Email Marketing: Move Beyond Segmentation to Insight Driven Personalization

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Good marketers know the importance of delivering the personalized experience customers expect. Personalized email campaigns begin with segmentation but in our data rich digital world we can now move one step further to one on one marketing also known as the segment of one.

Now having access to more customer data utilities can easily create personal, and relevant email campaigns. How relevant and personal can you get? Here are a few ways: threshold bill alerts, video bill explanations only sent to households with higher bills, demand response notifications, weather notifications, and more all including useful relevant tips.

The beauty of email marketing lies in the fact that they open the doors to a wide array of customer data begging to be analyzed, categorized, optimized. Thanks to these tools, we have access to detailed insights about our audience and can carefully tailor messages to drive open rates and customer engagement!

Audience Demographics

Without much effort, you can easily start segmenting based on location, home profile, income, age, and energy use patterns. In addition, gathering home profile data through your preference center or your online Energy Advisor ensures that your messages are even more exact. For instance, sending HVAC upgrade tips to someone in a multifamily home is not helpful. Someone eligible for your low-income program would rather see low-cost or no-cost tips. Having granular knowledge of your service territory allows you to deliver messages that customers appreciate. It all goes back to fostering a trusting relationship.

Do you know that young families are more conscious of how much they’re spending on their utility bill? Or you might gather, through household income demographics, that higher-income customers are more engaged in pricing programs. These are the kinds of insights that will allow you to start building trust with your audience that goes beyond efficient billing.

Email Engagement

Measure the success of your email campaigns by analyzing open rates, unsubscribes, and click through rates to determine how much your audience is interested and willing to engage with your brand.

Looking at email analytics is also an effective way to see which kind of content your audience wants to see. Brillion finds that our utility clients sending emails with video bills not only receive click through rates that are more than 3 times their average baseline but are sustained proving continued customer engagement.

Energy Use Data

Brillion has used customer energy use data to identify customers that have recently experienced a bill hike, we then send this group personalized energy tips and bill explanations messages on how to avoid it happening again. We are seeing as many as 98% of customers wanting to see more of these personalized messages and an increase in utility brand perception.

Are you moving towards the segment of one?

It’s important here to remember that if you’re new to segmentation, always start simple. Brillion can help move you closer to the segment of one.

Have you already started segmenting your audience? What’s worked for you? Let us know!