Tag: Email Marketing

Illustration of energy utility customer using paperless billing on laptop

E Billing Best Practices and Campaign Ideas for Energy Utilities

The benefits of choosing paperless billing may be obvious to you. But your customers may not understand these benefits, or they may not be properly incentivized to give up paper bills and make the switch. Follow these e billing best practices to improve your energy utility’s e bill marketing and boost conversion rates.

Infographic listing best practices for energy utility paperless billing promotions

E billing best practice #1: Focus on personal benefits for customers

Your messaging should help customers understand the benefits of paperless billing and overcome potential barriers that might stand in the way of adoption. The most successful messages speak directly to the customer, use personal language (“you”) and address the ways that paperless billing makes everyday life easier. Focus on solving problems, not just offering a new payment option.

In Questline Digital’s experience creating paperless conversion campaigns for energy utilities, the benefits that most appeal to customers are: 

  • Simple; easy to manage and pay from anywhere
  • Affordable; no need to buy stamps or worry about late fees
  • Convenient; saves time and fits into your on-the-go lifestyle
  • Eco-friendly; reduce your environmental footprint by using less paper
  • Reliable; never forget or lose track of a bill again
  • Secure; safely manage statements and payments online

E billing best practice #2: Drive opens with effective subject lines

The best email subject lines are upbeat, active and strike a personal tone while encouraging the customer to open the message. Short subject lines are best for capturing the attention of residential customers. Questline Digital data shows that subject lines with 40 to 50 characters perform best.

According to metrics from the many paperless billing campaigns Questline Digital has deployed for energy utilities, the top-performing subject line was, “You’ve got eBill and a $10 gift card.” This campaign achieved a 77% open rate, compared to 21% for the average campaign.

E billing best practice #3: Attract attention with compelling incentives

Incentives pay off in paperless billing campaigns, enticing customers with the promise of a contest prize or financial benefit. Not only do incentives boost email open rates, but incentives also increase conversions.

The most successful incentives are small giveaways awarded to everyone who signs up for paperless billing (including LED lightbulbs and $5 gift cards). Contest entries that award a single large prize (such as $1,000 cash or major league sports tickets) have been less successful.

Offering an incentive pays off with higher conversion rates (and by reaching participation goals more quickly). Paperless billing campaigns that award an incentive achieve a 34% conversion rate on average. In comparison, campaigns with no incentive achieve a 23% conversion rate on average.

Example of e-billing best practice incentive campaign

E billing best practice #4: Use segmentation

The same message or incentive is unlikely to work with all customers. Instead, your utility should segment customers into groups and build campaigns that speak to the specific concerns of each audience.

McKinsey’s Next in Personalization 2021 Report shares that, “71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions. And 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen.” Furthermore, McKinsey shares that companies that excel at personalization generate 40% more revenue from those activities than those who don’t.

As this data showcases, personalization is a must-do e billing best practice. Here are several ways you can segment your paperless promotion emails:

  • People who pay online but still get paper statements
  • Follow up with those who didn’t complete e bill signup
  • Eco-friendly message to EV customers
  • Convenience message to busy professionals and parents
  • Security message to older audiences or customers with smart security systems
  • Decluttering and convenience message to small business owners

E billing best practice #5: Don’t forget about design

You want the imagery in your e bill promotions to be relatable to customers, eye-catching and relevant. Consider your specific audience demographics and build in visual elements that help customers see themselves in your campaigns.

  • People – age, gender, race, socioeconomic status
  • Region-specific – weather, transportation, landscape, city landmarks
  • Customer interests – sports, culture, the environment, value and motivations

For example, Questline Digital worked with the Pittsburgh electric utility Duquesne Light to alter imagery to represent Steelers and Penguins sports team colors. This small alteration made the email campaign more relatable to the group of recipients.

How you display these images also matters. Consider designing around the inverted triangle strategy, grabbing a customers’ attention at the top, building anticipation in the headline and first few sentences and then taking them to the call-to-action.

To ensure the email is easy for customers to read, there should be plenty of white space throughout the design, clear line breaks and adequate use of bullets or icons.

Example of e-billing best practice email design

E billing best practice #6: Incorporate with onboarding 

It can be difficult to encourage customers to switch their behaviors, even when there are clear benefits or reasons to do so. Humans are creatures of habit and change isn’t easy.

Get customers enrolled in e billing on day one. Share electronic payment options at the start of service so you don’t have to convince customers to change later. Include prompts in onboarding materials and welcome emails, or run e billing campaigns at the beginning of the customer lifecycle.

E billing best practice #7: Try an opt-out campaign

Rather than asking customers to sign up, automatically enroll them in e bill and give them an opportunity to opt-out. If you take this approach, ensure you have adequate communication that keeps customers informed.

For example, Questline Digital ran an opt-out campaign with a Southeast utility. We targeted customers who received both a paper and e bill, but who had made at least one electronic payment in the past. This audience segment was automatically enrolled in the program but given the chance to opt-out and continue receiving paper bills. The opt-out campaign received positive customer feedback, with 90% of customers remaining enrolled. 

E billing best practice #8: Make enrollment simple

Customers abandon complicated digital processes. In fact, a study by Splitit showed that 87% of online shoppers abandon their carts during the checkout if the process is too long or complicated. Signing up for paperless billing is no different – customers want frictionless digital experiences.

Remove as many steps as possible for your customers. One effective way to do this is by auto filling forms with dynamic coding.

Questline Digital worked with PSE&G to set up one-click enrollment, making the sign-up process as easy as possible. Customers who clicked on the call-to-action within an email campaign were automatically taken to a landing page to confirm their information in a prepopulated form and enroll in paperless billing. The ease of one-click signup encouraged customers to make the switch, enrolling 21,945 customers.

E billing best practice #9: Use a multichannel approach 

Unfortunately, you can’t rely on email to convert all your customers. To get the best possible results, your utility will need to employ a multichannel approach and spread out the heavy lifting.

Complement your email campaigns with channels like direct mail, social media, outdoor signage and online advertisements. Your customers may need to see your message multiple times before they act. If you can get in front of customers via multiple mediums, they’re more likely to convert.

E billing best practice #10: Launch deeper digital customer relationships

Paperless billing conversions create an opportunity for long-term engagement by cementing the customer’s digital relationship with their energy provider. Once converted, paperless billing subscribers are more engaged with email communications and less likely to unsubscribe compared to customers who receive paper bills.

Before converting to paperless, energy utility customers have an average email open rate of 25%, according to Questline Digital performance metrics. After converting, paperless billing customers have an average open rate of 33%.

This higher engagement rate is an opportunity to connect with customers beyond their monthly e bill — sharing program promotions, energy efficiency advice and other educational content. By following these e billing best practices and boosting conversion rates, you can reduce operational costs and build long-lasting relationships between your energy utility and its customers.

Convert more customers to paperless billing

Converting customers to e bill doesn’t have to be difficult. Employ these e billing best practices and realize the many benefits of going paperless.

Learn how Questline Digital’s paperless billing solution and help your energy utility reach your e bill conversion goals.

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Illustration of email marketing trends for 2022

Webinar: Email Marketing Trends and Best Practices for 2022

As the new year approaches, marketing teams everywhere are planning their communication strategies to reach customers in 2022. For energy utilities, this is no different. It’s a perfect time to reflect on what worked or didn’t work in the past and revitalize your marketing efforts for the year ahead.

In our recent webinar, “2022 Email Marketing Best Practices & Trends,” Bethany Farchione (Questline Digital) and Cynthia Price (Litmus) shared their forecast for design and marketing trends and how utilities can prepare to make the biggest impact on customers.

A Look Back at Last Year’s Email Marketing Trends

Farchione began the webinar by taking a step back to discuss the email marketing trends Questline Digital saw in 2021, including:

  1. Personalization and segmentation
  2. Automated campaigns
  3. Interactive emails
  4. Bold/bright email designs
  5. Multichannel marketing

“For 2021, the biggest thing we saw was a massive rise in digital adoption and digital communications,” she said. “What’s important as we move forward is maintaining and growing that engagement into the next year.”

She explained that personalization and segmentation became major influencers, impacting nearly every communication as utilities tried to better target their audiences. “These trends are not going away in 2022,” Farchione added. “We expect that they will continue to grow in importance, but we do see a handful of new trends being added.”

A Look Ahead at Email Marketing Trends for 2022

Farchione proceeded to look ahead to the major themes of 2022:

  • Email marketing will continue to be extremely important
  • The goal for utilities is to keep engaging with the digital customers they acquired in 2021
  • Focus on continuing to improve digital services and experiences

“A new study from DMA Consumer Tracker says that 96% of consumers check their email every day and over 70% of consumers believe that email is the best channel for company contact,” she said. “So, while email has been around forever, it’s still really important within the customer communication mix. When done right, it’s actually a conversation with your customers, which is really valuable and powerful.”

Farchione also shared the most important trends to watch in the coming year.

Top 10 email marketing trends of 2022:

  1. Create an improved after-sales experience
  2. Audit and understand your data
  3. Accomplish more with your newsletters
  4. Optimize for all platforms and preferences
  5. Create more interactive emails
  6. Ensure your emails are accessible
  7. Showcase user-generated content
  8. Utilize preference centers
  9. Hyper-personalize your email campaigns
  10. Adapt to changes with open rates and privacy

Create an improved after-sales experience

Farchione shared that customer journeys are becoming more important to pay attention to and targeting customers where they are in that journey matters. Research from McKinsey shows that customers are actually asking for, and want, an improved after-sales experience.

For utilities, building this improved workflow for customers will be especially important for program enrollment, onboarding and marketplace sales.

Farchione shared an example of a customer purchasing a smart thermostat and the importance for utilities to be part of that journey. “Following up with customers and having journeys for each interaction is essential,” she said. “How do they install the thermostat? Do they need maintenance reminders? Do they need suggestions for future purchases? How do they make the most of that thermostat? Customers are looking for guidance.”

Understand your data

Price reflected on the importance of segmentation and personalization for utilities and shared, “At the core of every great segmentation strategy is understanding and using your data effectively.”

She recommends an annual audit to understand what data points are available and specify what your goal is for understanding that data. “Start with the key data points that you think will allow you to build customer segments and dynamic campaigns that will really give you a more effective experience.”

Make more of your newsletters

Newsletters aren’t new, but now is the time to go all-out with them. They’ve seen a resurgence of popularity in the past year and for good reason — they provide the foundation for ongoing customer engagement.

“We recommend that utilities focus on creating specialty newsletters for different interests that their customers may have. And since they are a foundation for engagement, we recommend sending them monthly. Customers are accustomed to getting monthly newsletters and when done right, they look forward to them,” Farchione said.

“Newsletters are an amazing way to build trust over time,” Price added. “Goals with newsletters are often less specific than for other campaigns, and they’re a great way to build awareness and trust for brands in general.”

Optimize for all platforms and preferences

Price explains that there is an overwhelming amount of data that shows that one bad experience in an email, whether a broken link or an image that doesn’t render, can turn off a consumer to a brand. “It can have long-lasting negative effects,” she said.

With the number of platforms available for users and the different requirements for each, it’s essential to test for quality assurance to ensure everyone receives emails as they were intended.

In addition, coding for dark mode needs to be at the forefront of development. Dark mode has become increasingly popular in the past few years. In fact, Price shares that over 80% of consumers who use Apple devices use dark mode. Therefore, it’s important to ensure your utility is checking how emails will look with dark mode rendering.

Example of dark mode email testing for different clients

Create more interactive emails

Interactive email continues to rise in popularity. In general, interactive content includes surveys, calculators or games. For email, interactive content simply means adding interest and movement so your messages stand out to customers.

“People like excitement in their inbox. They’re in their inbox every day so they need more visually exciting creative materials to keep their interest,” Farchione said.

Plus, the data doesn’t lie — interactive content is proven to generate five times more views than static content.

Ensure your emails are accessible

Focusing on email accessibility not only ensures that anyone is able to engage with the email, “it also makes the emails more pleasing and you see better engagement from all audiences when you use foundational accessibility techniques,” Price said.

She shared some tips to make emails more accessible:

  • Copywriting: Keep it concise and limit jargon
  • Design: Create a strong hierarchy, use white space and high contrast
  • Email code: Use semantic HTML and include alternative text for images

Showcase user-generated content

Data shows that consumers trust other consumers before they trust a brand. Because of this, both residential and business customers want to see the success of others. By including video testimonials or case studies, new customers can see firsthand experiences of the success of energy efficiency programs or marketplace purchases. Adding actual customer reviews directly in email is also a valuable way to prompt more action and improve click-through rates.

Utilize preference centers

Utilities obtain most of their customer data from contact information when they sign up for service. But what customers actually want and expect from utilities differs from this generic information. Preference centers are great tools for asking for details about a customer that might not be readily available when one signs up for service.

“With preference centers, you’re emailing them with content they actually want to get from you,” Price explained.

A few benefits of using preference centers includes:

  • Reduced unsubscribes
  • Showcasing email offerings
  • Increased engagement

Preference centers allow utilities to see which topics customers are interested in, or not interested in, and helps to tailor messages specifically for that individual.

Hyper-personalize your email campaigns

“Gone are the times of mass email messages,” Farchione said. “People want and expect content that fits their specific interests and needs.”

Hyper-personalizing communications makes customers more engaged and helps your utility reach its business goals. As Farchione pointed out, “Personalization drives performance and better outcomes.” In fact, data from Content Marketing World 2021 shows that 74% of customers are frustrated when information isn’t tailored to them.

Farchione shared an example of Questline Digital’s work with AEP Ohio on a segmentation strategy for the utility’s business eNewsletters. After adding targeted, industry-based audiences such as healthcare and education, the utility saw an 84% increase in engagement among its business customers.

Changes to open rates and privacy

Apple recently introduced Mail Privacy Protection, a privacy setting that hides IP addresses so senders can no longer see who opens an email, the time of open, location or type of device.

Although many utilities are concerned about these changes, Price reminds us to look back at the goals: “What was the goal of the actual email? The goal was never for customers to open it, the goal was for them to engage with it in some way.”

Price recommends expanding KPIs to better align them with long-term business goals. She suggests considering:

  • Email quality
  • Unique clicks
  • Account activity
  • Website visits

Prepare Your Marketing Strategy for 2022

As your utility looks ahead to the new year, consider these email marketing trends when planning your communications strategy.

Questline Digital can help your energy utility deliver more effective and engaging email communications.

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Illustration of anniversary emails sent to customers by energy utilities

How Celebrating Your Customer Anniversary Can Boost Engagement + Anniversary Email Examples

After new customer onboarding, energy consumers are accustomed to receiving billing notices and outage alerts from their utility. While these are essential messages, you need more than just transactional communications to build a long-term positive relationship. Anniversary emails can help increase engagement by recognizing a meaningful touchpoint in the customer lifecycle.

What is a customer anniversary email?

Anniversary emails celebrate a customer’s annual milestone with their energy utility. A customer’s anniversary offers a chance to reach out one year post service enrollment and show that you care.

We recommend sending an anniversary email one year after a customer receives their first Welcome Series message. An easy addition to your email marketing strategy, these personalized messages are automatically sent to customers when they reach the one-year milestone.

Why should you send a client anniversary message?

Customer and client anniversary messages are known to boost engagement. Questline Digital data shows that customer anniversary emails achieve an 89% higher open rate than our baseline.

In addition to providing a reason to connect with customers, anniversary emails help to humanize your energy utility — something not possible with a program promotion or other transactional messages.

They are also the perfect tie-in with content marketing.

In addition to the celebratory message, you can share seasonal energy savings tips or promote a product. If a customer hasn’t yet used a service, this is a great time to remind them of what’s available or what’s new.

Make it extra personable by including a special discount and/or overview of individual energy use over the last year.

A customer anniversary email is especially great for first-time homeowners or customers that finally moved into the home of their dreams. Moving is a major milestone in everyone’s life and sending an anniversary email that offers congratulations, assistance and remembrance stands out. Your customers will appreciate this personalized message.

Customer anniversary email examples

Check out these anniversary email examples. They include a mix of product promotions, personalization and thanks.

Wemo

Wemo reaches out to customers one-year post initial purchase to offer a unique discount code. This not only reminds customers of their previous purchase, but it also highlights how they can continue turning their home into a smart hub with other Wemo products.

Example of customer anniversary email

SHIPT

The grocery delivery company uses its annual client anniversary message to recognize accomplishments and encourage continued account growth. They highlight a customer’s key moments in the past year, making the recipient feel proud of the work they’ve done while also showcasing where they might have room for improvement.

Example of customer anniversary email

Utility example

This Southwest utility says, ‘thank you’ and directs customers to available resources to help them save on energy. Just because a customer is celebrating their anniversary doesn’t mean they know about every available tool or program – it’s essential to remind them. The message is also populated with the customer’s name to make it more personal.

Example of customer anniversary email

Airbnb

Airbnb follows up with customers a year after they sign up for booking services to suggest travel destinations. Sometimes a timely reminder is all a customer needs to prompt action. Don’t miss the chance to celebrate your customer anniversary and encourage deeper engagement.

Example of customer anniversary email

Setting up automated anniversary emails

When building your onboarding email cadence, add a customer anniversary message to the workflow. An anniversary email should be scheduled 365 days after your first Welcome message.

This added touchpoint makes customers feel special, gives your utility an opportunity to promote important content and services and is proven to boost overall engagement.

Learn how a Welcome Series and Anniversary Emails can build strong digital relationships with your energy utility customers.

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Illustration of creative marketing ideas for energy utility promotions

Creative Inspiration for Energy Utility Promotions

When it comes to promotional emails, there is a fine line between selling your product or service and creating a narrative that resonates with customers. For energy utilities, this is not always an easy task. The reality is, utility products and services can be technical, complicated and not always on customers’ radars. More so, energy utility emails are competing in inboxes brimming with promotional messages from Amazon, Netflix, Starbucks and other popular brands. However, with the right messaging, your energy utility promotions can cut through the clutter and make an impression with the right customers.

Ready to take your emails to the next level? For a dose of inspiration, check out these creative ideas for your energy utility’s product and program promotions.

Powerful Promotions: Storytelling vs. Selling

Storytelling is a powerful way to showcase the benefits of a particular product to customers. Rather than overtly selling to customers, guide them through a story that shows your product can add value to their lives. This leads them to make a purchase on their own accord.

For a major IOU in the Southeast, Questline Digital created a promotional email campaign to help increase awareness and sales of their security lighting product. For the residential email, the message centered around the main benefit for customers: greater security.

Example of creative program promotions email for energy utility lighting

To reach business customers, we created segmented emails for six industry segments: apartment complexes, warehousing and storage, auto sales and services, religious organizations, educational facilities and general commercial. The message focused on how each business sets the stage for important milestones for both employees and customers.

For example, the email targeted to educational facilities focuses on a new student moving into her college dorm. The email to apartment complexes showcases a new couple enjoying their first night together in their new home. The utility’s security lighting can provide a “safety spotlight” for these special moments.

Example of creative promotions email for energy utility business lighting program

Key takeaway for energy utilities: Instead of only listing the selling points of the product, craft a story about how it will benefit customers in their daily lives. In this example, customers want to feel safe and secure at their home or business so they can focus on the important things in life. By speaking to customers’ unique needs and interests, your energy utility promotions are more likely to capture their attention and connect with them emotionally.

Program Conversions: Incentives for the Win

When promoting various energy utility programs, such as paperless billing, outage alerts or My Account enrollment, an incentive is sometimes all you need. According to Questline Digital’s performance metrics, paperless billing promotional emails with incentives have a 17% higher open rate and 28% higher CTR than messages without incentives.

Beyond engaging customers, incentives have the power to drive conversions, too. For a Pennsylvania-based IOU, Questline Digital created a promotional email, sent around Earth Day, with an eco-conscious incentive to encourage customers to sign up for e-Bill. Customers could win one of 10 smart thermostats to help save energy in their home.

Example of e-bill campaign email with Earth Day theme for energy utility

Key takeaway for energy utilities: Incentives are often the extra push your customers need to take action, whether to enroll in paperless billing, sign up for My Account, take a survey or participate in other programs. Be creative with your incentive and tie it to a particular theme. A smart thermostat is a great giveaway around Earth Day, while a gift card might be better suited for a holiday season promotion.

Encouraging Customers to Go Electric

With growing consumer interest in renewable energy, energy utilities are increasingly promoting rebates and incentives for electric vehicles, EV smart chargers and electric warehouse equipment. When promoting these rebates, a focus on getting or saving money is typically the best approach to reach customers. Whether residential or business customers, everyone is motivated by the chance to either save or receive money.

For a large IOU in the Northeast, Questline Digital created a fun campaign to promote their EV smart charger rebate program to residential customers. The email featured a brightly colored animated GIF of a woman throwing money into the air with “$500 Smart Charger Rebate” front and center. Not only was the campaign eye-catching to customers, but it effectively highlighted the main benefit of the rebate while providing straightforward instructions on how to activate the smart charger and submit the rebate.

Example of creative promotions email for energy utility EV smart charger program

For another campaign, a Southeast energy utility wanted to encourage business customers to make the switch to electric equipment. With this goal in mind, we created a campaign that focused on the cash incentives for purchasing various equipment for their facility, including forklifts, man lifts, commercial level 2 EV chargers and golf carts. Through the use of an easy-to-read table and iconography, the email made it easy to see the benefits of going electric and taking advantage of the rebates.

Example of email marketing for energy utility electrification program

Key takeaway for energy utilities: When promoting rebates and incentives, focus on what your customers care most about: saving money. Remember, sometimes less is more when explaining technical products, such as EV smart chargers and electric equipment. The goal is to get customers intrigued by the offer so they visit your website for more details. In other words, you don’t need “everything but the kitchen sink” in the email.

No One-Size-Fits-All Answer to Energy Utility Promotions

As you can see from the above examples, successful energy utility promotions start by paying attention to what is most important to your target audience. For some campaigns, you might need to tell a story to showcase a particular product’s benefit and pull at the heartstrings of your customers. With other campaigns, an incentive or laser-focus on one specific benefit (like extra cash) is all you need to motivate customers to take action. Listen to your customers and their needs to develop creative campaigns specifically for them.

Learn more about the engagement strategy behind Questline Digital’s program promotions campaigns for energy utilities.

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Illustration of data security best practices for energy utilities

Data Security: Critical Trends for Energy Utilities

Few industries reach as wide and varied an audience as energy utilities. In fact, just about everyone is an energy utility customer — which means, when it comes to the growing challenges around data and email security, energy utilities have a lot more customer information to protect compared to other companies.

It is a critical responsibility to protect private data on behalf of our customers and communities. And yet, just like all other companies, utilities are often at risk for malicious attacks. As such, it’s imperative for energy utilities to stay informed of the latest trends in data security and compliance.

Understand how the risks of data management are assessed

Depending on the particular use case, your energy utility may need to comply with one or a variety of types of data management standards, whether directly through your utility or third-party vendors. These could include:

  • PCI DSS: Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard applies to any company that stores, processes or transmits cardholder data or sensitive authentication data
  • SOC 2: Auditing procedure that ensures data is securely managed and protects the privacy of customers
  • FedRAMP: Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program is a federal initiative that provides a standardized approach to cloud security
  • NIST 800-53: Provides a catalog of security and privacy controls for all U.S. federal information systems and are continuously updated for federal agencies
  • NERC CIP: North American Electric Reliability Corporation distributes standards of security for all North American bulk electric system providers

If you work with third-party vendors, you need to understand what standards they follow. For example, Questline Digital is SOC 2 certified and rigorously undergoes a yearly audit to ensure conpliance. This means that we are verified in complying with the trust principles of SOC 2, including security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality and privacy.

Data security in the cloud

According to GreatHorn’s 2021 Email Security Benchmark Report, “Organizations are continuing their migration from on-premise email solutions to cloud native solutions. While 24% of organizations are still running on-premise email solutions, 77% have plans to move to cloud native email solutions.”

The cloud has the potential for quicker customer responses, increased reliability and lower costs. However, it needs a strategic approach to security. By using cloud servers over the internet, your energy utility would no longer need to manage physical servers or manually run software applications.

Although there are many benefits to cloud computing, there are security risks. If moving to the cloud, your energy utility needs to ensure plans are in place to maintain security and privacy.

Data security is a concern for IT pros and customers

Your customers’ privacy is of utmost importance. Energy utilities are already a target for malicious users. Phishing schemes are one of the most common tactics used by hackers to attempt to obtain sensitive information. They pretend to be a utility employee and threaten power shutoffs if the customer doesn’t pay. In fact, the GreatHorn Email Security Benchmark Report says the top threat that concerns most IT professionals are “people impersonations” followed by “payload attacks.”

The report also says that daily phishing attacks have decreased from 35% to 25% from 2020 to 2021. In contrast, weekly and monthly attacks have increased from 28% to 42% and 11% to 17% respectively, “supporting evidence that cybercriminals are becoming more sophisticated and targeted in their attacks.”

If IT professionals are most concerned with these cyberattacks, then it can be said that your customers are as well. No one likes to be misled, especially when it comes to finances. Your energy utility needs to make sure it is listening to your customers’ concerns about their privacy and security, while highlighting how your energy utility is working to alleviate those concerns. To gain greater trust with your customers, continue to warn and educate them about the possibilities of these attacks and what to do when one happens.

What energy utilities should know about data security

In today’s digital age, security and privacy are always top-of-mind concerns for consumers. Transparency and education about how companies use this information is important to share with customers, no matter the industry. For energy utilities, in particular, it’s vital to ensure you’re achieving security and compliance best practices and shedding light on these initiatives. Your energy utility will be better protected, and your customers will thank you for it.

Questline Digital’s experts understand the unique regulatory and data security needs of energy utilities.

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