Image by Saskia Keultjes via Help Scout
The thought of raising your prices is terrifying. The stakes are high — do it right and you instantly boost your revenue. Do it wrong and, well…
The key is messaging. Communicating a price increase requires a delicate mix of clarity and empathy.
Early this week I received an email from Hotjar — a website analytics SaaS company — about a planned price increase. They did a really good job with it.
Let’s take a close look at the email to see what we can learn.
If you learn something from this email, please hit the 🖤 and share with one friend. Thank you!
Messaging Breakdown: Price Increase Email from Hotjar
First, here’s the entire email. Then we’ll break it down piece-by-piece:
From: Mike from Hotjar
Subject: Price increase from May 3
Hi Ben,
Mike here from the Hotjar team. I’m getting in touch to let you know that the prices on our Plus and lowest tier Business plans will increase by $/€10 per month from May 3.
You don’t currently have sites on either of these plans. We just wanted to let you know in the spirit of transparency, and in case you intend to subscribe to either of these plans in the future. You don’t need to take any action but, if you do decide to subscribe to one of these plans, the new price will apply on your next bill after May 3.We first announced this planned price increase back in August 2020 alongside some major updates to our product. As you may know, getting pricing right is tricky. It’s the first time our prices have changed since we set them back in 2017 and we’ve made a lot of improvements to our product since then. More importantly, we’re investing heavily in our team and technology to make sure we bring you even more value in 2021 and beyond.
Here's the new pricing, as outlined on our pricing page:
Plus will increase from $/€29 to $/€39 per month
The lowest tier on Business will increase from $/€89 to $/€99 per month
These prices have applied to all new customers since August 2020 and they will soon take effect for all existing customers, so all Hotjar customers will pay the same price no matter when they signed up.
As always, we encourage you to review our different plans and make sure you’re on the right plan for your organization. Our support team is here to help if you have any questions or concerns.
Kind regards,
Mike Cullen
Senior Product Marketer
What They Did Well
This email does a LOT of things well. Let’s look at four of them:
1. Leading with the most important information
The purpose of this email is to inform me about the price increase. When writing to inform, the key is to prioritize the most important information. Mike does a good job with this task.
First, the subject line is clear and unambiguous. If I read nothing, at least I would know about the price increase.
Next, he wastes no time informing me of the price change in the first paragraph (highlights are my own):
When writing to inform, get straight to the point. The more sensitive the message, the faster you need to share the important information.
2. Answering question, “What does this mean for me?” (aka empathy)
The next paragraph felt like magic, but really, it’s just a great show of empathy.
Getting this email startled me. I’ve had a Hotjar account for years, but I’m currently not on a paid plan — or so I thought. Have I been paying for a Hotjar plan without knowing it?
In the very next paragraph, in BOLD, he answers my question:
It was like Mike read my mind.
This is a perfect example of putting yourself in your customer’s shoes. Mike told me how this news impacted me. He made sure I knew there was nothing to worry about. ✅
3. Saving “nice to know” info for later
With the most important information out of the way, Mike shared an explanation for the pricing change.
This is “nice to know” information, not mission-critical. And rightly so, Mike saves it for the middle of the email:
Many companies would lead with this explanation. That’s a mistake. It makes readers impatient. Where are they going with this?
Share the most important information first. Then explain.
4. Two-way empathy
My favorite part of Hotjar’s email is this little sentence (highlighted above):
“As you may know, getting pricing right is tricky.”
This is a brilliant move of empathy inception. Hotjar is getting the customer to empathize with THEM.
Hotjar’s customers are other businesses—primarily SaaS and ecommerce companies. Pricing is a problem for Hotjar’s customers as well, and they acknowledge that. It creates a sense of camaraderie you rarely see between vendor and customer. ✅
Improvements to Email:
This email from Hotjar gets the job done. No major flaws that I can see. But there are at least three areas of improvement:
1. Mis-Prioritizing New Pricing Info
When writing to inform, you want to follow the Inverted Pyramid framework: Sharing the most important information upfront. Hotjar almost nailed it.
I think the only mistake was sharing the explanation before the new pricing info.
2. Explanation too long
Everything about this email is empathetic and personal — except for one line:
This is the only sentence that feels like “business as usual.” It adds nothing to the explanation and comes off as a little disingenuous.
Luckily it’s the last sentence of the explanation and not the first. Damage mitigated.
3. Unnecessary Qualifier
Finally, let’s get nit-picky. The last paragraph starts with an unnecessary qualifier. Get rid of it and your Call-to-Action paragraph is gold!
Overall: Solid Messaging for a Touchy Subject
Communicating a price increase is one of the most difficult messages for a company to deliver. Hotjar has done a really nice job with this one.
As an informative message, Hotjar leads with the most important information first. They anticipate my questions as a customer, and even turn empathy into a two-way street.
Outside a few stray sentences and structure decisions, this email is a great model for other companies to follow.
What do you think about this email?
You’ve heard my analysis — what do you think?
Did Hotjar nail it or bomb? Is there anything you would change? Is there anything you will swipe for your own use?
If you learned something from this email, please hit the 🖤 and share with one friend. Thank you!