Foundations for Success: Building Effective Utility Communications
The first episode of Questline Digital’s Powering Engagement Podcast Series sets the foundation for stronger utility communications.
Framed around three core pillars — strategy, content and technology — Episode One brings together insights from Questline Digital’s team of experts, including Rebecca Czarobski, Joe Pifher, Adriana Scavio and Nikki Seeley. They explore what’s actually working in utility communications today.
“At Questline, we build everything around three components: Strategy, content and technology,” says Rebecca Czarobski, Senior Director of Customer Success at Questline Digital. “When those three work together, you get operational messages that prevent confusion, reduce avoidable calls and help customers feel confident about their next step.”
Click here to watch the first episode of the Powering Engagement Podcast Series.
Lead with Strategy
Utility customers aren’t looking for clever marketing — they’re looking for clarity. When messages are intentional, customers are more likely to understand what’s being asked of them — reducing confusion and unnecessary customer service calls.
For utility communicators, sending more messages isn’t the solution. Instead, it’s creating a system that helps customers understand and take meaningful action.
Why strategy matters:
- Prevents customer confusion
- Reduces call spikes
- Ensures clear, purposeful messaging
The episode dives into the key fundamentals that influence inbox performance, including deliverability, subject lines and sending practices.
From proper authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) to clear, action-oriented subject lines, these foundational elements ensure messages reach the inbox and resonate with customers.
Deliverability Checklist:
- SPF / DKIM/ DMARC alignment
- Clean and simple HTML
- Consistent “from” name
- Fewer than five links
- Avoid heavy banners
These are the cues that inbox providers look for when deciding whether to trust your message or simply drop it into promotions.
“If your setup is clean and your sending practices are consistent, your emails will land where customers actually see them,” Czarobski says. “That’s really the difference between hoping people saw your message and knowing that it reached them.”
Once an email successfully reaches the inbox, the next moment of truth is the subject line and preview text. Together, they act as the “front door” of your communications — shaping whether a customer opens, ignores or deletes the message.
Subject line best practices include:
- Lead with a verb
- Keep it concise (four to seven words, under 50 characters)
- Focus on being human and factual
Keep in mind, overly promotional language, excessive punctuation or all caps can signal the wrong intent to both customers and inbox filters.
Subject line examples:
Update your billing preferences
Review your outage preparedness checklist
Confirm your energy-savings appointment
See how we’re strengthening the grid in your area
Preview text plays an equally important role, but it’s often overlooked. Rather than repeating the subject line, it should expand on it — adding helpful context in under 90 characters. This pairing helps customers to instantly understand what the message is about.
Even the best subject lines and preview text can’t compensate for poor list health or inconsistent sending practices. The episode emphasizes the importance of maintaining an engaged audience, including sending to your most active subscribers. From there, thoughtful A/B testing helps utility communicators refine what resonates most with customers, building a repeatable playbook to use in the future.
When subject lines, preview text and sending practices work together, utilities move from simply reaching customers to truly connecting with them.
Engage Through Content
Once the foundation is set, the focus shifts to content – this is where utilities either connect or miss the mark.
Joe Pifher, Creative Director at Questline Digital, emphasizes that effective utility content doesn’t need to be flashy — it needs to be easy to understand and act on.
Whether billing updates, rate changes or program promotions, utility programs can often feel complex and confusing to customers. The role of content is to make these messages easier to navigate, not more challenging.
“These are topics that can sometimes be stressful and create some confusion,” Pifher says. “We build content to be clear, relevant and easy to scan. The goal is to help the customer get what they need without working for it.”
Pifher focuses on the importance of simple language, clean structure and a tone that feels helpful rather than promotional. Communication should feel like “a respectful colleague, not a megaphone,” he adds.
Every message should quickly answer three questions:
What is this?
Why should I care?
What do you want me to do?
There’s also a technical side to message structure that often goes overlooked. Utility communicators should focus on clean layouts, minimal graphics, clear hierarchy and a primary call-to-action to guide customers.
Just as important, the message should match the design, Pifher explains. For example, an outage alert shouldn’t look or read like a rebate promotion.
As utility audiences become more diverse, accessibility and translation are also essential for emails.
With tools like Questline Digital’s Engage Global Translate, utilities can deliver the same communication across many languages — without adding extra workload for internal teams.
Accessible communications involve these principles:
- Plain, easy-to-understand language
- Consistent terminology
- Strong, logical structure
- Real text (not embedded in images) for headlines and key information
When these elements are in place, messages become easier to translate — and more accessible for screen readers and other assistive technologies.
Drive Results with Technology
In the last segment, Questline Digital’s Product Manager Adriana Scavio and Support Specialist Nikki Seeley turn the conversation toward technology — and how the right tools can help utilities scale their communications without overwhelming time-strapped teams.
As they note, it’s not that utilities don’t want to communicate more — it’s that many aren’t sure where to start or how to keep it going. That’s where technology plays a critical role.
Newsletters are considered one of the most high-value, proactive communications to build long-term customer engagement.
“Every utility needs a way to communicate with their customers, about programs, rates, new technology, Time-of-Use changes and more,” Scavio says. “And newsletters accomplish this in a way that feels friendly and helpful instead of overwhelming for customers.”
Over time, newsletters create a steady connection that makes customers more likely to engage, enroll and respond when it matters most. Even if customers don’t read every message, regular communication builds familiarity and trust over time.
“The value really adds up month after month, because when customers hear from you regularly, they’re more likely to take action when it matters, enroll in your programs, understand their bills and really trust your recommendations,” Seeley explains.
Questline Digital’s self-service Newsletter Outbox gives utility communicators the ability to build, edit and schedule newsletters in one place.
The Newsletter Outbox provides:
- Clarity: Organized workflows that show exactly where campaigns stand
- Flexibility: Easy editing, scheduling and customization without starting from scratch
- Efficiency: The ability to reuse, adapt and scale content quickly
The goal isn’t to reinvent the wheel with every campaign,” Scavio says. “It’s to build systems that make communication easier, faster and more repeatable.”
When the right tools are in place, the result is a more proactive approach to utility communications
Build a System, Not Just Messages
By aligning strategy, content and technology, utilities can move beyond simply sending messages to creating real customer understanding. It’s a shift from reactive communication to a more intentional approach — one where every message has a purpose.
In upcoming episodes, the Powering Engagement Podcast Series will explore how utilities can use segmentation, personalization and other strategies to create smarter, more data-driven communications.
Watch the first episode, Foundations for Success, available now on demand.