Audiogon Moves Its Dealers to a New Pricing Model With Maestra MCP and Expects $89K More a Year

Challenges

A major pricing change could make any of 250 dealers leave. The team had to show each what changed for them and win them over. With only one salesperson.

Solutions

Migration emails and pop-ups personalized for each dealer, built with Claude via Maestra MCP.

Integrated with:

Custom marketplace platform

Results

$89K in projected incremental annual revenue$2.9K net lift in the first 30 days43% of dealers in the first batches switched to the new pricing2 days for one marketer to build the campaign instead of a week by hand

Switched to Maestra from:

Optimizely

November 6, 2026

Results

$89K
projected incremental annual revenue
$2.9K
net lift in the first 30 days
43%
of dealers in the first batches switched
2 days
to build the campaign instead of a week by hand

Testimonial

Justin Roberson

Director of Digital at Audiogon

Profile

Once we decided to change our dealer pricing, we couldn’t afford to mess up. Every dealer had to understand what changed for them personally, and with one sales manager, we couldn’t call all 250 of them.

So we rolled it out slowly, batch by batch, to adjust if something went wrong. We ran the numbers for each dealer, grouped them and watched how each batch reacted to its emails. Setting that up by hand is a week of work. With Claude connected to Maestra, it took two days. Even more important, I kept 12 emails and pop-ups with their own segments and exclusions under control, and nothing got overlooked.

After the first batch, dealers started calling us, ready to switch. Our sales manager told me, “Dude, these conversations are so easy!” I didn’t expect signed contracts two days later, but we had them.

I can’t say enough good things about Maestra!

Migration Emails That Show Each Dealer Their Own Numbers

For more than a decade, Audiogon’s dealers paid only a flat monthly fee, and changing that was overdue.

Justin Roberson

Director of Digital at Audiogon

Profile

For a few years we hesitated to switch dealers to transaction fees, even though every other marketplace already works this way. For us, it was the only way to scale and keep improving the site.

The move was risky. Some dealers sell millions of dollars a year on the platform, and losing even one of them would hurt.

On top of that, the change hit every dealer differently: some would pay less than before, others a lot more. So the team decided to explain the change to every dealer in their own numbers.

1. Turn dealer data into Maestra segments

Audiogon used Claude to sort its dealers by contract status, sales activity and how their costs would change. With Claude connected to Maestra through MCP, the team then turned each group into a segment and added each dealer’s savings to their profile.

Justin Roberson

Director of Digital at Audiogon

Profile

Creating the audiences from a sheet I’d already made saved me a ton of time. Putting every user ID into a filter by hand would have taken me forever.

Dealer segments in Maestra, one for each way the new pricing changes a dealer’s costs

2. Send each dealer an email with their own numbers

For each group, the team wrote its own version of the migration email. Inside, every dealer sees how their costs change and how much they save each month. Where it applies, the email also lays out the early-switch discount.

The email opens with how much this dealer spends on listing fees today and what the new program changes

Then it covers this dealer’s plan fee, the early-switch discount and what to do next

3. Repeat the offer on the site

Not every dealer gets marketing email or opens it. So Audiogon repeated the offer in on-site pop-ups, personalized by segment, with a countdown to the discount deadline.

Pop-up for dealers whose subscription goes up

Pop-up for dealers who’ll pay less or the same

When a dealer asked for a call in the pop-up, the sales manager knew right away. He already had the same numbers the dealer had seen, so every call started from that dealer’s costs and savings.

Justin Roberson

Director of Digital at Audiogon

Profile

The first day we sent the email, one of our biggest dealers called our sales manager and pushed back: “What do you mean I have to do this?” His subscription was going up $50. But the email had already shown him he’d save $120 a month on listing fees, and that he could get 20% off for switching now. He signed, and in the first 30 days his sales brought us $1,121 in fees.

The Bottom Line

A pricing change this big could have cost Audiogon its best dealers. So the team walked every dealer through it gently: a full quarter’s notice, a message written for their situation, reminders on the site and a sales manager ready to talk it through. Almost half of the dealers who got the email switched to the new pricing quickly, and the new fees have already brought a $2.9K net lift in the first 30 days.

A small team built the whole campaign in two days, with Claude and Maestra MCP.

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