Webinars Archives - Page 4 of 7

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:

Personalization and segmentation
Automated campaigns
Interactive emails
Bold/bright email designs
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:

Create an improved after-sales experience
Audit and understand your data
Accomplish more with your newsletters
Optimize for all platforms and preferences
Create more interactive emails
Ensure your emails are accessible
Showcase user-generated content
Utilize preference centers
Hyper-personalize your email campaigns
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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Webinar: Energy Efficiency Adoption Solutions

For energy utilities, encouraging customers to adopt energy efficient lifestyles is an ongoing challenge. Both residential and business customers benefit from reducing energy, but it can be easier said than done to change long-standing behaviors. However, with the right strategies in place, utilities can make strides in their energy efficiency adoption goals.

In our latest webinar, “Energy Efficiency Adoption Solutions,” Colleen Bullett (Questline Digital), Laurel Gerdine (Franklin Energy) and Mary Medeiros McEnroe (Silicon Valley Power) discuss the importance of EE adoption and how to promote energy-saving solutions to your customers.

Bullett kicked off the webinar with a round of statistics, including: In 2019, the average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. residential utility customer was 10,649 kWh, an average of about 877 kWh per month.

In addition, Questline Digital’s 2021 Energy Utility Benchmarks Report finds that customer interest in energy efficiency increased significantly throughout the pandemic. In fact, customers engaged with promotional emails from their utilities at an 18% higher open rate and 27% higher click-through rate.

According to Bullett, there are many reasons to convert utility customers to energy efficient lifestyles, notably environmental and economic benefits. EE adoption plays a powerful role in lowering greenhouse gas emissions, reducing utility bills, creating jobs and addressing energy equity. With an aggressive commitment to energy efficiency, utilities could help reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 57% by 2050.

“It’s more cost-effective and efficient for energy utilities to encourage customers to change energy patterns instead of spending money on new technologies, updating generators and other costly measures,” Bullett says.

Research finds that 56% of consumers find it “very important” to have an energy efficient home. However, only 9% of those consumers think their home is energy efficient. Moreover, 47% customer say “the money I can save” is a top indicator of whether they will purchase energy efficiency products or not. Environmental concerns drive 44% of customers to invest in energy efficiency.

These are the top reasons why customers are averse to adoption:

“The costs are too high”
“Unsure about real-world benefits and performance”
“Too many barriers to adoption”
“Waiting until others adopt first”

To overcome these barriers, Bullett recommends sharing success stories in the form of case studies and content marketing. These solutions address the knowledge gap and help customers to better understand home energy audits, time-of-use (TOU) rate plans and other programs. Energy utilities should use content marketing to encourage customers to change behaviors, such as charging their electric vehicles at night or installing ENERGY STAR appliances. Content marketing is key to showing customers how they can easily implement these changes into their everyday lives.

With a large base of commercial and industrial (C&I) customers, Medeiros McEnroe shared how Silicon Valley Power promotes energy efficiency programs to this hard-to-reach audience. The municipal electric utility, located in Santa Clara, California, has over 40 large data centers and numerous tech companies in its 18.4-square-mile service area.

Residential customers make up about 85% of the utility’s customer base, but only represent 6% of energy usage. That’s why Silicon Valley Power focuses its energy efficiency efforts on C&I customers. Medeiros McEnroe reinforced the importance of understanding your business customers in order to promote the right energy efficiency technologies.

Energy utilities need to ask the right questions:

Are they a local, regional or national company?
What do they do?
What are their business drivers?
What are their pain points?
When are their funding cycles?
Do they have metrics for decision-making?
Who are the energy champions at the organization?

When energy utilities reach out to C&I customers, they need to understand the return on investment for an energy efficiency program or technology. In other words, will this solution help increase productivity and improve the company’s bottom line? Medeiros McEnroe encouraged utilities to think beyond how much a business will save on their electric bill. For example, what are their climate goals? What is the ROI equivalent to increased product sales?

To encourage energy efficiency adoption with C&I customers, Medeiros McEnroe recommends using targeted program promotions with multiple touchpoints, including emails, postcards and two-page fliers. Silicon Valley Power also takes advantage of site visits and training with trade allies. When the utility promoted an energy efficiency incentive program with hotels and motels during the pandemic, site visits and trade ally training were key to achieving high program participation.

In addition to promoting the energy benefits of a particular solution, it behooves energy utilities to talk about the non-energy benefits as well. Medeiros McEnroe shared an example of an energy efficient deep fryer demonstration at the Food Service Technology Center. The energy efficient deep fryer came to temperature faster, resulting in oil lasting longer than traditional fryers. This was quantified by the amount of French fry orders made per year, the amount of oil saved each year, etc. The non-energy savings were significantly more than the energy savings. Medeiros McEnroe strongly encourages quantifying the non-energy benefits of a solution to customers as a way of speaking to what is most important to them.

It can be just as challenging to encourage EE adoption among residential customers. Franklin Energy, which serves 500,000 residential customers annually, has experienced success with energy efficiency education and promotions. According to Gerdine, the utility’s commitment to energy efficiency adoption has resulted in a reduction of 1.6 million metric tons of carbon emissions in 2020.

To impact program adoption for residential customers, Gerdine emphasizes promoting convenience and simplicity. “We live in an Amazon world and consumer buying motivations have dramatically changed,” she says. An Accenture study found that 57% of consumers would switch retailers if they did not offer new, fast and flexible delivery options. For energy utilities, this means taking a hard look at their processes and determining what needs to change to meet the expectations of today’s customers.

“If you are not providing an easy way for customers to enroll or participate in an energy efficiency program, adoption will not be successful,” Gerdine notes. “Customers expect a streamlined sign-up process – if it’s too complicated, they will simply avoid it.”

For example, Franklin Energy had been using paper applications for years for its home weatherization program targeting low-income customers. The utility recently implemented an online application capability, mostly for use by program allies (the main channel for participation). The results were immediate with 30% to 50% of weekly applications submitted online.

Another example is the promotion of a large home energy assessment program. During the pandemic, the utility collected Covid-related information in the sign-up process. While the goal was to protect the health of customers and team members, the program execution created a barrier to sign up that significantly impacted adoption. In fact, the added complexity resulted in a 40% increase in the scheduling page bounce rate. To solve the problem, the Franklin Energy team removed the questions and asked them as part of a follow-up process. With this quick fix, the bounce rate returned to normal levels.

“The main lesson here is to make sure you consider the impact of your actions on the sign up process,” Gerdine says. “Remember the old ‘keep it simple’ rule to drive adoption and participation in programs.”

Partnerships are another huge resource to influence energy efficiency adoption. In the midst of Covid-19, community became a huge channel to provide energy efficiency solutions to low and medium-income customers. In addition, the emergence of new program designs and increasing complex technologies has shined a light on the value of engaging communities. Gerdine recommends that energy utilities work with key stakeholders to drive adoption among residential customers.

“It really takes a village to drive energy efficiency adoption and this will continue and become more important moving forward,” Gerdine says. “We began to use new community channels to reach customers where they are.”

Questline Digital can help your utility increase energy efficiency adoption among residential and business customers.

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Webinar: Using Interactive Content to Engage Customers

Interactive content is not a new concept, but it can be daunting for many companies to understand, let alone produce. However, it’s not as difficult as it appears to develop interactive content.

In our latest webinar, “Using Interactive Content to Engage Customers,” Matt Irving, Brian Lindamood and Robert Abbott share best practices and benefits of using interactive content to increase engagement and grow customer satisfaction for energy utilities.

What is Interactive Content?

Interactive content is easiest to understand as a two-way experience. It requires and encourages active participation from the user. In fact, customers are more likely to learn and remember your message when they actively participate. This type of content is more conversational because it allows the user to decide what path to take. Questline Digital Creative Director Matt Irving explained, “Your click is your voice.”

Customers now expect interaction. We live in an on-demand world, where consumers are constantly “choosing their own adventure.” Irving shared that 81% of marketers agree that interactive content grabs attention more effectively than static content.

There are a few key factors that make interactive content so powerful:

More rewarding – Customers want to have fun
Human nature – We love to interact
Social sharing – Encourages customers to share with friends
Competitive advantage – Helps break through noise in the content space

Benefits of Interactive Content for Energy Utilities

Beyond the theoretical reasons to use interactive content, there are very real benefits. In general, interactive content can help marketers:

Generate first-party audience data
Gain insights on consumer interests
Increase engagement
Optimize lead generation

For energy utilities in particular, interactive content can help them stand out by:

Teaching complex topics
Increasing program awareness
Improving customer experiences
Learning customer preferences and behaviors

Interactive content is also proven to build relationships by building brand awareness and deepening customer loyalty. This type of content doesn’t need to be complex in order to meet business goals.

“We measure customer relationships in decades, and maintaining customer satisfaction with their utility throughout that lifecycle is so important,” said Brian Lindamood, Questline Digital VP of Marketing and Content Strategy. “When an experience is entertaining, as well as informative, it really makes the customer not just more interested, but more likely to engage with it. You’re showing the customer that you care about their needs and interests. … You’re literally interacting with them while also demonstrating that your utility is a helpful resource for them.”

Tips for Producing Interactive Content

Robert Abbott of Context Digital shared helpful insights on both the technical and creative sides of developing interactive content. As with anything, producing this type of content could incur added costs and resources, but it’s a worthy investment. Customers will recognize and appreciate the investment in their entertainment and education.

Abbott stressed that it’s one thing to have the idea for an interactive content piece and it’s another thing to build it. All teams need to be aligned in figuring out the best solution that meets the goal. In the end, the product needs to be produced with the audience in mind. “Always consider what your audience needs or wants,” Abbott said.

Some other tips that Abbott shared, included:

Consider if you have a compelling reason to use it – Don’t create interactive content just for the sake of creating it
Don’t always reinvent the wheel – Use content you already have and repurpose it
Decide on how to measure success – Clicks and engagement rates are important, but consider quantitative metrics as well
Match the format to its intended function – Make sure the type of content is created for the right goals
Consider partnering with interactive content providers – You don’t have to do everything; allow experts to guide you to create a better experience for customers

Interactive Content is King

There are numerous types of interactive content to consider when producing new assets, including:

Calculators
Quizzes
Polls/Surveys
Games
Infographics
Clickable images
Interactive video

Each format has its own specific benefit to improving engagement or enhancing the customer experience. It’s up to your energy utility to research what hurdles your customers are facing and which format can best solve their problems. Put customers first and the content will follow.

Connect with your energy utility’s customers and build engagement with an interactive content strategy from Questline.

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Webinar: The Resurgence of eNewsletters

Newsletters have been around for a very long time — building relationships with readers since the 16th century. In the 1990s, the rise of email started the modern eNewsletter and delivery of curated content to inboxes. While email newsletters have been around a long time, they are still as effective as ever. In fact, eNewsletters have experienced a resurgence in recent years as customers increasingly look to personalized communications and relevant information from the brands they trust.

In Questline Digital’s Plugged In webinar, “The Resurgence of eNewsletters and What It Means for Your Utility,” Bethany Farchione and Ashley Guttuso shared best practices to help your energy utility’s eNewsletter stand out from the rest.

eNewsletters: The No.-1 customer engagement tool

In recent years, there has been a resurgence in eNewsletter popularity. Today’s digital landscape has transformed into a “creator economy” with over 50 million independent content creators, curators and community builders (i.e. social media influencers). With this shift, consumers are looking for useful information and a little bit of personality from the brands they know and love.

A powerful customer engagement tool, eNewsletters help turn one-time or prospective customers into repeat buyers or clients. For energy utilities in particular, eNewsletters are a consistent touchpoint that builds loyalty and stronger customer relationships over time.

“eNewsletters provide energy utilities with the ability to send information directly to a particular audience and deliver value over time to make a good impression,” said Ashley Guttuso, Director of Marketing at Simple Focus. “Through regular eNewsletter touchpoints, customers begin to trust your brand when they want to make a purchasing decision.”

Your customers want curated content

Customers appreciate that eNewsletter content is delivered directly to them based on their unique needs and interests — compared to being bombarded with content on social media that isn’t relevant. In fact, eNewsletters have 40 times the effectiveness of social media.

A successful eNewsletter can also help your energy utility achieve greater engagement with other types of communications. According to Questline Digital’s Energy Utility Benchmarks Report, eNewsletter subscribers open promotional emails at a 16% higher rate. “If your newsletter content continually helps your readers, they’ll be more receptive to future promotional content,” noted Bethany Farchione, Marketing Director of Questline Digital. “Quality editorial content earns brands the right to be promotional.”

While eNewsletters are a welcomed and popular form of customer communications, not all eNewsletters are created equal. To be successful and benefit from this resurgence in popularity, energy utility marketers need to think of their eNewsletters as editorial products or publications.

Here are 7 best practices to create a great eNewsletter for your energy utility customers:

Position your newsletter like a product: Inbox attention is hard to get and keep. Think about what content would be most valuable to your audience and what your competitive advantage will be. Farchione and Guttuso recommend creating an experience for your readers that becomes a part of their routine. Figure out how to differentiate your eNewsletter from the competition — perhaps it will have a different voice or a unique format such as a top 10 list.
Create an opt-in experience that works for your customers: An important aspect of your eNewsletter is deciding if a double or single opt-in is best. For example, in a double opt-in approach, after a customer signs up for an eNewsletter they receive another email asking them to confirm that they want to subscribe. According to Guttuso, your energy utility may want to consider mixing both opt-ins, which the experts at Litmus do.
Stop focusing on the ideal length and readability: There is varying data on the best format and length — that’s why you should focus on readability, not word count. Your eNewsletter should have short sentences and paragraphs for easy reading on mobile devices. Use bulleted lists, bold headlines and line breaks to make your content skimmable. Your customers are accustomed to scrolling on their phones, so they are willing to go deeper in your emails, Guttuso noted.
Use a combination of curated and original content: Content development is a time-intensive task. In fact, blog articles can take an average of three weeks to write. Consider working with partners to curate quality content for you, and don’t be afraid to share links to credible sources. Think of your energy utility as a curator of the best industry news and advice for your subscribers.
Talk like this isn’t the first time you two have met: Think about the inbox experience and what your energy utility can do to make it feel more like a message from a friend, not a company. This might include using an individual’s name as the sender (versus just your company name). For example, your key accounts eNewsletter could include a personalized message from an account manager that works with these business customers. This approach is refreshing for customers, as they want the companies they interact with to show personality.
Make the content engaging: Your eNewsletter content should include a mix of imagery, articles, infographics and videos. Quality visuals increase engagement, and videos always perform well compared to other types of content. According to Questline Digital Benchmarks data, there were 90,000+ video views from eNewsletters in 2020 and customers spend an average of 96.3 seconds on each video. Questline Digital’s research has found that residential and small business customers prefer quick-hitting, skimmable content, while key accounts customers gravitate to more technical, in-depth articles.
Use a simplistic design: Design is more important than ever before. More than 40% of emails are opened on mobile devices, so readability on small screens is key. Keep the number of sections in your eNewsletter to under five with one main idea. Your eNewsletter should feature high-quality images and a simple design that is great for scrolling.

eNewsletter sends and segmentation

To maximize engagement, it’s important to be consistent with your eNewsletter by sending on a regular cadence (weekly, monthly, etc.). Remember, if you’re delivering valuable content to your customers, frequency is not a nuisance. For a majority of energy utilities, a monthly send is both effective and manageable.

Farchione and Guttuso also suggested segmenting your eNewsletter based on audience interests. For example, AEP Ohio increased their business eNewsletter engagement by 84% through segmentation. The energy utility segmented their general eNewsletter by multiple industries, including healthcare, education and manufacturing, to achieve success.

Every successful eNewsletter has a mix of these best practices. Think of your energy utility’s eNewsletter in an editorial approach to serve your audience. Perhaps you’re providing helpful advice that customers can use in their daily lives, or you’re curating the best industry news they need to know.

According to Guttuso, eNewsletters that fail have one thing in common — they are focused on the company, not the people receiving them. For your eNewsletter to be a success, focus on creating high-quality content that customers can’t wait to receive in their inboxes.

Questline Digital’s eNewsletter solution can build lasting digital relationships with your energy utility’s customers.

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Webinar: How to Segment Customer Communications

Segmentation. What is it and why does it matter? Before we get there, let’s talk about movies.

Brian Lindamood, VP of Marketing & Content Strategy, shared this example to begin the conversation during Questline Digital’s webinar. “If we were to put up a poll asking all of us what our favorite movie is, I bet we would get 100 different answers. And that would be interesting, but not really that useful.”

However, if we instead polled 100 people on their favorite movie genres, we might end up with a response like so:

10% romantic comedies
10% dramas
5% vampire movies
75% science fiction

By polling genres, Lindamood explains, “We can see the trends, we can see the meaning in this seemingly random group of 100 people. That’s what customer segmentation is. By identifying the interests of your customers, by identifying their motivation and then organizing them into groups or segments, we can act on that information.”

Who? What? Why?

By definition, segmentation is the process of dividing something into parts or segments. As it relates to energy utilities, segmentation is a best-practice solution to maximize the impact of program promotions, eNewsletters and other communications. By utilizing segmentation strategies, your energy utility focuses on sending relevant messages to targeted groups based on the motivations and interests of your customers.

During the webinar, we asked the audience to share their energy utility’s primary goal with segmentation. Responses showed that 36% wanted to increase customer engagement, followed by a tie of 24% to increase customer satisfaction and increase program conversions.

Luckily, segmentation can accomplish all of these goals. As Lindamood shared, segmentation can lead to:

More effective marketing messages
Higher engagement rates
Increased program conversions
Building customer satisfaction through stronger digital relationships

More importantly, it also meets customer expectations. As tech giants Netflix, Amazon and Google continue to segment and personalize communications to their customers, these same customers begin expecting this from all of their brands, including their energy provider.

Lindamood reinforced that segmentation is not to be confused with personalization, although the two sometimes go hand-in-hand. Whereas segmentation sends different messages to specified groups, personalization sends a unique message to each individual customer.

Behavioral messages may also be part of a segmentation strategy but differ slightly. These are messages that are automatically triggered by customer actions. Behavioral emails allow you to identify what your customer is interested in and follow up with related information, such as providing relevant program information after a customer reads a related newsletter article.

For energy utilities, segmentation opportunities are boundless. A few campaigns to begin experimenting with a segmentation strategy include:

Paperless billing campaigns: Address the motivations of each segment and the benefits of switching to e-Bill
Energy utility marketplaces: Target users with specific items or offer related products
Welcome Series: Segment communications by residential, business or new and moving customers
eNewsletters: Residential newsletters based on interests like EV or smart homes; business newsletters segmented by industry

Artificial Intelligence-Driven Personas

Alison Alvarez, CEO & Cofounder of BlastPoint, joined the conversation to share advanced tactics in creating a segmentation strategy, including using AI-driven personas. These predictive models learn from past behavior and anticipate what’s going to happen in the future, helping utilities to better engage with their customers.

“The whole idea of AI-driven personas is to take advantage of the data that you have and find new sources of value in them and make them work smarter, not harder,” Alvarez says. “You can engage with your customers as they grow and change throughout their lifetime.” A key point in Alvarez’s discussion was that you don’t need perfect data to get started. AI helps to simplify the data you have and identify trends you otherwise may be missing.

When it comes to segmentation, she was also clear in sharing that segmentation can be as broad as your entire customer base or as narrow as groups that are best fit for a particular product, service or program.

To create and utilize data-driven personas, Alvarez shared BlastPoint’s process:

Establish goals: What does your energy utility need to accomplish? What benchmarks do you want to surpass?
Unlock the power of data: AI-driven analysis to discover what data can be unlocked to reach your specific customers.
Meet your personas: Utilize custom reports to meet and understand your audience personas.
Supercharge your initiatives: Learn how to best utilize the data and personas across your organization, whether with marketing, sales or product operations teams.
Win big: Understand the journey your customers are on and be ready to talk to them where they are in their journey. In turn, you’ll boost engagement and optimize the use of your data.
Refresh and repeat: Never stop learning and continue engaging customers effectively as their circumstances change.

Segmentation Builds Customer Relationships

Segmentation allows your energy utility to develop a long-lasting personal relationship with customers. “You’re not just going to talk to them one time. You’re not just going to have one touchpoint,” Alvarez says. “If you’re really successful at what you’re doing, you’re going to have a relationship with customers and they are going to come back to you continuously. It’s about taking every point of contact with that customer and making it the best point of contact.”

Segmentation doesn’t have to be as complicated as it may sound. With the right technology, tools and experts, your energy utility can create a segmentation strategy to reach and engage with customers from every audience.

Reach the right customers with the right content with a segmentation strategy from Questline Digital.

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