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Case study: New technology pricing
Education technology

Our client, an education technology start-up was about to introduce a game-changing innovation designed and developed primarily for academic researchers in social science. Social science researchers could now collect data offline, collaboratively, and conduct complex, longitudinal studies in ways that weren’t possible before. The EdTech company engaged us three months before the planned go-to-market date to validate their go-to-market strategy and pricing.

Future state

Early in our research, we validated that universities do not buy enterprise technology unless every user is already using this technology. This type of adoption curve, on average, took 5-6 years; so selling to universities was no longer an option. Our EdTech client required a new approach for their to go-to-market and pricing plans

Current state

Our client had originally planned to sell directly to large academic institutions as the enterprise-wide use of this new research platform would benefit research universities above any other user types. Their opportunity at first seemed to be enterprise software and that’s where we started from

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Insight

 

A new monetizable user exists

We have identified a new primary target segment for monetization. Some of these practices employed 50-100 researchers

The new target segment had additional gaps that needed to be built to drive willingness to pay

The segment needed a better platform to manage their research resources as well as managing their research


A “per-study” pricing metric is better aligned with how the buyers make their money

The new target segment received grants per study, not by per number of researchers

New fences and packaging must be tested

We determined the triggers for driving engagement, conversion, and adoption behaviors and prepared a testing plan

Problem

 

Academic users were not really monetizable

The needs of graduate students and social science research staff could hardly justify a new, paid platform

Users’ willingness to pay was skewed by less relevant reference products

Target users compared their willingness-to-pay to the non-profit pricing rates of survey platforms which weren’t the most relevant reference

Per user pricing metric was misaligned

Most survey tools and products priced based on number of users, questions, or responses

 

Product was not configured optimally to monetize the new target user

Even after uncovering a new per-study pricing metric, the pricing tiers still needed to be fenced for low and high levels of benefits

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Results

Our EdTech SaaS client ultimately identified the needs and dynamics of a brand-new segment, reconfigured its product and pricing structures, and adjusted its go-to-market plan which created an additional $1.5M annual revenue potential

Break-through

The pricing innovation came about out of successfully aligning the product, offer, and pricing structures with the newly identified segment. The original product had been developed for a different buyer and a use case. Opening up a new segment required configuring the product differently. The value gaps of the target segment had to be bridged before trying to elevate their willingness-to-pay

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