Program Promotions Archives - Page 6 of 7

Deferred Payment Programs Provide Relief to Utility Customers

With state disconnection bans ending, more than 179 million Americans risk losing their electric service due to unpaid bills. As the economy continues to suffer as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, many energy utilities are taking action to help customers facing financial hardship.

Helping utility customers with deferred payment programs

In August 2020, Questline Digital partnered with a major IOU in the Northeast to provide assistance to the utility’s customers with past due account balances. Questline Digital created an email and one-click landing page to encourage enrollment in the utility’s Deferred Payment Arrangement (DPA) program. This payment assistance program allows customers to pay their past due balance over an agreed period of time (12, 18 or 24 months). Enrollment required no money down regardless of past payment history, giving customers additional financial relief.

The DPA program email used dynamic data to pre-populate a customer’s name, account number and balance due. It was a text-centered email, with some modifications made to make it transactional. The email linked to a one-click landing page, hosted by Questline Digital, with personalized customer information and a drop-down menu to choose the customers’ preferred payment term options. After selecting their payment term and clicking submit, customers reached a confirmation page.

Resounding results and ROI

On Sept. 8, the email was sent to 73,745 customers with unpaid account balances. The one-off email experienced high customer engagement with an open rate of 45.6%, click-to-open rate of nearly 41% and a click-through rate of 18.6%. Questline Digital’s performance metrics show the program promotion truly resonated with an audience experiencing financial crisis.

In fact, within the first 72 hours of the email deployment, the DPA program garnered 11,930 enrollments, representing a staggering $20.8 million in past due balances. The email and landing page proved to be a tremendous success, providing the energy utility with an ROI of roughly 7,000%.

Customer engagement snapshot

91,323 total opens
32,872 unique opens
17,313 total clicks
13,428 unique clicks
97.77% delivery rate
45.59% open rate
40.85% click-to-open rate
18.62% CTR

Customer satisfaction and cost savings

The DPA promotional email and landing page prevented millions in delinquent accounts from being actively collected. As a result, the energy utility saved countless dollars in printing and mailing costs, while significantly reducing personnel costs and workload for the utility’s internal collections department. It also prevented the energy utility from outsourcing to a debt collection agency for the high volume of unpaid balances.

This customer communication will no doubt have a positive impact on the utility’s customer satisfaction scores. While some customers may still default on the payment terms, the program gives customers an opportunity to ease their financial burden and acknowledge their energy utility as a helpful resource during tough times.

Deferred payment programs provide hope during hardship

In this unprecedented time, energy utilities should encourage enrollment in their payment assistance programs. With no end in sight for the pandemic and a troubled economy, your energy utility needs to provide customers with relief. This promotional email and landing page has resulted in significant cost savings for the energy utility. But more than that — it has shown customers that behind their energy utility are people just like them.

Promote your utility’s payment options with a digital marketing solution from Questline Digital.

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Demand Response: Key Benefits for Business Customers

Infographic listing ways to get business customers to participate in demand response programs

As demand on the U.S. power grid continues to grow, energy utility demand response programs are gaining traction. These beneficial programs compensate participants for temporarily reducing their energy usage during periods of peak demand.

Many business customers are hesitant about the program and its impact on operations. For example, will reducing energy use during a demand response event significantly impede workflow? With this concern top of mind, it can be a challenge to encourage business customers to join your energy utility’s program.

Through our experience working with energy utilities on their demand response campaigns, we’ve identified four key value propositions to increase participation.

Demand response is a partnership

The program is a mutual solution for both energy utilities and local businesses. By joining forces with their energy utility and other area businesses, energy utility customers can help reduce the risk of grid overload, preventing mandatory blackout or brownouts.

When promoting the program, emphasize how enrolling in a demand response program is an opportunity to make a difference for the local community. By working together with their energy utility, business customers can help ensure grid reliability for everyone.

Demand response is easy to use

Many business customers are hesitant to participate in a program they view as complicated and time-consuming. In reality, the program is very simple and straightforward for participants. All they have to do is reduce their energy use during peak energy events (typically 2 to 4 hours) a few times a year. Advance notice typically ranges from 12 hours to two days.

In your program promotions, reinforce how customers have the flexibility to reduce energy usage in the ways that work best for their specific industry. For example, a manufacturing facility can reduce certain equipment usage or delay heating/cooling processes. An office building, in comparison, can shut off lights in rooms with ample daylight or where no employees are working. There are many options to reduce energy usage during peak demand, no matter the industry.

Make sure your business customers know your energy utility is there to suggest opportunities for their particular business to lower energy usage if they are unsure where to begin.

Demand response is cost-effective

Participating can be a smart financial decision for businesses. Be sure to highlight the cost savings for business customers and how this program can benefit their bottom line.

It is also an opportunity for business customers to decrease their year-over-year energy spending. With the extra cost savings from reducing their energy use, they can put that money back into their business operations. In addition, many demand response programs compensate participants even when no events occur.

Demand response helps the planet

The environment is a hot topic right now, especially as energy utilities plan for their midcentury clean energy goals. Demand response programs are just one element to help reduce energy consumption and demand on the grid.

While environmental benefits are less effective as the main value proposition in your campaign, it is still important to educate customers about the greater purpose behind the program. For eco-conscious business customers, the opportunity to make a difference for the environment may be a deciding factor to enroll.

Demand response is essential to the reliability and stability of the grid. That’s why you need a marketing campaign that drives participation among your business customers. These value propositions can help take your campaign to the next level — and help customers see the valuable benefits of joining this vital program.

Learn how the experts at Questline Digital can drive participation in your demand response program.

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Energy Efficiency Investments: The Cost of Doing Nothing

Time is money, as they say. Even time spent doing nothing can add up. The time spent procrastinating on a project instead of focusing to get it done? That adds up to a late assignment and possibly an upset manager.

In the energy utility industry, consider the time customers spend contemplating the purchase of energy efficient products and the money wasted on inefficient items. Everything has a cost. Read on to learn about the cost of doing nothing and how you can help your utility’s business customers improve their bottom line with energy efficiency investments.

Customers lose money by not making energy efficiency investments

Putting off an investment in energy efficiency introduces two types of risk: price volatility and lost opportunity. Prices generally rise over time — energy costs increase when supply tightens and demand escalates. The price of HVAC equipment, lighting systems, motors, drives, boilers and unit heaters fluctuate with the season and increase over time. In addition, labor costs almost never decrease. An energy efficiency investment two years from now may cost a lot more than an investment would today.

More so, federal, state and utility incentive programs may not be available two years from now. Possibly, tax credits may not be renewed by a new administration or the credits themselves may be phased out. In general, the loss of programs or opportunities for incentives and tax credits may disappear in the near future, which will make the investment cost grow exponentially. In the long run, business customers will lose money by doing nothing.

Take a look at the graph below. Consider the annual energy use of a current appliance compared to a more energy efficient alternative. Whether business customers do nothing or make an investment in the alternative, they are still committed to use the lower level of energy (illustrated on the right).

Chart showing energy savings for upgrading to an efficient appliance

If your customers do nothing, they will continue to consume the extra amount of energy above the energy efficiency investment result (shown by the green bar below). Whether or not customers make an investment in energy efficiency, they are still either paying for the wasted energy or paying for the investment in efficiency.

Chart showing energy and cost savings for investing in efficient appliances

Help customers save with your incentives and programs

As you can see, there is a cost for doing nothing — which ultimately leads to higher overall payments for your business customers. That’s why it’s important for your energy utility to continue promoting the importance of energy efficient products.

Your energy utility needs to showcase itself as a trusted source of information for customers who are looking to make big-ticket item decisions. Connect business customers to your marketplace and promote your energy efficiency incentives and programs. Also, let customers know you are there to support them on their efficiency journey. In the long run, your energy utility will build lasting relationships with your customers, while also helping them to increase energy efficiency and reduce costs.

Learn how to boost participation in your energy efficiency initiatives with a Program Promotions strategy.

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Go Green or Go Home: The Truth About Ecofriendly Messaging

Many energy utilities turn to an eco-friendly or green marketing message when promoting paperless billing, electric vehicle rebates, electrification, energy efficiency and other programs. But how effective is a green message when it comes to customer engagement and conversions? Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of green messaging to find out if this approach is right for your utility’s marketing strategy.

Buzzword or brand builder?

Research by digital agency Specific Media finds that some consumers are apprehensive and even skeptical about green messaging. Over the past five years, sustainability has become a marketing buzzword, inundating advertising and marketing campaigns, from car manufacturers to beauty companies. Consumers are continuously bombarded by green messages, which undermines the effectiveness and authenticity of that marketing.

Many marketers are now hesitant to make sustainability a focus, worried about misleading consumers or causing a social media backlash for overstating a product’s sustainability. A green message can be successful at building a brand and showcasing your utility’s community initiatives, but it is less effective as the primary message in a marketing campaign. For example, when promoting an electric vehicle rebate program, the focus should be on the cost savings, with a secondary message about the environmental impact.

Keep in mind, many customers are not motivated to take action by a green message, even if they want to positively impact the environment. According to Harvard Business Review, one survey found that 65% of consumers had a desire to purchase sustainable products and services, but only 26% actually followed through with it.

What does this mean for energy utilities? An environmental message has the power to emotionally connect with customers, but it is not always successful at driving conversions or achieving program goals.

Enhance your energy utility’s green message

In a Journal of Environmental Psychology study, social influence has been shown to encourage customers to take action with ecofriendly messages, even when “the current norms for purchasing green products are low.” In other words, customers are often motivated by what their peers are doing.

For example, instead of promoting the green benefit of reduced paper consumption in a paperless billing campaign, highlight how other customers are making the switch and how going paperless is becoming common in today’s society. When promoting LED lighting for residential customers, consider this message: “Your neighbors are saving energy with LED lights — are you?”

For green messaging to be successful, customer education is key. Many customers simply aren’t aware of the environmental benefits of a particular program. For example, if your energy utility is creating a campaign to promote a community solar program, provide customers with information about the energy-saving benefits and the impact on their energy bill. Instead of simply describing community solar as green, “walk the walk” by combining education with marketing.

Connect with purpose-driven customers

Demographics are changing, and energy utilities are increasingly marketing to younger generations. Both millennials and Gen Z are passionate about advocating for sustainability and climate change, especially on social media. In fact, 75% of millennials will pay extra for sustainable products.

These purpose-driven customers are passionate about the environmental impact of the products and services they use. According to a Gallup poll, millennials and Gen Z are “highly worried about global warming, think it will pose a serious threat in their lifetime and think news reports about it are accurate or underestimate the problem.” Another recent study finds that 87% of millennials believe companies should be addressing environmental issues.

To reach these customers, sustainability messaging makes sense on your social media platforms as a way to encourage conversations and sharing. For example, highlight your energy utility’s midcentury carbon emission reduction goals and showcase local partnerships that make a difference for the environment. Also, try segmenting your customers to include more green messaging with younger audiences.

Keep in mind, millennials and Gen Z aren’t the only generations to care about the environment. Although younger generations love to express their passion for sustainability on social media, Gen X and baby boomers have greater purchasing power to seek out ecofriendly products and services. Customer insights data by Forrester Analytics finds that baby boomers are the generation that feels most empowered to reduce their environmental impact.

With climate change a hot-button topic, messages about the environment certainly resonate with today’s energy utility customers. However, a green message may not be enough to drive customer conversions. With the right research and marketing strategy, your energy utility can decide if a green message is the right direction to enhance your program promotions and build your brand.

Is your program messaging connecting with the right customers? Learn more about a targeted marketing strategy for your energy utility.

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Creative Impact: Why Design Matters for Energy Utilities

Design plays a powerful role in your energy utility’s marketing strategy. From eye-catching emails to attention-grabbing social media posts, design elements can impact customer engagement and program participation. However, it’s not always easy to know how to improve the design of emails, web pages, social media posts and other marketing materials.

We sat down with Questline Digital Creative Director Joe Pifher — a marketer with two decades of digital design experience — to get his thoughts on best practices for energy utilities. Check out our Q&A below for his expert advice.

What are the best practices you recommend in email design?

One best practice is to make sure your email is accessible to everyone and complies with ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) design standards. With so many people using their phones to check their email, your design also needs to be mobile-friendly.

If you want to try new things in your design, you can always use an A/B test to see what works best with your audience. You can A/B test anything — subject lines, calls-to-action, hero images — though you should only test one element at a time. I also recommend running a Litmus test so you can see how the email will look on each platform. For example, Outlook on a PC will not show an animated GIF, but Outlook on a Mac will.

What design elements make an email easy to read?

Today’s consumers don’t have time to read six paragraphs of copy. If possible, find ways to keep your copy simple and don’t cram too much into one message. If you do need to use a large amount of copy, find a way to break it up by using icons, bullets, imagery or a call-out. These elements can help separate each section. You don’t want your readers to get overwhelmed by giant blocks of copy.

How do you choose a photo that resonates with energy utility customers?

I can’t say there is a formula for selecting the best photo. You have to pick an image that is specific to the email and the story you’re telling. Regardless of the topic, you want to find something that is going to grab your audience’s attention, whether it’s a pop of color or an image that pulls at the heart strings.

Often I’ll alter or enhance a photo to heighten the impact. In an interior image, for example, I’ll change a plain white wall to a bright color. Beyond color correction, I’ll find a point of interest in the image and darken or blur around it so your eye is drawn to that focus area.

You also need to make your image relatable and reflect the demographics in your region. You want to have diverse images that include different ages, genders and ethnicities. If you’re coming from a place of authority, it might not be a bad idea to have the subject of the photo look right at the camera, making eye contact with the customer.

Should you use an animated GIF in an email or social media post?

Whether to use an animated GIF depends on a couple things. Timing is a big one. Making a GIF takes a little more time than just supplying a static image. It’s also important to know your audience. If most of your audience is on a PC using Outlook, a GIF isn’t going to show up.

You also want to think about how it will benefit your campaign. If a GIF is going to help tell your story, then it makes sense to use one. As far as social media, it’s always a good idea to use some form of movement to capture attention.

How can energy utilities improve their social media engagement?

Our clients know that customers don’t think about their energy utility unless they have to. That’s why you need to have social content that stands out. Think about what you’d like to see when scrolling through your feed. Show consumers that your energy utility is not just an afterthought — you’re relatable and part of the community. Give them something that’s fun or helpful, like a puzzle, video or interactive infographic.

It’s also important to tell a story with social posts. Give your followers something they don’t ordinarily see in their everyday life like a behind-the-scenes look at your energy utility. Perhaps most important, remember to speak to a specific segment of your audience. If you try to talk to everyone at once, you’re probably talking to nobody.

What’s your take on emojis in subject lines?

I think emojis are a great idea. In my personal email, I get hundreds of emails each day and the ones with emojis catch my eye. Anything that’s going to help an email stand out is beneficial.

If you do add an emoji to a subject line, make sure it’s at the beginning and not the end to ensure customers see it. You can even use emojis in emails to your business customers. You can use a typewriter, check mark or smartphone emoji to make it a little less whimsical. If you’re hesitant to use emojis in a subject line, run an A/B test to find out if a subject line with or without an emoji works best.

Do you have design recommendations for a call-to-action (CTA)?

Keep your CTA simple. Have a good call to action so your readers know why they are clicking on the button and where it goes. Our data shows that a button always performs better than a hyperlink. As far as color goes, I like using whatever brand color we’re using for the hyperlinks or bold copy. Keep in mind, if you have several blocks of copy, your readers may not scroll far enough to reach the CTA button. That’s why I always recommend a button at the top and bottom of a long email.

What are your thoughts on the use of white space in design?

Just like any other design element, the use of white space needs to have a purpose. If you’re not giving readers’ eyes a place to rest, they aren’t going to take the time to read your content. I can’t tell you the number of times I stopped reading an article or landing page copy because of the lack of white space. White space is a basic element of design — you need it in everything.

What do you recommend for energy utilities with small marketing budgets?

If your energy utility’s budget is too small to afford professional tools like Adobe Creative Cloud, I would suggest finding alternative options. There are many helpful sites for improving your content and design, and many are free or very affordable.

Grammarly is great for writing, while Canva is an easy-to-use platform for creating social posts, infographics and more. You can learn how to use these apps through educational sources like Lynda. Through partnerships with public libraries in many areas, you can use your library card to get a free Lynda membership (that’s how I use it).

Keep in mind, doing creative work in-house will likely help with costs, but not always results. My best advice is to stop worrying about being unique in your marketing if your budget doesn’t allow for it. As much as my team loves creating custom campaigns, financially it doesn’t make sense for every energy utility. Consider using one of Questline Digital’s off-the-shelf campaigns to promote your programs. These campaigns can be personalized with your brand for a fraction of the price of a fully custom project. Plus, they were strategically created to meet the unique needs of energy utilities.

Learn how Questline Digital’s Creative team designs utility marketing campaigns that deliver results.

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