We so often hear “I have all this data, but I have no idea how to use it in meaningful ways.” In order to “scale up,” we need to best evaluate where we are and where we’ve been. Our Vice President of Client Services for our Verdant Brand Communications division, Sarah Gibson presented at the annual BECC (Behavior, Energy and Climate Change) conference how data mining helped us better understand and engage with our client’s audience. For our client, Focus on Energy, we sought to address that challenge and uncover the answer to these critical questions
- Who are my core program participants?
- Who comes back for more?
- What are the demographics, attitudes, behaviors, and lifestyles that define them?
- What are the ideal program and product bundles for my market segments?
In order to answer these questions, we undertook a comprehensive data integration and segmentation exercise. This task involved cleaning customer participation data and analyzing it for program participation, patterns, and insights. We then appended customer data with syndicated energy profiles to understand high-propensity segments, life stage groupings, and media habits.
The outcome of this work are target segments that allow us to conduct relevant and meaningful outreach for specific programs and bundles. This strategy will help Focus on Energy scale program design and communications for future growth and attraction based on where participants and potential participants have been and want to be on their energy efficiency journey.
Some surprising findings we uncovered:
- One of the highest propensity segments in the state was largely untapped, uncovering an entire population that needs a different message and program mix to act.
- Only a very small percentage of program participants enrolled in more than one program, uncovering a huge opportunity for cross-sell and program bundling.
- The time horizon for someone to participate in their second or third program is very long, with the exception of one program combination. This begins to uncover opportunities for customer journey alignment based on the most intuitive steps for customers.
- The most heavily populated area in the state had the least amount of program penetration.
Interested in continuing the discussion or learning more? Please reach out to Sarah Gibson, Vice President, Client Services at sarah.gibson@weareverdant.com.
