volume; it's to significantly raise the Average Order Value (AOV) and, crucially, profitability for every transaction.

Using basic "Customers Also Viewed" widgets or stagnant recommendation flows simply won't cut it. These simple algorithms often suggest products based only on category adjacency or shallow purchase history. They don't understand context, timing, or, most importantly, your business goals.

From Mindless Suggestions to Strategic Upsells

To truly maximise AOV and profitability, your upsell and cross-sell strategies across all customer touch points (product pages, cart pages, confirmation emails, and retargeting ads) must organise themselves to evolve from being just relevant to being strategic. This means prioritising suggestions based on three critical factors:

1. Prioritise by Sales Velocity and Context, Not Just Category 🚀

A common mistake is recommending products that are in the same category. If someone buys a camera, don't just recommend another camera. That’s a transactional dead end.

Instead, look at the data to determine what customers actually buy next.

A camera buyer is far more likely to buy a memory card, a protective case, or a second lens in the same order. This is a crucial distinction between a generic "related item" and a true complementary cross-sell that increases immediate order utility. Use recent sales velocity—what people are buying right now—to keep your recommendations fresh and contextually accurate, especially as seasonal buying patterns shift.

Also read: How CLV and Retention Guide Your Path to Profitability

2. Maximise Profit Margin, Not Just AOV 💸

Increasing AOV is a vanity metric if it comes at the expense of margin. When you implement dynamic recommendation logic, it shouldn't just look for the most expensive item a customer might consider.

It should prioritise items that carry your highest profit margins.

For instance, if you sell premium coffee machines, the highest-margin cross-sell might not be the $10 bag of coffee beans; it might be the proprietary water filter or the extended warranty plan. By baking margin data directly into your recommendation engine, you ensure that every successful upsell is a genuine boost to your bottom line, not just your top-line revenue number. This helps you to realise your full profit potential.

3. Strategic Inventory Clearance (Slower Moving Items) 📦

Automation can and should be used to solve inventory problems. If you have aging inventory—products that are high quality but simply aren't moving fast enough—your cross-sell flows are a perfect, low-cost channel to move them.

By pairing a fast-moving, high-demand anchor product with a strategically chosen slower-moving, complementary item, you can gently guide customers toward valuable inventory.

This requires a smarter algorithm that balances the potential for a successful sale with the need to clear stock. It’s the difference between blindly marking an item down and intelligently integrating it into a recommended bundle.

The Takeaway

The era of "set-and-forget" automation is over. As purchase volume increases and customer acquisition costs soar, your upsell and cross-sell touch points are the most critical piece of real estate you own. If you’re not actively auditing and upgrading your product suggestion logic to align with profitability and inventory goals, you’re doing exactly what the pic is joking about: you're sending another unneeded toilet seat and flushing additional dollars down the toilet.

Now is the time to make your automation work smarter, not just faster.