My comments and suggestions on the new Clay pricing

Hi, you probably don't know me, I'm Laurent-David Hostyn.

Everybody calls me L-D and I'm a packaging and packaging & pricing expert for SaaS since more than 10 years now.

quite happy about what happened yesterday.

Clay announced the new packaging and pricing.

It was a nice announcement made by the founders.

really master class about communication.

It's really, really important to communicate that really clearly to your customers.

Why you change your packaging and what are the key changes.

however I have a few things to say about the new pricing page.

I don't have access to the data, I didn't do any kind of business case.

But there are more or less 10 things that I would comment.

more than just commenting it I worked on a new packaging and pricing page so maybe Clay will use it in a few months, years.

So let's start.

what we need to know is that it's really complicated to make a packaging and pricing change because you need to consider your prospect.

So companies that are not yet customers, they will come to that price, packaging and pricing page and they have to make a decision based on that.

it's pure perception.

But at the same time when you do a change you need to manage all your existing customers and that's a big challenge.

You need to migrate them from existing plans to the new ones.

so you need to consider both prospects and existing customers.

What I don't like.

So there are a lot of things that are great of course but I'll focus on what I would improve.

1. So first of all: the names of the packs.

I would disagree with them.

it's probably because you have kind of "segment-based" packaging but "Launch" & "Growth" I don't like them too much because most of your customers they would like to grow, they acquire data, they want to run automations, connected to the CRM.

They all want growth.

So you might have established companies that exist since 5, 10 years.

They would like to grow.

It's not about launching.

Probably they will launch with you but they can use the freemium.

So "Launch" "Growth"...

I don't like it that much.

2. Their descriptions, neither you will see the improvement.

I will suggest 3. What I don't get, neither is to you have a freemium plan.

So freemium, it's free forever.

But there's a 14 day trial.

So that's a bit strange 4. Here the tag "Recommended".

I recommend to use this kind of tag in companies that have a Sales-Led motion, not Product-Led growth motion.

Because in Sales-Led motion the salespeople have the time to understand the prospect and really recommend the plan.

Here you don't know the company the prospect.

So I would stay with the classic, "Most popular" and probably on the "Launch" one.

5. What is also a bit annoying: "Action"...

It's complicated to understand what is an "Action".

So I need to really look everywhere, scroll down, go to the FAQ to understand what is an action.

So that's a bit a pity especially as it's really at the beginning a bit same for credit.

many companies use credits.

But what does it mean a "credit" at Clay?

6. What is also a bit a pity: Sometimes you put a tooltip, a description to understand the attribute is.

But for most of them I don't have any description.

so you assume that it's obvious for the prospect, but for most of them it's not.

So it can be quite tiring to understand the value of every line.

I suggest you take example on Monday: on every value attribute there's a short, and nice description.

So I suggest you to do exactly the same on all of them.

And what is really important is not just to be descriptive, it's really to understand why why this feature is relevant.

7. What is also annoying is when I look at the full table comparison, when I scroll down, I don't see the price anymore.

I've the "Launch" "Growth" but no price.

It's annoying of course.

So I again have to scroll up, down.

I can't change the credit volume.

8. Another suggestion here: If I subscribe for one year I save 10%.

but I would suggest to write yeah "Get one month for free".

I know it's only 8.3% but it's quite often stronger to write "One month for free" than just "10%".

9. Another thing that is not that good: Custom functions "coming soon".

Okay, what does it mean "soon"?

In one month, one quarter, this year?

it's too vague.

10. Here it's also for me a bit of pity: the number of tables and users for requests is unlimited.

Can probably be two lines.

So here were my comments about what I don't like that much.

But as I said I worked on a new version , here.

so I used my solution, The Smart Builder, to work on it.

You can really clearly see here that if, let's say I'm not interested in the free, neither in the enterprise, I will compare those two, right?

And here I see big price difference.

not everybody is comfortable with maths.

And I see that the price is much bigger, it's much more than two times the price, maybe three times the price.

Number of credits is a bit more than two times, the number of credits.

So for most of the people it's a bit hard to get a bit of VOLUME DISCOUNT then if I really see only the differences.

So it's the number of credit and a few features here.

But it's not that easy to make the decision.

so what I've done, improved this.

So what I suggest you to do is to not mix those two things.

But we need to have two axes to increase the deal size.

What I've done, 1. I put exactly the same number of credits between the two.

Let me hide the Free and Enterprise (Custom).

There we go.

So I have exactly the same number of credits, right?

2. I change already the price, same number of actions.

And I also, there we go, change a few attributes to 3. increase a bit the differences between the two.

So between the Silver and the Gold, for example, the table version history, you have one month here, two months.

The raw limit, I have a bit less.

I have 30,000 here, 50,000.

So it's easier to understand as a prospect: "okay, I need to pay more for this additional value.

More features, more volume and I get better prices on the credit top ups, and in parallel, yes, if I buy more credits, I will have a better price per credit and I can do that for the Silver and the Gold." So yes, you might have customers that take the Silver and pay much more than the Gold because of the volume.

But it is great for them because they don't have to pay too much for the Gold, all the features that they don't need.

4. Another thing that I changed is here: the granularity, the number of ranges, in your current pricing there is 2,500, 6,000, 10,000, 20,000, 50,000.

I usually don't like that much, that kind of profile too much.

because as a prospect, if I need 3,000 credits.

Yeah, I feel forced.

We need to take the upper range 6000 so it's more than the double.

here it's fine 6,000 to 10,000, 10,000 to 20,000.

And here again if I need 22,000, 23,000, I'm forced to take 50,000.

people usually don't like when the jumps are bigger than twice so be careful with the jumps between the ranges.

So I've been a bit more granular.

2,000, 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, 40,000, 50,000.

I know it's a bit more ranges but probably it's more acceptable by the prospect and same here.

So if I take now 30,000, 30,000 here, of course the price difference is still there and I get that.

I pay of course more for the credits but also for the features.

There you go.

here 5. in the integrations I put the CRM right from the silver.

6.

I also worked on the add ons.

So here you don't provide that many add ons.

enterprise to have a company people job data in bulk.

It's an add on but I think it should be accessible for the two other packs, "Launch" and "Growth".

and other add ons like the single sign on.

Yeah, I would say should also be an add on for the, for the Launch.

you allow them to pay much more based on the credits.

But if they have the budget they probably would like to have the single sign on and especially as you don't limit on number of users.

So I think it will be good to put an add-on here.

and yeah so you see with the price changes, 7. and last thing that has changed is the order of the section.

today your section is volume data enrichment, signal integrations, workflow, platform administration, credit economics.

as a buyer I would find the story a bit better like this.

So first of course we talk about the volume.

But then yeah, to understand a bit how it works with the credits, that I have a rollover, that I have a dashboard, et cetera, that okay, on gold I have a better price than on silver.

Then of course the data enrichment, the signals, then the workflow.

for me the workflow should come before the integrations.

We clearly see much more value here than here.

8. last thing that I added: I found your section, "customer success" it's a bit, yeah, I think a pity to not have anything in free and launch.

I'm sure that even your free, customers and launch customers, they get access to some, some value, even if it's not with someone of your team.

But usually they have access to FAQ tutorials, etc.

So for me.

So I want to put it, to put it here.

Yeah, so I hope that you enjoyed my comments.

I'm going to put this interactive page so you can compare this this one with yours, in my LinkedIn post.

And feel free to, to reach me if you would like to have another sparring partner session.

Bye.

Bye.