Tag: Webinars

Illustration of business customer satisfaction examples and best practices for utilities

Webinar: Proven Ways Utilities are Improving Business Customer Satisfaction

We know from recent J.D. Power studies that as energy rates have increased, business customer satisfaction has taken a hit. But rising rates don’t have to equate to low customer satisfaction.

“In fact, the handful of electric utilities that are getting the business customer engagement formula right are able to maintain or even drive higher levels of satisfaction and affordability perceptions,” says Adrian Chung, Director of Utilities Intelligence at J.D. Power.

From sharing transparent communications to educating customers about programs and energy-saving technologies, there are many ways utilities can increase business customer satisfaction.

Our recent webinar, “Proven Ways Utilities are Improving Business Customer Satisfaction,” provided takeaways and insights into achieving increased CSAT from Derek Rahn with Louisville Gas & Electric and Kentucky Utilities (LG&E and KU), Ammanuel Moore with Baltimore Gas and Electric (BG&E) and Sarah Sharp, Business Development Consultant with Questline Digital (previously with Entergy.)

“Go Beyond” with LG&E and KU

LG&E and KU serves over 1.3 million customers, with 35% of its total customer base being business customers. Additionally, 60% of the utility’s revenue comes from business customers. This means that the utility puts an extensive focus on ensuring it communicates consistently and proactively with this group of customers.

Rahn shared that LG&E and KU aspire to be the best utilities in the United States and the initiatives they run are all in support of this goal. In addition to providing safe, affordable, reliable and sustainable energy, LG&E and KU strives to be a utility that customers can turn to and rely on.

“To meet these needs of our customers, as well as the company as a whole, we try to push for customer satisfaction and customer experience at the forefront — going beyond and enhancing every interaction we have with customers and the communities that we work with,” says Rahn.

LG&E and KU rank higher than other similarly sized utilities within their regions for the clarity, functionality and navigation of its website and mobile app. Additionally, Rahn says they use a multitude of tools to reach and connect with customers outside of the website, including:

  • Vehicle wraps
  • Web postings
  • Sponsored facility signage
  • Face-to-face interactions

“It’s not just while we’re on the clock, doing these particular actions, it’s even in the off-clock type scenarios where we’re making phone calls with customers or just having sidebar conversations as to how their day-to-day activities are going and what is working for them and what is not,” says Rahn. “Our goal is to go beyond and enhance every interaction we have with those customers and the communities that we’re servicing on a day-by-day basis.”

LG&E and KU also focus on interacting with customers face-to-face to continue relationship-building and extend communications past video screens or phone calls.

“It’s the face-to-face time to answer not just their day-to-day questions, such as billing related concerns or power usage concerns, but also questions along the lines of, how can we better provide you service or better your own operations at your particular plant or facility,” says Rahn. “It’s those types of relationships that have helped us build on and go into the future.”

Shifting Mindsets with BG&E

BG&E is one of six utilities spearheaded by Exelon, which is the largest utility company in the United States and services 10.6 million electric and gas customers. BG&E specifically services 1.3 million customers, with 10% of this group being business customers.

BG&E’s Large Customer Services team is designed to be a trusted energy advisor to customers, meeting and exceeding their needs through strategic partnership, proactive assistance, meaningful innovation and relevant communications.

The team’s purpose is to identify how to make commercial customers’ experience better with BG&E. The team consistently asks themselves questions like,

  • How do we improve the ease to do business with BG&E?
  • How do we improve the customer experience?
  • How do we leverage our internal and external networks to improve our customer’s operational performance?
  • How do we better anticipate customer needs such that we can avoid problems and create efficiency.
  • How do we effectively inform customers of important BG&E programs and services?
  • How do we generate program interest?

Moore explains that servicing large business customers comes with common issues that the team tries to solve in the present and for the future.

“When you work in a large customer organization, you’re going to always have incoming calls about some very routine issues that customers bring to our attention. And that centers on reliability, billing, technology, construction challenges,” says Moore. “So, when a customer calls or emails us about any one of these matters, we try to solve that issue straightforward, but then we gather as a team to talk about how to solve this issue from a long-term standpoint. We shift our mindset that if one customer is experiencing a challenge, it’s more than likely that other customers are also experiencing that same challenge.”

As a result of the team’s input and sharing of customer concerns, they are able to help influence and shape programs and guide customer to new solutions. It’s how they were able to launch the utility’s EVsmart program in 2023, to educate business customers and help them understand the potential of fleet electrification. Additionally, the team’s proactive approach to helping customers is also how the utility’s “Empower Maryland” program resulted in $454 million in commercial rebates since 2009.

BG&E encourages continuous business customer engagement beyond programs through a multitude of ways, including:

  • Monthly newsletters
  • Customer visits and executive team member visits
  • Quarterly webinars
  • Event participation and sponsorships
  • Quarterly meetings with the utility’s Smart Energy Council

“Outside of just addressing customer concerns, we’re always looking for ways to engage our customers from a proactive standpoint,” says Moore. “If we really want to influence customer satisfaction, it can’t just be through taking reliability and billing calls and solving problems. We have to engage our customers proactively. We have to be top of mind.”

A key element of improving its business customer satisfaction, BG&E surveys its customers and reviews the findings for areas to improve upon. In the past seven years, BG&E has been in the 90th percentile for large commercial customer satisfaction. The utility just began surveying its SMB customers on a monthly basis and have thus received an 8.23 out of 10 in satisfaction for 2022.

“There’s opportunities to improve,” says Moore. “But the facts remain that the outreach that we’re providing and the face-to-face interactions are causing our customers to have strong trust for us, advocate for us when they’re asked to, and they appreciate all that we’re putting into making sure that we understand their business and creating that relationship.”

As BG&E continues to reflect on its business customer satisfaction initiatives and prepares for challenges ahead, such as nationwide energy policy changes, Moore explains that they’ll continue to review, become more analytical and make changes where necessary.

“In order to get over those challenges, we need to make sure that it’s fun to do this job, we have to reward our employees for the innovations and ideas that they’re bringing, as well as making sure that we keep the customer top of mind,” says Moore. “If we’re able to take care of all of these things, not only will we have strong customer relationships, but we’ll also be able to build advocacies and partners with our commercial customers that will help guide us forward in our success as we help them continue to receive the energy that they need.”

Boosting Business Customer Satisfaction with Digital Relationships

“Both Derek and Ammanuel discussed the importance of account management and continuous engagement with customers,” says Sharp. “A key element of this is to leverage digital engagement for relationship building.”

As Sharp began her discussion, she was keen to share the importance of focusing on proactive digital customer relationships, sharing that those utilities who don’t initiate a digital strategy risk a multitude of challenges, including:

  • A utility’s only touchpoint with customers is monthly billing
  • It’s harder to reach customers during times of crisis
  • Utilities are unable to capture customer data
  • Energy utilities receive lower satisfaction and customer loyalty

“It’s important to establish ongoing touchpoints to be seen as a trusted advisor, to help foster positive relationships and to educate customers,” says Sharp.

Once a digital strategy is in place, it’s important to develop a multichannel communications strategy to ensure your utility is reaching business customers where they are. To achieve business customer satisfaction, Sharp shared advice on honing an effective communications strategy, including:

  • Keep open and transparent communications
  • Understand business customer needs
  • Provide economic development opportunities
  • Be an electrification resource
  • Support small businesses
  • Ensure a customer-centric strategy

Sharp’s experience as a long-time marketing manager at Entergy provided insights and advice for utilities to develop segmented email campaigns that target individual customers’ interests and needs. For business customers in particular, it’s important to deliver messages and content that will resonate with them, such as energy efficiency rebates or incentives.

Proactive communications are a huge element to an effective strategy, especially in times of difficulty or uncertainty, such as storm communications. Even sending storm communications to business customers shows that your utility is keeping the customers top of mind. It helps build that relationship with them and reinforces that you are their trusted energy advisor.

“My main takeaway is that digital communications is a very cost-effective method for ongoing relationship-building with your customers,” says Sharp. “When you connect with your business customers where they are and with messages that they care about it results in improved customer satisfaction. And you do this through awareness, education and action.”

A Future of Improved Business Customer Satisfaction

Developing and maintaining business customer relationships is just as important and necessary as developing relationships with residential customers. Our speakers shared innovative and tactful strategies other utilities can use to reach their own satisfaction goals. By adopting these strategies, utilities can not only meet customer expectations but also build long-lasting relationships with their business customers.

Learn how Questline Digital can help utilities build digital relationships and improve business customer satisfaction.

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Illustration of energy utility building trust with customers through outage communications

Webinar: How to Build Customer Trust with Outage Communications

Energy utility customers don’t want to be left in the dark during a power outage. When done well, outage communications can be a chance to further engage with customers and earn their trust. On the other hand, a lack of communication during an outage can cause ill will among customers and make it difficult to create a positive relationship down the line.

In our webinar, “How to Build Customer Trust with Outage Communications,” Questline Digital’s Nina Cummins, Senior Director of Key Accounts, and IntelePeer’s Jon Dunham, VP of Strategic Channels, shared insights into building an effective outage communications strategy. They explored best practices for communicating before, during and after power outages and explained why data integration is an important foundation for a successful strategy.

What Do Customers Expect During an Outage?

There are many challenges faced by energy utilities and their customers during service interruptions. To level-set the conversation and encourage webinar attendees to look at outages from a customer’s point of view, we asked them, “Which way do you prefer to get outage updates?”

An impressive 94% of poll respondents said they prefer to receive outage alerts via text — and only 3% prefer email. This is only further proof highlighting the need to understand customer preferences when earning their trust with outage communications.

While it’s unrealistic for customers to expect that outages will never occur, ongoing education and expectation-setting are crucial for an exceptional customer experience. Cummins shared that a staggering 71% of utilities acknowledge that they’re not doing enough to improve customer engagement. Utilities need to make a conscience effort to position themselves as trusted partners to customers by sharing information, collecting feedback and creating strong relationships.

Dunham explored the different perspectives of utilities and customers when facing outages.

From the utility’s standpoint, managing costs and investments while handling a spike in call volumes is a significant concern. On the other hand, customers primarily care about the restoration of service, the causes of the outage and potential safety threats to their families. Striking a balance between managing costs and delivering the best possible customer experience is essential.

“You have to think about the customer’s point of view,” Dunham said. “You need to look at, from a best-practice perspective, How do you reach those customers? How do you find that careful balance between managing your investment in technology and also managing customer satisfaction and how they interact with your company?”

Dunham also shared best practices for outage communications, emphasizing the importance of transparency, proactivity and clear messaging.

Five best practices that were shared include:

  1. Communicate proactively
  2. Remove jargon from messages
  3. Provide direct links and access to important resources
  4. Communicate the scope of the outage to customers
  5. Inform customers before, during and after outages

Before, During and After the Outage: Communicate at Every Stage

Effective communications are needed at all three stages: before, during and after power outages.

To ensure customers are well-prepared before an outage, utilities should provide outage resources (like an outage map), seasonal safety tips and options for customers to opt-in to alerts.

The top advice Cummins shared for this round of communications is to ensure your communications to customers are clear and to the point. Avoid jargon and complicated directions. Provide direct links.

During an outage, utilities must prioritize urgent and transparent communication with customers. A well-defined communication plan should be in place, utilizing various channels such as voice, SMS and digital platforms to ensure timely and accurate information is shared.

Customers should be informed about the impacted areas, the extent of the outage, the number of affected customers and the reason for the outage. It is essential to update them on power restoration efforts and provide confirmation that the issue is being resolved promptly.

After an outage, utilities should communicate details such as the cause, resolution, number of affected customers and even the number of line workers deployed. Reinforcing available outage resources and encouraging customers to sign up for text alerts while the experience is still fresh in their minds is also essential.

Post-outage surveys via SMS, email or outbound voice can provide valuable customer insights, helping utilities evaluate and improve their communication strategy. Real-time customer information associated with the outage journey, channels used and feedback on communication effectiveness are crucial to this evaluation process.

In this stage, utilities should send messages that include thanking customers for their patience, reminding them to sign up for outage alerts and providing safety tips and other resources. By addressing customers’ needs and concerns during and after an outage, utilities can foster a positive relationship and maintain customer confidence.

Integrate Data Into the Outage Communications Strategy

Regardless of where a utility company is in its technology journey, it can still innovate and create a better experience for customers without a major overhaul.

Call center agents use various communication platforms to respond to customers and integrating data from these platforms is crucial to creating a smart, unique experience for customers. For example, an SMS experience should be interactive, allowing customers to respond or even initiate a phone call to the call center directly from the text message.

Data integration can also help utilities monitor the effectiveness of their outage strategies and solutions. By analyzing data such as call spikes, SMS effectiveness and customer feedback, utilities can continually improve their services and maintain positive customer relationships.

Having access to the right data, fully integrated into the utility’s environment, and using insights and reporting tools are essential for continuous improvement and adapting to customers’ needs. This approach enables utilities to create better customer experiences.

Earn Customer Trust with a Successful Outage Communication Plan

Building trust with outage communications requires a successful strategy before, during and after service interruptions. Your utility needs to deliver timely, relevant information each step of the way.

Cummins and Dunham shared helpful tips during the webinar. In summary:

  1. Define realistic customer expectations about outages through ongoing education and communication.
  2. Focus your outage communication strategy all three stages: before, during and after an outage (also called the aware, action and affirm stages).
  3. Provide proactive communication and transparency in all channels, including email, text and social media.
  4. Share safety information, outage causes, estimated restoration times and status updates as quickly as you can.
  5. Thank customers for their patience and provide resources for any future outages.
  6. Gain customer insights through surveys to improve the outage communications strategy.
  7. Integrate data from various sources to provide tailored, interactive experiences for customers.
  8. When starting somewhere, begin your outage strategy with the “during” stage, since this is when customers are most concerned about their power.
  9. There’s no such thing as too much communication during an active outage situation.
  10. Balance communication across channels to avoid overcommunication before and after outages.

Research shows that overall satisfaction among customers who receive outage communications is much higher than among those who do not receive this information. By proactively building out an outage communications strategy, your utility will pave the way for increased customer satisfaction, earn their trust and build engagement in the long run.

Learn how an outage communications strategy from Questline Digital can help your utility build customer trust.

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Illustration of AI for utilities improving customer communications

Webinar: Boost Customer Engagement with AI for Utilities

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming various industries, including energy utilities, by offering innovative ways to improve the customer experience, enhance efficiency and streamline communications.

Our recent webinar, “Boost Customer Engagement with AI,” shared expert insights from Questline Digital’s Brian Lindamood, VP of Marketing and Content Strategy, and Zach Hardison, VP of Innovation. They explored how AI can be used tactfully by energy utilities to create personalized content, automate customer onboarding and support targeted communication campaigns for utility customers.

Lindamood reminded audience members that, “AI is a tool to improve our work, but still requires humans to operate and leverage results in a strategic way.”

Why We Care About AI Now

The growing interest in AI can be attributed to several factors that have made it more accessible, relatable, and widely adopted across industries, including energy utilities. These advancements have demystified AI and showcased its potential for enhancing efficiency, streamlining operations, and improving customer experiences.

Notably, AI is nothing new. Hardison shared that AI has been integrated for many years now, one example dating back to 2007 with Netflix’s ability to recommend “Top Picks for You” based on user preferences. He pointed out that the current buzz around AI stems from ChatGPT’s rise to fame in late 2022, thanks to its broad release and free public access.

“What this [public access] does is greatly remove the apprehension and barriers around AI,” says Hardison. “You can do things that are silly, you can do things that are professional. It reduces that apprehension. It reduces the fear factor that folks have around AI. And that’s why you’re suddenly seeing a lot more adoption because it has reduced the stigma and the barriers around AI.”

Benefits and AI Use Cases for Utilities

Hardison and Lindamood shared a variety of ways that AI can assist both outside and inside the energy utility industry.

“AI has been a boon in the fields of marketing and communications,” says Lindamood. “AI has the ability to analyze a vast amount of data, learn about customers’ preferences and behavior, and then help us personalize the customer experience to better meet their needs.”

One significant benefit of AI in the utility industry is its ability to share personalized content with customers based on their interests and engagement with previous communications. AI can be used to ensure that the right information reaches the right people at the right time, enhancing the overall customer experience.

Hardison shared an example of utilizing AI to create dynamic newsletters that send relevant content to customers based on their chosen preferences and interests. He shared that the importance of sending this customized content is to connect with customers in a way that shows your utility is listening.

Another valuable application of AI in the utility industry is its ability to identify characteristics that make customers eligible for programs like energy assistance, even if they are unaware of their eligibility. By using AI algorithms to analyze customer data, utility companies can proactively reach out to eligible customers and inform them about available aid.

One of the most immediate benefits of AI is its ability to scale up human efficiency. It excels at handling monotonous, repetitive, low-value tasks that would otherwise consume a significant number of human resources. By providing AI with boundaries and structure, it can operate within a defined scope, enhancing productivity without compromising on quality.

Limitations of AI for Utilities

It’s important to remember that artificial intelligence isn’t perfect. While AI offers numerous benefits to the energy utilities sector, it’s essential to recognize that the technology also has its limitations. By understanding these constraints, your utility can make informed decisions about AI implementation and manage expectations.

  1. Machines can’t understand user intent: AI can’t know for sure what a searcher wants; data will help improve algorithms but it will never be perfect
  2. AI doesn’t understand nuance: Computers see things in black and white and can’t offer perspectives from multiple lenses.
  3. AI-created content can be wrong, biased or misused: It needs to be fact-checked by humans.

Best Practices for Implementing AI in the Utility Industry

Chart showing best practices for using AI for utilities

To maximize the benefits of AI in the utility industry, it’s important to begin by following the data and using that information to guide your AI decisions. Consider the following template in analyzing the path for your AI strategy:

  1. Determine the use cases for AI and prioritize the data accordingly.
  2. Set clear business goals and metrics to measure success.
  3. Clean and explore data to see what opportunities rise to the surface and remove irrelevant data.
  4. Test and develop AI before putting it into production and maintain and review it regularly.
  5. Don’t get distracted by shiny new AI tools; be guided by business goals and objectives.

Remember, AI is a powerful tool that can greatly improve customer experiences and streamline operations, but it still requires human input and strategic thinking to be genuinely effective. You know your audience best. Use your human intelligence to guide the decision-making process and add AI when helpful to assist your strategy.

Want to use AI to improve customer engagement at your utility? Check out a demo of Questline Digital’s personalized newsletter solution.

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Illustration from a webinar about using data to personalize the energy customer experience

Webinar: How to Use Data to Personalize the Energy Customer Experience

Personalization can be a powerful force in helping energy providers build engaged relationships with customers. In fact, 55% of consumers believe that targeted communications create a more enjoyable experience.

By using data to personalize the customer experience, energy providers can achieve:

  • More effective marketing messages
  • Higher engagement rates
  • Increased program conversions

However, it’s important to remember privacy and security considerations when collecting and using data. Although customers expect relevant messages, they also expect their privacy to be respected and protected.

In Questline Digital’s webinar, “Data Privacy & Personalization,” our expert speakers, Brian Lindamood (Questline Digital) and Marianne Holohan (BlastPoint), shared insights into:

  • What is personalization
  • How personalization differs from segmentation
  • The benefits of personalization and segmentation for energy providers
  • Legal considerations and data privacy best practices
  • Examples of personalization in customer engagement campaigns

Personalization vs. Segmentation

“Personalization and segmentation work really well together,” Lindamood says. “Campaigns are most effective when you create segments based on the relevance of a program or the motivations those customers have, and then you personalize some piece of information for each customer within those segments.”

In the data privacy webinar, Lindamood explains that personalization is an engagement approach that treats customers as individuals. You do this by customizing the content, format or channel of messages for individual customers and you send relevant messages to customers based on:

  • Needs
  • Interests
  • Behaviors
  • Channel preferences

The benefits of personalization are expansive. Energy providers can achieve:

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

Secure Data Analysis

“Many people think of segmentation as a one-and-done situation where you segment your customers broadly and then you use those segments over and over again to reach different objectives,” says Holohan. “However, we found that objective-driven segmentation is a much more effective personalization tool.”

Holohan shared BlastPoint’s process for secure data onboarding and analysis, including:

  • Review
  • Clean
  • Append
  • Analyze
  • Activate

She then described BlastPoint’s process. The first step is to collect and clean existing customer data. This is followed by enriching the data with external data sources and generating specific intelligence tied to the energy provider’s business goals. Last, the data and intelligence is put into action to achieve those objectives.  

Holohan also highlighted various third-party data information that can be used for personalization, such as

  • Residential demographics
  • Financial data
  • Media engagement
  • Psychographic data
Chart listing the third party data that can be used to personalize the customer experience for energy providers

Legal Considerations and Customer Expectations

When it comes to data privacy, there are a variety of legal considerations and processes for both incoming data and outgoing data.

Incoming data is defined as data that is purchased from third-party vendors. If the data is personally specific data, it’s important to ask the vendor to validate their permission to use the data. If it’s modeled or inferred data, it means the data is less accurate, so your organization shouldn’t rely too heavily on it.

Outgoing data is defined as sharing your customer data with third-party vendors. When doing this, Holohan suggests:

  • Limit the scope of the data being shared, especially if it includes personally identifiable information (PII)
  • Review vendors’ data security practices to ensure the legality (under GDPR) of transferring data.

In terms of information security, customers have high expectations for the privacy and security of their data, such as:

  • “Don’t leak my data”
  • “Don’t gather more than you need to know about me”
  • “The data you are gathering should benefit me, not annoy me”

To respect and meet these expectations, Holohan shared some best practices for using data in the data privacy webinar, including:

  • Validate third-party organizations’ security practices.
  • Use objective-driven, targeted segments for personalization instead of broad, multi-purpose segments.
  • Make data actionable with AI to ensure effective personalization practices.

Opportunities for Energy Providers to Personalize Communications

The data privacy webinar went beyond high-level definitions and shared real-world success stories. Lindamood and Holohan each shared examples for data privacy and personalization on various topics, including:

  • Energy efficiency
  • Electric vehicles
  • Payment assistance

For energy efficiency use-cases, Lindamood suggests:

  • Target users with relevant programs based on their interests
  • Segment based on past participation
  • Create messages that reflect their motivations or interests
  • Include personalized data, e.g. energy use
Examples of email marketing from energy provider using data personalization

He shared an example from a smart thermostat campaign. The utility used targeted messaging to segment and send emails to customers. One segmented message was about adopting a smart thermostat to help the environment, while the other pushed the benefits of saving money. By segmenting the messages, the utility found more success in its smart thermostat adoption program.

Holohan shared an example of BlastPoint’s process of working with a utility to increase engagement in its energy efficiency messaging. By acknowledging the utility’s goals of providing relevant programs and identifying income-eligible households, BlastPoint was able to gather and analyze data to assist in achieving these goals. They reviewed:

  • Internal residential data
  • Psychographic data
  • Demographic data

The data analysis led them to develop customer segments around energy efficiency, including income-eligible segments, and identify a target segment that had a high propensity to adopt efficiency measures. Using this technique and secure data access, the utility had 47% more income-eligible customers engaging in energy efficiency.

The Power of Data and Personalization

When done correctly, data-driven personalization can lead energy providers to achieving increased engagement and satisfaction among customers. The data privacy webinar highlighted the many impacts of data privacy and personalization.

Learn more about how Questline Digital can help your utility with targeted customer communications.

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Illustration of email marketing trends for 2023

Webinar: 2023 Email Marketing Trends + Best Practices

A full year of Apple’s privacy changes has come and gone, marketing texts are trending, chat boxes continue to pop up and voice search is making itself heard, among many other hot topics for utility marketers. Questline Digital’s experts weighed in on the top 10 email marketing trends and best practices for 2023 during a recent Plugged In webinar.

Brian Lindamood, VP of Marketing and Content Strategy, and Nina Cummins, Account Director, shared their insights and interpretations for the year ahead.

Top 10 Email Marketing Trends for 2023

  1. Increased use of interactive content
  2. A focus on key email metrics beyond open rate
  3. Privacy technologies and their impact
  4. The rise of SMS marketing
  5. Strategic push notifications
  6. The use of chatbots
  7. Voice search capabilities
  8. Self-service experiences
  9. Increases in video marketing
  10. Segmentation and personalization expansion

Marketing Manager Maureen Mierke and other special guests from Questline Digital also joined the webinar to offer their advice on interactive content, Apple’s Privacy Policy, SMS marketing, push notifications and video marketing.

A Look Back at 2022 Email Marketing Trends

Last November, Questline Digital’s webinar on Email Marketing Best Practices for 2022 forecasted trends for this past year. We took a look back at the top 10 trends we saw in 2022:

  1. Creating an improved after-sales experience
  2. Auditing and understanding your data
  3. Making more out of your newsletters
  4. Optimizing for all platforms
  5. Creating more interactive emails
  6. Ensuring your emails are accessible
  7. Showcasing user-generated content
  8. Utilizing preference centers
  9. Hyper-personalizing email campaigns
  10. Changes to open rates and privacy

“Certainly everything on this list was important in some way this year,” Lindamood said of the 2022 predictions. “Some of these things are still ramping up and will continue to be factors in the coming year.”

Lindamood reviewed the importance of creating an after-sales experience with customer onboarding and developing a personalized experience starting on day one of service. Additionally, he said that optimization “is about making your emails accessible and compatible across all devices.” This was an important focus this past year, especially with the growing use of dark mode, and Lindamood suspects it will only get more important as the year goes along.

Cummins shared that many clients she works with have done a lot of deep diving to better understand their data, including reviewing performance metrics for their emails, newsletters and social media. As expected, Apple’s Privacy Policy dominated many data analytics conversations in 2022 and Cummins expects this trend to continue into 2023.

A Look Forward to the Email Marketing Trends and Best Practices for 2023

Chart listing the top 10 email marketing trends for 2023

Increased use of interactive content

Lindamood began with a discussion on interactive content. “There’s no doubt that interactive content is popular with customers and is an effective way for marketers to share a message,” he said.

Interactive content can include games, quizzes, calculators, polls, surveys or a myriad of other content types, he added. “It can be any digital experience where there’s some back and forth. The user takes an action or provides some information and the content responds in some way.” This type of content, requiring active participation from the user, makes it more fun and engaging for customers to learn about complex energy topics.

Animation of interactive games a marketing trend for 2023

Cummins shared an important reminder that interactive content in emails is all about adding interest and visual movement so that messages stand out.

Joe Pifher, Questline Digital’s Creative Director, shared his take on whether utilities should jump on this trend. He said when it comes to interactive emails, “There’s not enough support for them. Right now, the email clients are dinosaurs. There are some that can handle it and some that can’t. And without having your list broken up for every email client, it’s not worth the time to put that in there.”

Animation of interactive emails a trend for 2023

Overall, we see the use of interactive content rising, as research shows it generates five times more views than static content. However, when it comes to interactive emails, we suggest keeping interactivity simpler, including some GIFs or movement. The key is using email as a way to drive clicks and visits to interactive content on your utility’s website or other platform.

Metrics beyond open rates

Apple’s Privacy Policy changed the way digital marketers see open rates. Where they used to be a strong indicator of engagement, open rates are no longer reliable or useful in analyzing the performance of campaigns.

Jeremy Harning, Questline Digital’s Vice President of Technology, explained a little more about the impact from his perspective. Most notably, he shared:

  1. Since September 2021, when Apple introduced its changes to email tracking, Questline Digital has seen an 11% inflation in open rates, from about 25% on average to about 36% overall.
  2. We have also seen about 34% of our opens overall get flagged as “machine read,” indicating they are being opened by Apple’s proxy servers.

With this information, Questline Digital recommends that utility marketers review other metrics tied more directly to the utility’s goals, such as:

  • Conversion rate
  • Enrollment numbers
  • Page clicks
  • Time on page

“Open rates can inform how we get to an action, but it’s not going to determine if your campaign was successful,” Lindamood said. “As an industry, we really need to get past open rates. They’re not reliable anymore.”

The rise of SMS marketing and push notifications

Cummins shared that she sees the rise in mobile communications as an answer to what customers want: multichannel marketing that reaches them in their preferred channels.

“We’re on email, we’re on social media, so text messaging only makes sense to be next,” she said. “It’s quick, direct, and research shows that 98% of all text messages are opened, and one in three consumers check their text notifications within one minute of receiving a text.”

Additionally, push notifications are another method customers prefer for staying up to date with company happenings.

Quotation about push notifications being a top marketing trend for 2023

The data speaks for itself: Customers expect these types of messages. The caveat, according to Cummins, is making sure that text messages and push notifications provide value to customers.

“Are push notifications going to provide value in some way to a customer’s life?” she asked. “If so, then they’re great. If not, then people aren’t going to care. They’ll turn notifications off and it’s as simple as that.”

Susan Kownacki, Questline Digital’s Vice President of Account Services, shared an additional reminder.

“While most utilities have already been doing transactional text messages around outage and billing alerts, marketing messages are relatively new to our space,” Kownacki said. “To make a successful leap to non-transactional SMS, it’s absolutely critical to get your customers to opt-in. Because if you don’t, fines are steep, as much as $1,500 per offense, which can add up quickly.”

Chatbots, voice optimization and self-serve

Chatbots and voice search were hot topics leading into the previous year, and they’ll continue to be important marketing trends for 2023. “I don’t think a lot of utilities are investing in either of these things at the level that we thought initially,” Cummins said, “but I do think they’re still very valid and useful options to keep in mind in the near future.”

Lindamood said that customer expectations will continue to grow in this area. He shared research from J.D. Power that found that chat is the leading digital contact method for online customers: 42% of customers prefer chat versus only 23% for email and 16% for social media.

“For utilities, any interaction that you’re having with customers over the phone could probably be accomplished more efficiently with a chatbot,” Lindamood said. “It’s certainly more cost-effective for you and most of your customers would prefer it that way.”

Additionally, Lindamood noted that there are many opportunities for utilities to enhance educational efforts with chat, such as answering customers’ questions about program promotions on your website or providing advice on rate plans.

When it comes to voice search and optimization, Lindamood said that the next generation of utility customers will be more inclined to use voice search, as it’s what they’ve been acclimated to growing up.

We suggest creating FAQ pages or other pages on utility websites that list common energy-related questions along with clear answers. These pages will help customers, and they will be easy for voice-activated search engines to find.

Voice capabilities are also great for making content accessible to all customers. Those who are visually impaired may prefer listening to an article, while many people use audio for convenience’s sake, listening to content as they work on other things. Lindamood shared these best practices to help users who prefer to listen to content:

  • Include alt text that describes any images on the page
  • Make sure text is text — not a JPEG of a headline — so the computer can read it
  • Embed audio players within the content itself

Whether customers prefer to chat with customer service representatives instead of call or they prefer to listen to content instead of read it, the modern customer experience demands that options are available and that the end user can ultimately choose their own preference. Don’t force them to communicate in one specific way with your utility.

Increases in video marketing

Matt Irving, Questline Digital’s Creative Director of Video Content, shared the importance of video marketing, including its ability to capture attention, simplify complex topics and make an idea memorable and entertaining. When creating videos, he reminds utilities to think about the audience.

“Video content can do a lot of things. I like to say it’s part of a complete breakfast. It provides a big oomph, it can cover a lot of areas and it can have a really big impact. But it’s not the best choice for everything,” Irving said. “A video, or any content for that matter, should be relevant. It should be relevant to the consumers, it should be relevant to the space you’re talking to the consumers in and it should be relevant to you.”

Quotation about the importance of video marketing as a trend for 2023

Video is already the most popular and preferred content format for all customers, and it’s only going to grow. According to the Content Marketing Institute, video is going to be the “it” content for 2023, given that 78% of marketers plan to invest in video in the new year.

Segmentation and personalization expansion

Segmentation and personalization have been high-profile email marketing trends in 2022, and Lindamood and Cummins agreed that will continue into 2023. “If utilities haven’t started looking into segmentation, then they’re going to, and if they have then they’re going to push the boundaries more and see what they can accomplish,” Cummins said. “I think it’s really going to be a top priority in 2023.”

“Personalization is the thread that ties together a lot of the email marketing trends that we talked about,” Lindamood added. “I think it’s going to be the longest-lasting trend we’ve discussed. We’re still near the beginning of a big shift toward personalization and it’s going to be around for a long time.”

Personalized and segmented messages make those types of communications immediate, tangible and accessible to customers. Questline Digital expects to see more of this as we use customer data and preferences to personalize the experience they have with their utility.

New Year, New Opportunities, New Email Marketing Trends

Quotation about TikTok being an important digital marketing trend for 2023

Of all the email marketing trends and best practices discussed, Cummins shared that data is a low-hanging fruit. Utilities should focus on cleaning and using their data in new ways, including segmentation and personalization, to better reach and communicate with customers.

Additionally, Lindamood suggested that TikTok needs to become a priority for utilities in the new year and beyond. “Utilities really need to start taking TikTok seriously,” he said. “The thing about TikTok is it’s not just popular among certain customers watching videos, they’re also using it as a search engine. They are finding answers on TikTok, and as a utility, you need to be there answering their energy questions. As an industry, we need to start communicating with the TikTok audience in their preferred channel.”

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