How to expand, upsell and cross-sell
There are different sales motions that customers can go through once they are already using our product.
But first, let's define what these motions mean.
Definitions
Expansion is when a customer increases their usage of the same product, such as adding more seats or increasing volume.
Example: They are sending 4M emails per month and want to increase to 10M.
Upsell is when a customer buys a more expensive version of a product or adds extra features.
Example: They are in the Scale plan and want to upgrade to the Enterprise plan.
Cross-sell is when a customer buys a different product that complements the one they are already using.
Example: They are sending transactional emails but not marketing emails yet.
Our approach
We don't try to upsell or cross-sell products that are not a good fit for the customer.
Just like forcing an expansion on a customer that doesn't need something will only lead to frustration and churn later.
Our mentality is to help customers in the long term, not to make a quick sale.
Expansion
Ask yourself: Does an increase in Resend usage correlate to an increase in revenue for them?
A) Expanding use cases
Maybe a customer is already sending Magic Link emails, but they haven't started sending Monthly Digest emails yet.
Maybe they already send Password Reset emails, but they haven't started sending Welcome emails yet.
We can educate them about the benefits of using email for new use cases, and how that translates to actual business value.
Pro tip: See What are the most common use cases for more ideas.
B) Constantly going over quota
Now, that we have pay-as-you-go pricing, customers can continue sending emails beyond their quota without having to upgrade to a higher plan.
If a customer is utilizing overages frequently, it's a sign that they might benefit from a higher plan.
Upsell
Look for signs that a customer is no longer the right fit for the Scale plan, and they might benefit from the Enterprise plan instead.
A) Priority support
As the number of email use cases increases within a company, they might need more support.
We can offer a shared Slack channel for customers to have direct access to our team.
B) Compliance and Single Sign-On
As companies scale and raise capital, they might need stricter retention rules and tighter authentication controls to meet compliance requirements.
We can offer Single Sign-On (SSO) to allow companies to use their existing identity provider and we can also work with them to figure out the ideal retention policy.
Cross-sell
We believe that adopting more products leads to a better experience with Resend.
A) Using Transactional but not Marketing
In larger companies, it's common to have Engineering and Marketing teams that are siloed and using different tools.
We want to encourage them to remove these silos by having everything unified on a single platform.
B) Using Marketing but not Transactional
In some cases, the engineering team might have set up a transactional email service a while ago, and doesn't have the motivation to migrate to a new platform.
C) Sending emails but not receiving
Up until November 2025, Resend's customers could only send emails, but not receive. Plenty of people wanted to do both, but they couldn't, so they used a different provider for receiving emails.
Now that Resend can receive emails too, we can help customers centralize their email workflows in a single place. That way, they'll have a better experience because they won't have to manage domains or team member's permissions in multiple services, for example.