Spur consumer demand for your program's services by understanding your target audience and motivating them to act using effective messaging, marketing and outreach tactics, and attractive program offers.
Marketing & Outreach – Overview
- Description
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- Tips for Success
- Examples
- Toolbox
- Topical Resources
- Quick Links
Description
Home energy upgrades can create greater comfort, improve indoor air quality, and significantly reduce utility bills. Despite these benefits, many people are still unaware of why and how they should invest in energy efficiency for their homes.
Effective marketing and outreach motivates a consumer to invest in home energy upgrades, creating demand for services. Successful strategies provide information that resonates with target audiences in compelling ways, such as positioning your offerings as a solution to a problem many homeowners do not realize can be solved with energy efficiency improvements.
Successful marketing and outreach campaigns use various strategies to repeatedly reach out to target audiences to build awareness and drive residents toward investing in home energy upgrades. Effective programs use a mix of market research, targeted messaging, outreach efforts, partnerships, paid media, public relations, and social marketing. Note, however, that no two programs are the same, and what works for one may not work for another.
Marketing and outreach are critical to getting the message out, but they will not result in success on their own. Important ingredients for significant program impact include a streamlined upgrade process and customer experience that is simple for homeowners; incentives and access to affordable financing that enable customers to pay for upgrades; and a well-trained workforce able and ready to complete home energy assessments and upgrades.
The Marketing and Outreach component provides program administrators with strategies to:
- Define marketing and outreach goals and objectives based on an assessment of the market to help identify target audiences.
- Identify and collaborate on marketing and outreach with current and potential partners.
- Make design decisions about the program’s marketing and outreach activities and create a plan to meet the program’s marketing and outreach goals and objectives.
- Formulate a plan for evaluating the marketing and outreach program.
- Develop your program’s brand and promote it consistently in your program’s materials.
- Implement your outreach campaigns, with a plan to regularly assess and improve your strategies and processes.
- Communicate outreach results to partners and other stakeholders.
Step-by-Step
Tips for Success
Communicate with audiences at least three times; once is not enough
All residential energy efficiency programs have found that outreach needs to be repeated to connect with and remind potential participants about program offerings. As marketing gurus note, the majority of people need to be exposed to a product message at least three times (on separate occasions) to buy into it. The more time between communications, or “touches,” the less likely the customer will take action. Some programs even coordinated marketing strategies with partners, so that potential customers get multiple, complementary touches from different communication channels or groups.
- NOLA WISE (New Orleans, Louisiana, Worthwhile Investments Save Energy) used a combination of traditional paid media, grassroots outreach, and earned media outlets to communicate with its audience. The program generated the highest number of high-quality leads through its homeowner showcases, which were events held at the home of a resident who completed upgrades. The NOLA Wise team and contractors were on hand to highlight the completed home energy upgrades and educate attendees on how to make their own homes more comfortable and energy efficient. NOLA WISE’s homeowner showcases were promoted through neighborhood canvassing, electronic newsletters, social media, collaboration with nearby neighborhood associations, and earned media strategies.
- Philadelphia's EnergyWorks promoted its program through a multi-phased advertisement plan. This first phase focused on radio and weather-related websites to take advantage of peoples' moods during specific weather conditions, which resulted in 15,000 visits to the EnergyWorks website and 303 completed home energy assessments. The second phase used print, online, and regional rail marketing materials to create a sense of urgency to compel consumers to act on their immediate needs by introducing the benefits of energy efficiency. In its third phase, EnergyWorks' advertising continued to emphasize the value and comfort of energy efficiency upgrades, and introduced an educational component that defined some common home energy upgrade terms, such as insulation and air sealing, in ways customers could understand.
CloseEnergyWorks Aligns Advertisements With Weather
Source: Energy Efficiency Residential Marketing Keep it Simple. Keep it Focused. EnergyWorks, 2012.
These EnergyWorks online banner ads rotated on accuweather.com during days with anticipated temperatures of 85 degrees or above.
Follow through with customers
Following up on leads that result from your marketing and outreach efforts quickly and consistently will help your program convert them from interested parties to satisfied customers. Many programs found a sizable drop-off in action if they or their contractors were not able to follow up within a few days to a week. Additionally, contacting initially interested participants regularly (e.g., through a monthly email, with a phone call every few months) was also a successful strategy for turning potential customers into paying customers.
- BetterBuildings for Michigan saw more homeowners undertake upgrades in cities where it held a neighborhood sweep and followed the sweep with a city-wide offering a year later. While the program initially planned for a timeframe of four to six weeks for homeowners to decide whether or not to undertake a home energy upgrade, following up with customers after giving them time to better understand the program’s offer helped BetterBuildings for Michigan achieve success. Based on the success of the initial follow-up offers, BetterBuildings for Michigan lengthened the time for each sweep to a full year. Overall, the program was able to complete nearly 8,000 home energy assessments and more than 6,300 home energy upgrades.
One successful approach programs used to maintain this connection was through energy advisors who followed up with homeowners after their initial interest and coached them through the home energy upgrade process.
- The Greater Cincinnati Energy Alliance (GCEA) realized that many of the homeowners who signed up to learn more about the program were getting stuck between creating their online profile to initiate program participation and completing a home energy assessment, and then between the energy assessment and home energy upgrade stages. Instead of accepting these customers as losses, GCEA had its full-time energy advisor make phone calls to each of these customers to learn why they were not completing their home energy assessments or upgrades and to explain to customers how to move on to the next stage. By explaining the entire upgrade process to individuals, GCEA was able to ensure that potential customers did not drop out of the program simply because their questions were not answered, they did not understand how the program worked, or they forgot that they signed up in the first place. Of the customers the energy advisor contacted, 50% who completed assessments followed through to complete home energy upgrades.
- The Denver Energy Challenge provided customers with free energy advisors who recommended energy improvements and guided participants through the process. The program found that those advisors with a background in customer service had a better conversion rate than those whose expertise focused on building science. Overall, three out of every four customers who worked with an energy advisor went on to complete a home energy upgrade. Although not all participants made all of the improvements recommended at once, because Denver’s energy advisors kept in touch with participants, program staff reported that many homeowners completed additional upgrades later on in the process.
- Connecticut’s Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge used energy advisors and a customer management database to help ensure that their contractors were following up on leads and following through with customers in a timely manner. Through weekly meetings with contractors and daily monitoring of contractor activities, the program’s energy advisors made sure contractors were leading potential customers through the program’s next steps. The program set up its database to send automatic reminders to contractors when they needed to take a new step with the homeowner. This regular follow-up helped ensure that homeowners heard back from contractors within a certain number of days, depending on where they were in the process.
- Michigan Saves, formerly BetterBuildings for Michigan, saw more homeowners undertake upgrades in cities where it held a neighborhood sweep and followed the sweep with a city-wide offering a year later. While the program initially planned for a timeframe of four to six weeks for homeowners to decide whether or not to undertake a home energy upgrade, following up with customers after giving them time to better understand the program’s offer helped Michigan Saves achieve success. Based on the success of the initial follow-up offers, Michigan Saves lengthened the time for each sweep to a full year. Overall, the program was able to complete nearly 8,000 home energy assessments and more than 6,300 home energy upgrades.
Conduct one-on-one outreach where people gather at their own homes
Programs that conducted one-on-one outreach found that community events provided good opportunities for the program and its partners to connect and build credibility with potential customers. Particularly successful events were ones that attracted the program’s target audience and aligned with their program's messaging—such as an Earth Day celebration, home improvement expo, or green fair—because these events had established participants.
Programs found events to be the most successful when the program provided the opportunity for interested homeowners to take action (e.g., sign up for a neighbor-hosted information session, schedule a home energy assessment) right on the spot. Every program found that some events they thought would be great actually deliver fewer leads than expected, so it is important to track the number of leads and program participants that result from each event to determine the effectiveness of participating.
Neighborhood canvasses or "sweeps," were another tactic used by some programs to directly reach potential customers. Sweeps can be time- and labor-intensive undertakings that some programs found to have the greatest impact when targeting specific communities likely to participate in the program. Sweeps were successful for some programs, but not all. A comprehensive evaluation of more than 140 programs across the country suggests that programs engage in a concerted priming effort in the target area before canvassing the neighborhood. Learn more about neighborhood sweeps in the Marketing and Outreach Develop Implementation Plans handbook.
- Energize Phoenix held a community energy efficiency exhibit and contractor fair at the local library to promote its "One Day Only" financial incentives of up to $3,000 per home. Sixteen out of 25 approved contractors participated. More than 500 people attended, 125 homeowners signed up for a home energy assessment on the spot, and the program noted an impressive 58% conversion rate from home energy assessments to home energy upgrades.
Source: Energize Phoenix
- Sacramento Municipal Utility District’s Neighborhood Program—a Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partner in California—promoted its home energy upgrade program at high school fundraisers, outdoor concerts, homeowner association meetings, parent-teacher association meetings, car shows, and other community events. The program sent direct mail pieces to invite homeowners to attend, speak directly to the participating contractors, and sign up for a free home energy assessment at the event. At some events program staff also had activities for children and prizes or giveaways for homeowners who signed up for their free assessment. The program found that 65% of homeowners who heard about the program did so through these community events.
Motivate action through financial incentives and time-limited offers
Incentives can be the easiest approach to overcome motivation barriers and attract customers’ and contractors’ attention, as long as the upgrade and reimbursement processes are kept simple and easy to follow. Successful programs have found incentives help entice customers to complete upgrades, particularly during limited time offers when a deadline further motivates action. Because incentives are expensive for programs, determining the minimum level needed to achieve your goals or offering incentives for limited periods can be important strategies for success. Also, according to a comprehensive evaluation of more than 140 programs, successful programs were able to offer lower incentives than other programs that also had incentives.
- Efficiency Maine used large incentives during the program launch to create consumer demand for energy improvements and stimulate contractors’ interest in adapting their business models to accommodate more comprehensive energy upgrades. From January 2010 through May 2011, homeowners could receive a rebate for 30% of project costs, which could total up to $1,500 for comprehensive projects that were projected to achieve at least 25% energy savings. To further motivate consumer and contractor action, Efficiency Maine launched an additional, limited-time $1,000 bonus incentive in the summer of 2010. As Efficiency Maine’s rebate funds wound down in spring 2011, the program underwent a one-month transition period during which customers could qualify for both rebates and financing. This approach, in addition to contractor sales training, residential direct installs, and other program design features, contributed to the creation of a successful market for residential energy efficiency in Maine. Learn more in the U.S. Department of Energy case study, Spotlight on Maine: Transition to a Sustainable Level of Incentives.
- Michigan Saves, formerly BetterBuildings for Michigan, focused its incentive dollars on completing home energy upgrades rather than on energy assessments and direct install measures, after experimenting with various incentive designs from November 2010 through March 2012. When they adjusted the program’s incentive structure in this way, program staff saw the conversion rate from assessments to upgrades increase, depending on the neighborhood, from a range of 5-25% up to a range of 30-60%. The incentives for deeper energy upgrade packages, including air sealing and duct sealing, seemed to attract a higher percentage of the eligible population—20% to 30% participation for a package valued at around $1,000 versus 10% to 15% participation for a package valued at around $350. Learn more in the U.S. Department of Energy case study, Spotlight on BetterBuildings for Michigan: Experiment to Find the Right Mix of Incentives.
- To develop momentum for its Clean Energy Accelerator program, Austin Energy started off with a 3-month Best Offer Ever promotion from October 1 through December 31, 2010, that offered a combination of rebates from local utilities that varied based on work performed and interest rates that were bought down to 0%, representing an additional $1,200 in incentives per household compared to Austin Energy's typical offer. Contractors completed comprehensive energy upgrades in a record 568 homes in the six months after the campaign launch.
- In addition to its base rebate levels, Enhabit, formerly Clean Energy Works Oregon, offered limited-time bonus rebates on top of its $2,000 base rebates ($500 for the assessment and up to $1,500 for the upgrades) to grab the attention of potential customers. The first limited-time promotion occurred in spring 2011 and offered an additional $1,700 to the program’s base rebate. The second promotion was offered in March and April 2012 and added $500 to the base rebate. The program found that repeatedly offering bonus promotions attracted the attention of new customers each time, even as the program reduced the dollar amount of the bonus from $1,700 to $500.
Enhabit’s Applications, Assessments, Upgrades, and Loans Per Month
(March 2011 - July 2012)
Source: Spotlight on Portland, Oregon: Use Incentives to Get Attention and Encourage Deep Savings, U.S. Department of Energy, 2011.
Programs often discover that offering limited time incentives can bring about a sizable surge in assessment and upgrade requests. A few programs found that they were not sufficiently prepared for the additional work and lost interested customers because they could not get back to them quickly. Some programs added temporary staff for call centers when a big push was set to take place, or created a temporary pool of contractors to help with increased workloads; others scheduled their incentives to coincide with seasonal capacity.
- NeighborWorks of Western Vermont’s (NWWVT) Home Energy Assistance Team (H.E.A.T. Squad) incentivized homeowners to complete a home energy assessment by offering the assessment for $50, which was $200 less than the typical evaluation cost offered to Vermont residents through Efficiency Vermont. One year in, the program found that its contractors were struggling to keep up with surging demand for home energy upgrades. In 2011, NWWVT established LaborWorks@NeighborWorks (LaborWorks) as a nonprofit temporary labor pool to assist professional contractors involved with the H.E.A.T. Squad during busy periods when they could not keep up with demand or hire full-time help. The extra staffing helped reduce the number of backlogged projects.
- When planning its Best Offer Ever promotion, Austin Energy collaborated with contractors to account for their seasonal workload and launched the promotion during the fall and winter, typically the slow season for contractors in an otherwise sunny and hot region of Texas. This careful timing increased the likelihood of upgrades being completed in a timely manner and helped contractors avoid seasonal layoffs. Contractors completed comprehensive energy upgrades in a record 568 homes in the six months after the campaign launch.
Examples
The following resources are examples from individual residential energy efficiency programs, which include case studies, program presentations and reports, and program materials. The U.S. Department of Energy does not endorse these materials.
Toolbox
The following resources are available to help design, implement, and evaluate possible activities related to this handbook. These resources include templates and forms, as well as tools and calculators. The U.S. Department of Energy does not endorse these materials.
Topical Resources
The following resources provide additional topical information related to this handbook, which include presentations, publications, and webcasts. Visit Examples for materials from and about individual programs.
Quick Links
Browse key topics that many residential energy efficiency programs need to address. Select a Quick Link below to see curated resources, including case studies, presentations, tools, calculators, templates, and more. See a full list of all Quick Links (link to Quick Links landing page). If you have suggestions for additional Quick Links, please tell us.
Branding is a way of presenting, positioning, and talking about a program consistently to target audiences to encourage a certain feeling, action, or behavior.
Community events allow for face-to-face contact with target audiences and provide a venue to deliver messages to potential customers by trusted sources.
Community-based social marketing aims to change the behavior of a target audience within a group, neighborhood, or town based on principles of behavioral psychology and community dynamics.
Competitions and challenges among households or towns are intended to increase program participation by creating a sense of urgency and tapping into people’s competitive spirit.
Customer engagement tactics aim to increase the likelihood that a customer will participate fully in a program by forming a relationship between the customer and the program or contractor. From pledges (which provide contractor leads and engage potential customers without requiring a full commitment from them) to testimonials (which encourage homeowners to share their upgrade experience with others), engaging customers in multiple ways can help increase program successes.
Demonstration homes and displays allow potential customers to see energy efficiency improvements that have been completed in neighborhood homes and speak directly to homeowners and/or contractors about the process and its results.
Energy advisors are typically program staff who help customers understand, manage, and successfully navigate the home energy assessment and upgrade processes. Customer services can range from providing independent technical advice to serving as the customer’s primary point of contact for all program services. A program’s decision to use energy advisors varies by community needs and program resources.
Incentives are tools to motivate potential or current customers or stakeholders to take a prescribed action by lowering risk and decreasing upfront costs. The incentive can be financial (e.g., rebates, limited-time offers, special interest rates) or non-financial (e.g., public recognition, prizes, awards).
Market segmentation divides target audiences into categories based on their attitudes, attributes, buying habits, or other characteristics. With this information, teams can research and craft messages that will resonate with specific audience groups and implement targeted marketing tactics to reach them effectively.
Media can be an effective way of communicating your program and its benefits to broad audiences. Media can be paid, earned, or social in nature; each type has a different purpose.
Messages that resonate with key target audiences are critical to a successful energy efficiency program. To motivate action, messages on communications materials need to resonate with the target audience and make a strong, immediate, and positive impression on a program’s potential customers.
Neighborhood sweeps are geographically targeted campaigns to reach a specific audience in an identified community over a defined period of time.
Energy efficiency programs provide identifiable benefits beyond energy savings, such as health and safety improvements, job creation, economic development, avoided emissions, and water savings. Quantifying these non-energy benefits may help program administrators demonstrate progress toward stated program and/or policy goals, or increase general awareness and support for program activities.
Pilot projects allow programs to gain direct experience in their markets, while testing and refining program design and processes before full-scale launch.
Process flow diagrams illustrate key steps, decision points, and interaction points between programs, contractors, and partners from home energy upgrade project inception to completion. They are an important tool for ensuring effective coordination at critical points in the assessment and upgrade process, and identifying opportunities to streamline program processes.
Program dashboards are tracking tools that summarize metrics for monitoring progress toward meeting program goals, objectives, and efficient program processes. For many programs, they are an important tool for assessing and improving programs over time and communicating results to partners and stakeholders.
A request for proposals (RFP) is often necessary to engage the services of a program implementation partner or third party evaluator. A RFP should have a well-defined scope of work and clear description of how proposals will be evaluated.
Giving customers a good experience and encouraging them to refer friends to a program and its contractors are low-cost, high-trust methods for generating demand for your program services. People often trust the opinions of friends, family, and co-workers more than a program or contractor promoting its services.
Public, private, and non-profit organizations often seek to work in partnership with investor-owned and municipal utilities to provide energy efficiency services. Utilities may already offer energy efficiency services that other organizations can enhance or promote, and utilities typically have access to energy consumption data that helps track program success.
Last Updated: 10/15/2014