ElectriCities Helps Municipal Utility Boost Customer Engagement with eNewsletter Solution

Challenge

The town of Benson, North Carolina, didn’t have an established way to send electronic communications to customers. Instead, it sent out a print newsletter with monthly bills. This limited the type of content the town could provide their audience and put limitations on their speed to communicate important updates. 

Solution

As a member of ElectriCities, Benson’s municipal utility gained access to eNewsletter deployment and content marketing services from Questline Digital. The town took advantage of the member benefit and transitioned its newsletter to a digital format. 

Benson chose a turnkey template from Questline Digital’s library and built an eNewsletter for its 2,300+ customers. It maintained content from its print edition and added helpful videos, infographics and articles from Questline Digital’s Content Catalog. 

Results

Benson’s eNewsletter quickly transformed into a valuable resource rich with useful energy news and efficiency tips. Customers showed great interest, as seen in digital performance metrics, and expressed appreciation for the tips to lower their energy bills. 

“Previously, we didn’t have a way to communicate with customers in bulk,” explains Crystal Thompson, Accounting/Billing Technician at Town of Benson. “Questline Digital’s eNewsletters have provided us with a perfect way to quickly reach all customers at once. It saves our small staff time and energy. The eNewsletter is exactly what we needed.” 

About ElectriCities

ElectriCities is a not-for-profit membership organization of municipally owned electric utilities that are spread across North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. The organization advocates for public power communities at the state and federal levels, and provides a number of administrative, technical, legal and legislative services to support members and the value of public power.

Benson’s monthly eNewsletter achieved an above-average open rate of 47.3% and impressive CTOR of 33.0% in 2021.

“The eNewsletters are a wonderful way to communicate with customers. Most like the DIY content and videos because they don’t have to read something complex. Questline Digital’s content library gives me the flexibility to choose the exact types of content I know our customers will enjoy.”
—Crystal Thompson, Accounting/Billing Technician, Benson, North Carolina