Customer Engagement Archives - Page 9 of 19

Email Subject Line Best Practices + Sample Subject Lines

Subject lines are the make-it-or-break-it text for emails. An effective email subject line will catch the attention of the recipient and inspire them to open the message to learn more. The goal is to drive opens and engagement with your emails. A well-executed subject line can make your utility’s email stand out in the noise of customers’ inboxes.

To ensure successful email campaigns and boost engagement rates, it’s important to follow email subject line best practices, including:

Make it personalized
Keep it short
Don’t bury the lead
Use action language
Include numbers
Don’t use clickbait
Think through emojis
Make it readable
Avoid shouting
Test, test, test

BONUS TIP: Don’t forget the preview text.

Chart listing the top 10 best practices for effective email subject lines

Sample Subject Lines for Energy Utilities

Typically, program promotions can be the most difficult emails to get customers engaged with. After all, people don’t typically enjoy being sold to. Your subject lines for promotion emails need to work hard to showcase the benefits of utility programs, inspire action and catch customers’ attention.

With this in mind, we evaluated the top email sends in 2022 that were deployed to over 20,000 customers for our energy utility clients and have compiled the best sample subject lines for your reference and inspiration.

List of sample subject lines from top performing emails

Make it personalized

Research shows that 74% of customers are frustrated when content is not relevant to their interests. This means personalization is no longer a nice-to-have in digital marketing — it’s essential to increasing engagement with customers.

There are two main ways you can personalize an email subject line:

Make the subject line text personal to what you know about the customer: Consider who the email is being sent to and why. Are you trying to increase awareness of an EV rebate to customers who have shown interest in purchasing one? Then make the subject line stand out for those customers.
Humanize who the email is coming from: Instead of just using your utility name as the sender, state who it’s actually coming from. Questline Digital’s monthly newsletters are delivered from our Marketing Director and customers know that immediately with the subject line “From: Bethany @ Questline Digital.”

By following this email subject line best practice and adding more of a human touch to your utility’s subject lines, customers will see the communications as personal rather than promotional.

Sample of personalized email subject lines

Keep it short

One of the most common questions we hear at Questline Digital is, “How long should an email subject line be?”

The answer?

Email subject lines should be quick, clear and specific. Data shows that the best length is 40 characters or fewer. Longer subject lines are often truncated because of mobile displays and screen settings. Your intended message could be unintelligible if you make it too long.

With nearly 1.7 billion people using their mobile devices to read and share emails and 42% of users deleting emails that aren’t optimized for mobile, it’s essential that your subject lines are prepared for mobile viewing.

A Marketo study surveying around 200 email samples found that subject lines with four words received the highest open rate at 18.3%, followed by five words with an open rate of 17.1%. However, seven-word subject lines received the highest click-to-open rate, with 10.8%. Depending on your utility’s goal, it’s best to stick between four and seven words.

Don’t bury the lead

Put important words and information at the beginning of the subject line to catch a customer’s attention immediately. Let recipients understand what they are getting before they even open the email with this email subject line best practice. If your utility is offering a rebate or promotion, make that known upfront. Or, if your utility is announcing a new product or offer, convey the feeling of “insider updates” to customers via the subject line.

Answer the question: How would opening the email benefit them? Customers respond well to specific references to their situation; email subject lines with the words “you,” “your” and “about your” tend to perform well.

Use action language

Customers are more likely to open emails when they see actionable, eye-catching words in the subject line. Some powerful action words to use include:

Improve
Increase
Update
Join
Congratulations
Last Chance
Offer
Rebate

When deciding what action words to use, consider your goal for the email:

Are you trying to pique customers’ curiosity?
Are you appealing to their sense of self?
Are you trying to build trust?

No matter your utility’s goal, an email subject line best practice is to include action words in your subject line that makes sense with your goal. For example, if you are trying to increase paperless billing enrollments, try using “Enroll Today!”

Include numbers

Numbers naturally catch people’s attention. Humans like to organize information into logical, numbers-backed scenarios. So, including numbers in your utility’s subject lines only makes sense. Numbers can succinctly tell a story that words alone can’t. Plus, numbers differentiate themselves among words — making the email subject line stand out more.

Yesware completed a survey that analyzed 115 million email subject lines and found that those that include numbers outperform those without. Subject lines that include a number were found to achieve:

53.2% open rate, compared to the average 51.9%
32.0% reply rate, compared to the average 29.8%

When considering what numbers to add to subject lines, try including a promo code or dollar amount to catch attention. Subject lines such as “Save $XX when you use promo code XXXXX” are shown to improve open rates as well as CTOR.

Screenshot example of sample subject lines

Don’t use clickbait

Heed this email subject line best practice: Do not try to amplify your subject line with words that could be considered clickbait.

Your utility’s subject line should match the content of your email. Don’t try to trick recipients and boost open rates with an over-the-top subject line only to disappoint them when they see the email message.

Your subject line should always be clear and concise, informing customers exactly what they can expect when they open your email. Although your utility may be trying to cut through the clutter of customers’ inboxes, using clickbait is a surefire way to be flagged for spam or lose subscribers.

Instead, use tactics like including numbers, testing emojis and using action words to drive opens and clicks with your subject lines.

Think through emojis

There are strong arguments to be made both for and against using emojis in email subject lines. Some research has found that 56% of brands that included emojis in their subject lines saw an increase in unique open rates.

Other data has indicated that emails without emojis were considered to have more value. This same research, though, discovered after testing 3.9 million email subject lines with and without emojis that:

Subject lines without an emoji had higher open rates
Subject lines with an emoji had higher click-through rates

Even after testing, the data was still mixed.

So, what should your utility do? Test them to determine whether emojis resonate with your customers, and which messages lend themselves to subject lines with emojis.

When considering using emojis, remember:

Use no more than one emoji at a time.
Use emojis to complement words, not replace them.
Test among different systems. Google and Apple, for example, use different versions of emojis, so it’s important to test which ones you want to use across different systems that will receive them.

You can also test placing emojis at the beginning or end of your subject line. Just don’t assume that emojis will automatically elicit opens or clicks. Test and review the metrics to discover what your utility’s customers prefer.

Make it readable

Using unique text characters or different fonts may seem like it would help your utility’s message stand out. But using special Unicode characters makes subject lines unintelligible to users who rely on screen readers. This means your email is not accessible to all audiences.

Plus, different fonts within subject lines tend to appear as spam to viewers, meaning your utility’s emails likely wouldn’t reach customer inboxes.

Making your utility’s email subject lines readable and accessible to all customers and systems is vital to having your message read.

Avoid shouting

We all know the feeling of seeing an all-caps message in our inbox, and immediately wondering why you’re being yelled at. Although some brands try this tactic to gain attention, most often it is seen as obnoxious and dissuades customers from wanting to open an email. Plus, this is another way emails can be flagged as spam.

As an email subject line best practice, simply avoid shouting at your customers. Instead, get your message across in a less-aggressive manner, such as using the action words mentioned above.

Additionally, your utility can test the use of capitalization (such as sentence case or title case) to see what resonates with customers. Typically, these tend to fare better in customers’ eyes than all-caps subject lines.

Test, test, test

Email subject line best practices include A/B testing. This is when you send two versions of a subject line to a portion of your audience, measure the open rate or click-through rate, then deliver the “winning” subject line to the remaining mailing list.

Through the consistent use of A/B testing over time, an energy utility can narrow down very specific best practices for their customer segments. Some tips to keep in mind:

Is my A/B testing sample size big enough? Typically, 500 to 1,000 recipients is an effective sample size and will deliver statistically meaningful results.
How long should the A/B test run? More than 50% of opens and clicks happen within the first six hours after email delivery. However, to eliminate seasonal and day-of-week variables, it’s best to test for one full week before determining a winner.
Is there a clear winner in A/B testing? Depending on the sample size, a good rule of thumb is to look for a 25% to 35% performance variance in order to declare a clear winner.

You can also leverage free online tools to test your subject lines. These tools analyze and offer suggestions for improvement:

Don’t forget the preview text

While not technically a subject line, your preview text (also known as preheader text) is equally important and can help your utility grab attention and boost opens. Preview text is the sentence or phrase that appears in the list view of email clients before the message is opened.

Use preview text to convey additional information that expands on the subject line, without repeating the same information that’s in the subject line. For example, add an explanation or highlight a detail from the subject line that the preview text can expand on. Preview text length should range between 40 and 140 characters.

Sample of preheader or preview text included with email subject line

Employing Email Subject Line Best Practices

By following these email subject line best practices, your utility will set itself up to achieve increased open rates and click-through rates. In doing so, customer engagement will rise as customers look forward to receiving emails from your utility, knowing that they are receiving valuable and informative messages.

Learn how Questline Digital’s engagement experts can boost the performance of your email marketing campaigns.

Learn More

Energy Spotlight: Kelly Fikes

Kelly Fikes will be celebrating an extraordinary 24 years with Alabama Power in January. In her tenure, she has experienced many changes and worked in numerous facets of the utility.

Fikes began her career with Alabama Power as an Administrative Assistant. After a few years in this role, she worked as an Account Manager in the residential segment before moving to a position as a Residential Planner for the utility’s corporate office. Following this position, she was named the Mass Marketing & Events Manager before a company reorganization took place and she was asked to join the residential major accounts team. After this move, another reorganization occurred, and Fikes entered into her current role as Training Program Manager for the marketing and economic development organization.

Fikes has been in her current role for almost three years, with a goal to ensure new employees have the training they need and to refresh training courses for existing key account managers. Although each of her roles seem vastly different, they all had a common denominator — Alabama Power’s customers.

“Everything we do at Alabama Power is with our customers in mind,” Fikes says. “I’ve been lucky enough to work with account managers and customers in different sectors of the company, but the goal has always remained the same — creating the best customer experience we can.”

Fikes’ adaptability across different roles has made her open to changes. “You adapt and roll with it,” she says. Fikes began her current role just two months before the start of the pandemic, which led to her jumpstarting the marketing organization’s digital training efforts.

“There wasn’t someone in my position before me, so I was creating it as I went along,” Fikes says. “When COVID hit, I realized we had nothing [training-wise] that was online, on-demand or digital. I needed to build an online library and utilize digital content to not only have it available for our account managers to push out to customers as needed, but as a training resource for them as well.”

As she continues to choose content to add to the library, she takes inspiration from outside campaigns to connect with customers. “Content can be fun,” Fikes says. “It doesn’t always have to be educational. A lot of it can be creative and catchy, and that lets the customer tie the concept back to your utility and what you’re trying to promote. That sticks really well.”

When she’s not crafting content or training materials, Fikes enjoys spending time with her husband, two daughters and three cats. She loves any activities outside, including gardening, pool time or watching her youngest daughter play softball.

Questline Digital connected with Fikes to get her thoughts on changes in the industry as well as meeting and exceeding the needs of customers.

How did you get started in the energy utility industry?

I was recruited by a company recruiter in my senior year at college!

What has changed the most about your job working in the utility industry over the course of your career?

Throughout my career in marketing, technology has continuously changed how we communicate with customers, and more recently, how we train our employees.

What excites you the most about the energy utility space?

Using analytics to learn more about how our customers use electricity! In turn, taking that information to predict consumer usage patterns and customize products and offerings for customers.

What campaign or initiative are you most proud of?

I can’t cull it down to just one, but an initiative that stands out is a tankless water heater pilot that we did. Electric tankless water heaters are not very popular, and gas tankless water heaters were starting to eat up our market share. So, we wanted to test the electric tankless to see how it would hold on our system.

We went to a couple of different builders asking them if we could pilot this and put it in a few new homes. We looked at two cul-de-sac areas and in 24 houses we put electric tankless water heaters to see what it would do to our system in terms of distribution. We had some hiccups, but overall, the product was great. The manufacturer worked very closely with us, and it was successful. As far as I know, most of those houses still have electric tankless water heaters in them today. It was a fun research project.

What’s a marketing campaign you wish you’d thought of and why (inside or outside the energy industry)?

I love some of the old campaigns: Nike’s “Just Do It!,” Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef?” and “Yo Quiero Taco Bell,” but those are bit before my prime! Of the more recent ones, I love Farmer’s Insurance “University of Farmers” that successfully drives home the importance of being insured while depicting worst-case scenarios with a bit of sarcasm and humor.

What is the hardest part of working in the energy industry today?

Anticipating what’s next! Technology also changes how we serve our customers. Knowing what to expect and being prepared puts us in a positive position with our customers.

Finish this sentence: If I weren’t working in the utility industry, I would be…

Working in construction! I love everything about it.

How do you anticipate the world of energy evolving in the coming years?

Technology and customer demands will be big drivers in the evolution of the energy industry. I think we will continue to see innovations delivering smart energy (efficient, convenient and environmentally friendly) while expanding others, such as the electric transportation industry.

I’m looking forward to seeing how utility operations embrace technology in generating and delivering service.

What advice would you give to those entering the utility space?

Buckle up and hang on tight! The utility industry is quickly evolving in fun and innovative ways.

Participation in Questline Digital’s Energy Spotlight series does not indicate an endorsement from utility partners.

What Does Utility Customer Engagement Actually Look Like?

An engaged customer is easy to recognize in many industries. In the retail industry, an engaged customer is an avid online shopper who tags their favorite brand on social media. In the spa or beauty salon industry, an engaged customer will book appointments regularly and leave positive reviews on Yelp.

In the energy industry, however, it can be more challenging to define what utility customer engagement looks like.

Customer engagement is the relationship a customer has with a brand. It can be strengthened — or diminished — with every interaction.

Check out the following signs that your utility customer engagement efforts are succeeding.

What Is An Engaged Energy Utility Customer?

An engaged energy utility customer will:

Regularly log into MyAccount
Sign up for mobile alerts
Open and click your emails
Connect with your energy utility on social media
Take advantage of your programs and services
Make repeat visits to your online marketplace
Share experiences about your energy utility

Regularly log into their MyAccount or mobile app

If your customers are putting self-serve tools to use, that’s a strong indication they are engaged. If they are logging into their MyAccount or mobile app to pay their bills, look at past energy usage, read efficiency content or choose alternative rate plans, you can be confident that they are paying attention.

Customers who don’t regularly log in can be labeled as “absentminded power users.” They are on autopilot and don’t think much about their utility, the services provided or how they can take control of their own energy usage or spending.

Sign up for mobile alerts

Customers who have signed up for mobile alerts are more engaged than customers who haven’t. These customers are telling you they want to receive the updates you have to share. Whether it’s energy usage alerts, outage updates or general community messages, these customers have indicated they care about what your utility is doing.

Boost engagement quickly by running an opt-in campaign. See how this Southeast utility used email to update more than 275,000 customer accounts for mobile outage communications.

Example of mobile communications to achieve utility customer engagement

Open and click your emails

Utility customer engagement can be easily tracked by looking at email performance. If your customers repeatedly read the content you send them, they are highly engaged.

If customers aren’t opening or clicking your emails, your utility has some work to do. Your emails may not be speaking to specific customer interests. Can you employ segmentation to become more relevant?

Check out the performance metrics for a municipal utility’s monthly residential newsletter. These high open and click rates indicate an engaged readership and customers who see value in their utility.

Example of performance metrics showing utility customer engagement

Connect with your energy utility on social media

Your social media platforms are a great barometer for utility customer engagement. Think about your favorite brand — you are more likely to engage with their posts compared to a company you feel lukewarm about.

Engaged customers will frequently like, share and comment on your social media posts because they trust and respect your energy utility. They will also contribute suggestions, requests and ideas on your social platforms, showcasing their loyalty and involvement. They may even leave questions on your social media posts, further showing that they want to engage with you.

Keep in mind, your energy utility needs to have a social media presence with entertaining and educational content for these interactions to take place. If you have nothing worth “liking” to post, how will your engaged customers connect with you?

Whether you share educational videos or fun infographics with valuable insights on energy topics, give your engaged customers a reason to connect with your energy utility on social media.

Example of utility customer engagement on social media

See how Rochester Gas and Electric fostered strong customer engagement with its social media content. By highlighting an accomplished employee, the utility gave its community something to celebrate, leading to a high number of comments, likes and views.

Take advantage of your programs and services

Engaged customers will utilize your energy utility’s programs and services to improve their daily lives. This is especially true with MyAccount and paperless billing customers who are more likely to have a strong digital relationship with your energy utility.

Customers attuned to your brand might participate in an energy efficiency assessment or regularly visit your website to find helpful information on topics like renewable energy or home energy savings.

Engaged customers are eager to learn more about programs and services that are relevant to their unique needs and interests. By personalizing content in promotions and newsletters, you’ll increase utility customer engagement over time. Customers will begin to see you as an energy expert and helpful resource in their day-to-day lives.

Make repeat visits to your online marketplace

Customers engaged with your energy utility will make repeat visits to your online marketplace. Research finds that fully engaged customers are not as price sensitive as their unengaged counterparts. Of course, they will look at the price tag, but that is not the only deciding factor. They shop more often, buy more products and are eager to tell their friends and family about your brand.

To encourage customers to visit your online marketplace, try sending regular promotional emails with energy-efficient products of interest to them. For example:

For renters, share low-cost products like smart power strips or energy-saving showerheads.
For homeowners, share products that require a bigger investment like ENERGY STAR® appliances.
For customers who visit your marketplace, consider sending abandoned cart emails when they leave the site without finalizing a purchase.
For customers who are previous shoppers, share product recommendation emails to encourage them to make another purchase, such as a smart home hub that’s compatible with the thermostat they bought.

Share experiences about your energy utility

Engaged customers are excited to share their positive experiences, whether it was how your energy utility handled a power outage or the considerable savings from an incentive. These happy customers are eager to share their experiences online through a thread on Reddit, Nextdoor, a Facebook group or official review channels and satisfaction surveys.

While seemingly counterintuitive, engaged utility customers will also occasionally share negative experiences online. Though this may not seem like a good thing, it shows these customers care and are interested in your energy utility and its services. In comparison, unengaged customers will be disinterested, resulting in silence rather than a chance for rectification.

Example of utility customer engagement in online review

See how an AEP Ohio customer was at first dissatisfied by their electric bill, but by speaking up was able to learn more about available services. This review can help educate other customers who may have the same concern.

Boost Utility Customer Engagement with Every Interaction

Every touchpoint can either positively or negatively affect utility customer engagement. That’s why your customer interactions need to provide value, whether you’re sharing educational energy topics in a monthly newsletter or promoting a relevant program to a specific segment of your audience.

With these types of digital customer touchpoints in place, your energy utility can then define what an engaged customer means for your energy utility.

What does an engaged customer look like for your energy utility? Learn how to build stronger digital relationships with an engagement strategy from Questline Digital.

Learn More

Impact of Content Marketing on Utility Customer Experience

As energy consumers choose new electricity sources and show more interest in their overall consumption, the utility industry is paying more attention to the customer experiences it provides. Utility professionals now understand that their relationships with customers need to be built around two-way conversations.

In the latest edition of its “New Energy Consumer” report, Accenture paints a picture of utility customers seeking relationships with their energy providers that go beyond transactional. They are demanding more of their energy providers, especially when it comes to energy-efficient products and services.

The voices of these new energy consumers are getting louder, underscoring the need for utilities to take a customer-centric approach to their communications strategies. Utilities know they need to offer new products and capabilities. But they also need to understand the unique needs of each customer and develop relationships with them.

So, what are utilities doing?

How Content Marketing Affects the Utility Customer Experience

Now that brands in other industries are realizing the importance of creating content for specific stages of the customer journey, utilities are also finding it to be a valuable strategy for customer engagement and retention.

“When it comes to customer experience, a big motivation for utilities is to establish and maintain long-term relationships,” says Brian Lindamood, Vice President of Marketing and Content Strategy at Questline Digital. “After all, unlike most other companies we do business with, we have lifelong relationships with our utilities. That’s why content marketing can be so effective. It’s not about a sales cycle that can be measured in weeks or months. It’s a lifelong relationship.”

An effective content marketing program includes a variety of content types. Offering multiple communication options allows utility customers to choose their preferred method of engagement. Communication channels and potential content formats include:

Newsletters

When it comes to the content marketing channel that utilities use successfully, email newsletters are the winner, hands down. “Newsletters are the main channel for utilities in proactively getting their message into customer inboxes and on their phones,” says Lindamood. “The monthly touchpoint is an effective, low-key way to be visible in customers’ lives without bombarding them with ads or messages.”

The town of Benson, North Carolina has been enjoying outstanding customer engagement from its eNewsletter, which leverages videos, infographics and articles from the Questline Digital content catalog. In 2021, the utility’s monthly newsletter achieved an above-average open rate of 47.3% and an impressive click-to-open rate of 33%.

At Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE), the utility’s Key Accounts eNewsletter is improving engagement — and customer satisfaction — among business customers, with the metrics to prove it. “With Questline’s Key Account eNewsletter, we can track official metrics for customer engagement and have seen a related increase in satisfaction scores,” says Monika Campbell, Manager of Large Customer Services at BGE. “Our Key Account Managers who have higher eNewsletter opens have happier customers.”

Advice from Monika Campbell about improving customer experience in the utility industry

Social media, text and websites

Because millennials and Gen Z audiences are active users of mobile devices and prolific sharers on social media, many utilities are choosing to use social media platforms and text messaging to communicate with these audiences.

“Younger customers are used to getting their bills via text from other companies,” says Lindamood. “We’re seeing utilities increasingly using text messaging, especially for outage alerts, emergency messages and promotions.”

Websites, meanwhile, are used by most utilities for providing in-depth content resources like articles, infographics and videos.

Webinars

The experience of commercial and industrial (C&I) customers is important, too. In fact, because they have more options when it comes to suppliers, maintaining their loyalty can be a greater challenge. Webinars are an effective way to reach these customers and position your utility as a thought leader in energy end-use implementation.

Duke Energy, one of the country’s largest energy holding companies, has seen a substantial increase in customer engagement and its J.D. Power ratings since it began offering webinars to its C&I customers.

Improving the Utility Customer Experience With Relevant Content

A recent survey by Content Marketing Institute found that more than half of the companies delivering an optimal customer experience agreed that content marketing was a major contributor to their success. These marketers make it a priority to deliver relevant content when and where a customer is most likely to see it.

For energy utilities, that means providing customers with helpful content when they need it. “Using content marketing tactics to reach consumers on the channel they prefer can go a long way toward helping utilities meet their safety and educational goals,” Lindamood says. “Providing relevant and helpful information not only increases engagement, it improves the overall customer experience.”

Learn how a content marketing strategy from Questline Digital can help your utility improve the customer experience.

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When to Use Video vs. Written Content in Your Customer Engagement Strategy

Comparing the effectiveness of video vs. written content isn’t clear-cut. There are numerous factors to consider, like, who the content is for, why you’re making it, what your goals are and where you’re going to use the content. Often, you might even decide to use both formats in tandem to accomplish your goals.

But there are some best practices you can follow to make the choice easier. Check out the following advice from Questline Digital’s content experts.

Chart listing the differences between video and written content

When to Use Video in Your Content Strategy

The popularity of video continues to rise, spanning all audiences. Video content has become one of the most effective tools to capture attention and teach new concepts, but alas, isn’t always an attainable option or even the best choice. It all depends on your goals, timeline and audience. Marketers must identify the best-fit scenarios to invest in video production.

Goals and audience

“I think intent is the most overlooked aspect of video,” explains Matt Irving, Creative Director of Video Content at Questline Digital. He warns that people sometimes make video just to have video, not because it’s the best tool for the job.

Understanding your audience and how they learn best is step one. Do they require visuals? Are they familiar with the subject?

“Video is usually really good at simplifying topics or concepts that are easier to show than describe,” Irving adds. “It’s also good any time you want to show something that’s moving or changing.”

The most popular videos in Questline Digital’s Content Catalog include clips that provide an inside look at how new technology works or explain a complex energy concept. Without video, you can’t see beneath the surface. With animation and video editing, you can offer an x-ray view.

Humans struggle to conceptualize the abstract. With just text to rely on, an intended message about a new program or initiative can easily get lost. “Video works well in demonstrating something that is new or something people have heard about, but never seen,” Irving says.

So, if you’re promoting a new service that requires visual aids or want to explain the inner working of a complex energy topic, video is likely your best choice.

Inspiring action

What do you want your audience to do? Are you trying to make them sign up for a program or convert to a new rate plan? Or are you trying to educate them about an important energy or safety topic?

“The best campaigns use all the tools to move people toward and through the funnel and video can do a lot, especially near the top,” explains Irving.

“Videos can tell someone what’s in it for them if they take action, then facilitate that action. But if someone already knows what they want — say, a new fridge — video is probably not the way to go. If you’re to the last part of the funnel and want to convert with one click, video isn’t your best choice. If you are near the top of the funnel or trying to shift the feel overall, then video is great.”

If you’re introducing a new program or want to educate audiences on an efficiency topic, video could be your best tool. But if you want to push a warm audience to final conversion, asking them to first watch a video could complicate or stall the journey.

Simply put, Irving says, “I don’t sell cars or pizza. My goal is for someone to watch my video then find or call the person that does.”

The right channels

Where your content is shared matters. It’s a fact that videos perform better on social media than articles. Questline Digital’s data shows that videos shared on Facebook attract 200% more engagement than static content.

Why? Because compared to written content, video is much more effective at adding personality and emotion to a message. Social algorithms favor videos because they capture a viewer’s attention quicker and for longer, meaning more exposure to your message.

Videos can also be repurposed across multiple platforms. They are effective not just on social media but also on websites, in newsletters and for advertisements.

When to Use Written Articles in Your Content Strategy

Video isn’t always the answer. Often, written copy emerges as the clear and best choice. If you are still debating video vs. written content, here are some concrete reasons why you might choose text.

Complexity and depth

If you’re releasing new research findings or covering a topic that includes copious statistics, written content is your best bet. Generally, people don’t remember numbers when they see them in video. They will recall the broad strokes of the message, but not the specifics.

Additionally, if you need to go deep into an idea, written content should be your go-to tool. Marketing videos are typically short and cover high-level concepts while articles can cover a topic from every angle.

“Articles are better for discussing a subject from a variety of angles,” explains Scott Miller, Director of Energy Communications at Questline Digital. “Videos are generally less than two minutes long, so they often give a broad overview of a topic or cover a limited part of it. If we want to take a deeper dive, we will typically choose an article.”

Timeliness

If you need to produce and deliver a message quickly, it should come as no surprise that written content is the better choice. Professional video production can take weeks or months and often requires the involvement of multiple people.

Once produced, videos are more difficult to update than a written article. Hitting the edit button and changing a statistic, updating a link or correcting a quote is no issue for text-based content. Updating a video, on the other hand, requires editing software, audio mixing, new graphics, and a number of other steps.

“We want to ensure that our content is relevant today and three years from now,” adds Miller. “So, topics like ‘findings from a recent survey’ are best covered as articles that cost less to produce and are easier to keep up-to-date.”

Audience size

Articles have mass appeal. They can be used for both small and large audiences because of their versatility and ease of creation. If your target audience includes just 30 customers, would you recoup the money spent on video production? Most likely, an article would be a more economical choice for your small audience.

Articles are better for niche topics such as “best lighting choices for college campuses” and videos are best used for broader topics like “how the electric grid works.”

Video vs. Written Content: What’s Best for Customer Engagement?

What content format will you use for your next campaign? We hope our comparison chart and best practices make your choice simpler. Still unsure of video vs. written content? Don’t hesitate to reach out! Our team of experts is here to help.

Increase customer engagement with a content strategy from the experts at Questline Digital.

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