Latest / Community Marketing with Fexingo: Discord, Slack Groups, and Brand Communities / How a 50-Person Slack Group Tested 12 Pricing Models in 2 Weeks
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this B2B SaaS company I've been watching, they sell a project management tool for architecture firms. Not a huge name, maybe fifty million in ARR. Luna: Okay, I know the type — niche, high-ticket, very specific buyer. Lucas: Exactly. They wanted to change their pricing. They were doing a flat per-seat fee, and they wanted to move to a tiered model based on storage and project count. Classic move. Luna: Right, get more revenue from the heavy users. Lucas: But the CEO told me they were terrified of getting it wrong. A bad pricing change can lose you thirty percent of your customer base in a quarter. So instead of hiring a pricing consultancy for fifty grand, they turned to their Slack community. Luna: How big was this community? Lucas: Fifty people. That's it. Fifty active members — mostly power users, some long-time customers, a couple of free trial users who were very vocal. Luna: Fifty doesn't sound like a statistically significant sample. Lucas: That's the thing — for pricing, you don't need statistical significance. You need signal. And these fifty people were deeply familiar with the product. They could smell a bad pricing model from a mile away. Luna: So how did they run the experiments? Lucas: The community manager created a private channel called 'pricing-lab'. Then over two weeks, they posted twelve different pricing model mockups — one every day or two. Each one had a simple question: 'Would this make you buy more, less, or the same?' Luna: And people actually engaged? Fifty people, two weeks, twelve models — that's a lot of asks. Lucas: Engagement was high because the community manager did something smart. She framed it as 'help us build pricing that works for you' — not 'please beta test our revenue optimization.' People felt ownership. Luna: That's a key distinction. One is collaborative, the other feels extractive. Lucas: Exactly. And she also gave them a sneak peek at the thinking behind each model. Like, 'Model three assumes we want to encourage annual contracts — does this feel fair?' That transparency built trust. Luna: So what did they learn that a survey wouldn't have shown? Lucas: A few things. First, they discovered that their heaviest users — the ones using ninety percent of storage — actually preferred a higher-price, unlimited-everything tier. They didn't want to count credits. They wanted simplicity. Luna: That's counterintuitive. Usually heavy users want the cheapest option. Lucas: Right, but for architecture firms, time is money. They didn't want to think about overage charges. They'd rather pay a premium and forget about it. Luna: What else? Lucas: They also found that a 'per-project' pricing model, which they thought would be popular, was actually hated. Architects said it penalized them for having many small projects — which is their entire workflow. Luna: That would have been a disaster if they'd launched it blind. Lucas: Huge disaster. The community saved them from that. And they did it in two weeks, with zero budget, just the Slack community they already had. Luna: So the small size was actually a feature, not a bug. Lucas: Yeah, because each person could speak in detail. In a fifty-person group, everyone's voice gets heard. In a five-hundred-person group, the loudest or most negative voices dominate. Luna: And you can follow up individually in a small group. Like, 'Hey, you said model seven felt unfair — can you unpack that?' Lucas: Exactly. They did that. They had side conversations in DMs. The community manager told me she learned more from those one-on-one follow-ups than from the main channel. Luna: That's a great example of what a community can do that a survey never can. Depth. Lucas: Depth and context. Surveys give you a number. A community gives you the story behind the number. Luna: I want to pause here because this kind of deep, practical marketing insight is exactly why we keep this show ad-free. We don't run commercials, we don't have sponsors. If these conversations have sparked something you've actually used — maybe a pricing test of your own, or a new way to talk to your community — you can support that choice at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, and it's a small way to say this kind of content matters. No pressure, but if you've gotten value, that link is there. We'll keep doing episodes like this either way. Luna: Alright, back to the pricing lab. So after the two weeks, what did they actually do? Lucas: They picked two models to A/B test with their whole customer base. One was the unlimited tier for power users, the other was a simplified per-seat with no project limits. Luna: So the community didn't dictate the final answer, but it narrowed the options dramatically. Lucas: Exactly. Instead of testing six models and needing months of data, they tested two. The community filtered out the noise. Luna: What about the risk of the community being unrepresentative? Fifty power users might not reflect the broader customer base. Lucas: That's a real risk. The community manager was aware of it. She actively recruited a few 'median' users — not power users, not churn risks, just average customers — to join the channel for that two-week window. Luna: So she temporarily expanded the cohort to get more representative input. Lucas: Yes. And after the pricing test ended, those temporary members left the channel. The core fifty stayed. That way the community didn't get diluted. Luna: That's a smart tactic. Rotate in fresh perspectives for specific tests. Lucas: It also prevents 'community fatigue' — the same fifty people getting asked for feedback on everything. You preserve their goodwill for when you really need it. Luna: So what's the takeaway for a marketer listening who has a community of, say, two hundred people? Can they do this too? Lucas: Absolutely. The size doesn't matter as much as the relationship. If you have a group where people trust you and feel heard, you can run these experiments. Start with one pricing question, not twelve. See how they respond. Luna: And if they're silent? Lucas: Then you probably haven't built enough trust. Go back to basics — deliver value first, ask for feedback second. But if they engage, you've got a pricing lab that no competitor can replicate. Luna: I like that. It's not about the tool — Slack, Discord, whatever. It's about the trust. Lucas: Exactly. The tool is just the room. The trust is what makes the conversation honest.