Segmented Emails Help Avista Improve Customer Relationships

Challenge

Avista saw a need to expand their existing Welcome Series program to include unique touchpoints for residential and business customers and for those who moved within the energy utility’s service territory. Understanding that a simple “hello” can make a powerful difference for customer satisfaction, Avista wanted to send targeted messaging that proved resourceful and relevant to new and returning customers.

Solution

Questline Digital produced and deployed four Welcome Series for Avista. Campaigns were tailored to the energy utility’s brand and each segmented audience. Campaigns included three to four emails with messaging that touched on reminders for outage alerts, billing options, contact information, mobile app downloads, energy saving tips and relevant marketplace products.

Results

Avista consistently met its engagement goals and increased customer satisfaction with the addition of Questline Digital’s segmented Welcome Series. The energy utility built essential touchpoints along the customer journey, maintaining contact with movers and reinforcing timely, audience-specific needs.

About Avista

Avista Utilities serves 340,000 electric and 300,000 natural gas customers across Southern and Eastern Oregon, Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho.

Welcome Series achieves above-industry-average open rate of 61.1% with new customers and 44.6% with new movers.

“Questline Digital’s Welcome Series has made it so easy for Avista to start our customer relationships on a positive note. I’ve appreciated that the Questline Digital team comes to me with well-thought-out recommendations for improving our communications with customers. Their advice is based on experience and analytics with other utilities like ours, and I trust them immeasurably.”
—Sandra Hoye, Demand Side Management, Avista