from stale acquisition tactics to counter-intuitive pricing model
Strategic Pricing Shift
Growth Marketing | The Circus Project | 2019 - 2022
Summary
Through incremental learning from pricing experiments, we transitioned from underperforming promo codes to a pay-what-you-will pricing model that boosted revenue by 30% in just nine months while increasing community access.
I led a cross-functional team to successfully implement and scale this model across all product categories, improving impact and differentiating us as the straight-forward, radical access choice in a crowded market of aerial classes in Portland (yep, it’s a land of nonprofits and small circus studios).
My Role
As the Executive Director, I:
Designed initial experiment and analyzed results
Built the business case
Gained buy-in from key stakeholders
Modeled financial scenarios
Managed a cross-functional team spanning marketing, programming, operations, and customer experience
Background
I was the Executive Director of a growing circus arts school, and our goal was to max out enrollment in our beginner classes — the top of our enrollment funnel.
Initially, our primary acquisition tactic was offering first-time student discount promo codes promoted through corporate partners like Nike and Intel, and through condo managers in our rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. We were a team of frugal nonprofit administrators and artists, and thought: who doesn’t love a discount?
Our customers didn’t.
Looking at our enrollment analytics, promo codes consistently under-performed, and the ROI on the associated advertising and partnership management costs was dismal.
Meanwhile, one of our standout offerings was a drop-in aerial class with sliding scale pricing. While most of our classes had set tuition with scholarships for those in need, this class offered three below-market price options, subsidized by grant funding. Our hypothesis was that most customers would opt for the lowest price option, regardless of need. That was fine, since our goal was creating access and attracting new students who would convert to loyal and longtime customers.
The data told a different story: 50% of customers selected the highest “true cost” price, and only 25% chose the lowest and heavily subsidized rate. This class wasn’t just attracting new students—it was generating revenue.
Seeing a Growth Opportunity
We had an opportunity to rethink our pricing model entirely. Rather than continue offering cumbersome discounts and need-based scholarships, what if we trusted our customers to tell us what they could pay? We imagined a pay-what-you-will pricing model across all classes. This approach not only aligned with our mission to make circus arts accessible to everyone, but it also had the potential to eliminate administrative overhead and boost revenue.
Teaming
I assembled and led a cross-functional team for this initiative, spanning marketing, programming, community access, and CX operations.
We moved quickly to test the pay-what-you-will model. I implemented a few tools up front to facilitate effective and quick collaboration across this asynchronous team:
Project Charter. A one-page summary that included our goal, implementation plan, rationale, hypothesis, and the KPIs we would track.
RAPID Framework. Transparently outlining who was responsible for deciding whether to move forward, who needed to be in agreement with our plans, who needed to be kept in the loop, and who would actually carry out the work.
Progressive Kickoff Meetings. This team had conflicting schedules and was impossible to gather in the same room. So we unrolled the project in stages. I first met with the Program Director, my closest collaborator, to compile the project charter. Then we each met separately with our respective reports. I worked with the Marketing Manager and CX Operations Lead to get feedback and buy-in and kick off their respective deliverables. The Program Director met with her team to get buy-in, surface concerns, and keep them in the loop. This required significant upfront effort, but it empowered our team to work autonomously down the line.
Slack kickoff. I then summarized the project again in a new Slack channel, establishing our primary place for collaboration and home for documenting key decisions and project artifacts.
Experimenting: 0 to 1
We started experimenting with the pricing for our existing tier pricing class. This phase was primarily driven by marketing and CX operations. We met to divvy up the work and get clear on our balance between collaboration and autonomy. For example, the full team gave input on what the pricing should be. The Marketing Manager ideated, tested, and selected pricing labels and descriptions autonomously, soliciting feedback as needed. Our CX lead figured out how to implement the change in our CRM without throwing off our whole analytics process. They worked together to figure out how the pricing would show up on our website, since our CRM integration capabilities were limited. This involved significant technical effort, requiring close alignment to ensure a smooth user experience between our website and CRM.
The results were clear: customers gravitated toward the higher price points, with 50% still opting for the “true cost” tier, while the new “pay-it-forward” option attracted 10% of customers.
Building the Business Case
Before scaling further, we needed to get buy-in from key stakeholders including staff leadership, implementors, and the board. There were three key considerations:
Financial - several folks on our leadership team had a strong gut reaction that this would tank the organization.
Mission - Some teammates were energized by this radical access. Others worried that our more privileged students would dominate classes without a scholarship process in place.
Practical - this was a seemingly simple change that would actually require a big technical lift because we were working with a mismatched CRM that wasn’t built for our use case.
I built a financial model based on three potential outcomes — best case (most customers paying higher amounts), conservative (similar spread to our initial experiment), and worst case (everyone choosing the lowest price). The worst-case scenario showed that, even with minimal revenue, we could absorb the financial impact. The best and conservative cases, however, presented significant upside. I also highlighted the reduced administrative burden for both our team and our customers, as scholarship management would be eliminated.
The team gave input asynchronously to surface obstacles and propose strategies for mitigating risk and negative impact on our mission or staff.
To address the practicalities, I designed a transparent, incremental decision-making process, clearly identifying who would make which decisions at each stage, based on specific KPIs along our roadmap. This demonstrated that we weren’t making a wholesale shift at once. We’d roll it out in stages, with clear points to assess and adjust before expanding further. This was critical to gain buy-in.
I packaged the expected financial outcome, mission impact, and implementation plan into a 2-page project brief using storytelling to make this decision easy and compelling for the board. I labeled it 'DRAFT' to invite productive feedback and ensure key stakeholders felt involved in the process rather than seeing it as a formality.
Scaling: 1 to 10
Scaling: 1 to 10
We expanded across more categories of in-person classes with consistently positive results. I periodically recapped our goal, progress, and the story of the initiative to the project team, full staff, and board to maintain alignment, celebrate success, and invite feedback as we scaled up.
The pandemic hit in the midst of this project. When we closed our facility and shifted to 100% digital service delivery, we implemented a pay-what-you-will model across everything with great success, and saw a similar spread of customers per price point.
Results
Once implemented, the pay-what-you-will pricing model led to a 30% increase in total revenue over 18 months and a 10% increase in enrollment. Feedback was enthusiastic. Our lower-income customers were grateful for the ability to keep up their circus skills without having to ask for help. Others were happy to pay a little more to support their community. Customers were also attracted to us as a circus org making bold moves in the name of access. The pay-what-you-will growth strategy paid off in terms of revenue and impact.