My Account makes your customers’ lives easier. They can set up their payment options, sign up for paperless billing, explore their energy use and more. My Account isn’t just beneficial for customers — it’s an essential tool to help energy utilities achieve long-term customer satisfaction.
Not only does My Account help customers personalize their experience, it also helps them be more digitally connected with your energy utility. However, it’s not always easy to encourage customers to enroll in this convenient service. Try these five proven strategies to increase My Account enrollment.
Promote My Account enrollment in Welcome Series
The best time to promote My Account is at the start of service. We recommend taking advantage of a Welcome Series to introduce the features of My Account to new and moving customers. In 2019, nearly half of all Welcome Series emails were opened, and one in 10 customers clicked through at least one email.
We recommend promoting My Account enrollment throughout Welcome Series, especially in the first and second emails focused on setting up service and billing options. Our benchmarks data shows that the welcome and billing message have the highest customer engagement, with open rates of 43% and 53%, respectively. In these emails, highlight the key benefits of My Account and include a CTA directly to the enrollment page.
Segment your message
A personalized message has the power to increase the effectiveness of your My Account promotions. Segmentation helps increase enrollment by promoting specific benefits to smaller, targeted audiences.
We recommend segmenting your audience by customers’ needs and interests. For example, business customers are more interested in no-hassle payment options like auto pay that make their busy schedules a little easier.
You can segment your residential customers by homeowners and renters. Homeowners are interested in keeping track of their monthly energy usage. Budget billing or payment assistance programs may be more relevant to a renter audience.
Consider one-click My Account enrollment
A potential roadblock for customers is a complicated, multi-step enrollment process. One-click enrollment features an easy-to-use landing page with customers’ account information dynamically prepopulated in the form. All they need to do is click a button to enroll.
Our energy utility clients have found success with one-click enrollment for various promotions, from paperless billing to rebate programs. For example, we helped Eversource Energy create a one-click enrollment landing page and enrollment confirmation page for their paperless billing program. As a result of this easy enrollment, Eversource experienced the largest annual gain in five years with an increase to 33%.
Add an incentive
Incentives are an effective way to increase My Account enrollment. Questline Digital performance metrics have found that a small reward for every customer who signs up is more effective than a single grand prize. Promotions with an incentive have a 17% higher open rate and 28% higher CTR.
Here are some best practices when choosing a smaller incentive:
- Awarding a $5 gift card to all signups converts better than enter-to-win contents of $1,000 or more.
- Products like LED lightbulbs rank second to gift cards among the best drivers of click-throughs.
- Thermostats and smart-home device giveaways are also top performers.
While less effective than small rewards, a single grand prize (tickets to a sports game or free electricity for a year) is better than no incentive at all. These prizes will still encourage opens and drive customer interest in your promotional email.
Be sure to mention the incentive in your subject line to increase engagement. In fact, subject lines that clearly state the incentive reach 13% more of their intended audience than subject lines that only imply the offer.
Don’t forget social media
The demographics of energy utility customers are changing — and younger generations are a growing share of the population. To reach millennial and Gen Z customers, you need to be where they are online. With 90.4% of younger generations being active social media users, this is where to find them.
Don’t miss out on reaching younger audiences — share the benefits of My Account through an engaging social media campaign featuring fun videos or imagery. While it’s important to stay true to your brand, social media is the perfect opportunity to show off your brand’s personality.
Opportunities abound for increasing My Account enrollment. Since every energy utility is unique, test out these different tactics to discover which one works best for you. Reach out to Questline Digital for more insights on creating a successful My Account campaign.