Effective and impactful communication with your audience is absolutely vital to the success of your organisation. But if you send too many communications, which is called communication fatigue, or you get the messaging or tone wrong, you run the risk of losing trust as well as your audience’s interest. Your open rates and conversion rates will decrease, and so too will your Return On Investment (ROI). You may even cause your customers to opt out of marketing communications altogether and potentially do more harm to your company and brand, than good.
Statistics show that more than 100 trillion emails are sent every single year and an even more staggering 500 million tweets are posted every single day.1 These numbers don’t even account for the posts communicated via other channels such as instant messages and text messages, and other forms of communication that are constantly being pumped out by companies, big and small, across the globe.
We are all constantly being bombarded by messages for companies trying to get our attention. It’s no wonder that people are all too ready to opt out of marketing communications. So how do you avoid communication fatigue and make sure your customers are not only receptive to hearing from you, but will take action on your advice or your promotions?
Want to avoid communication fatigue?
The results of our annual survey review, which is an assessment of customers engaged in one of our behavioral science based customer engagement programs demonstrate that when it comes to customer engagement, our science based approach hits the right mark.
- As a result of communication up to 90% of households went online to complete our survey, which provides us with more detail and data relating to their homes.
- 90% of respondents recalled receiving their Home Report.
- 37% said they’d gone as far as sharing their Report with family and friends.
- 87% of respondents said that as a result of our Home Reports, they had taken steps to reduce their energy and water consumption.
- 47% saw a reduction in energy and water consumption in their next bill.
Here’s how our behavioral science based customer engagement programs can help water and energy companies avoid communication fatigue:
- We send personalized messages, specific to each customer’s household and their energy or water usage – based on data and data science techniques. This ensures that the information being received by your customers is relevant and useful. For example, we don’t tell homes without a garden how to use water more economically outside and we don’t send homes without an Electric Vehicle tips on when to charge their car.
- Our online platform provides customers with the opportunity to interact and give valuable feedback. Customers can volunteer more detail and information about their home, which then allows us to tailor messages even more accurately. This additional information enables us to apply advanced segmentation to your customer database – putting customers into target market groups, which allows for even more relevant and successful communication. Discover how applying advanced segmentation can help to achieve electrification goals. Our surveys also give customers a chance to provide feedback on our engagement programs, to help us make sure we are achieving our objectives.
- Because our customer engagement solutions are Data Science based, our communications and messages are not only aligned to the customer, but are also sent within the right context. For example – they will be relevant to the customer’s geographical region, the season, or events taking place at the time. This also serves to give the messages credibility.
- By conducting Randomized Control Trials and A/B testing we measure the impact of our communications and customer interventions. This enables us to improve our communications to make them even more effective and to determine the ROI. Learn more about the importance of A/B testing or as it’s also called, Randomized Control Trials.
- Our Management Analytics Portal empowers utility marketers to identify key customer segments based on behavioral attributes – for example, high or low consumers, those that are digitally engaged or those that paper-enthusiasts, etc. These insights facilitate better campaign selection – such as the removal of customers with low conversion potential; those that are at a high risk of leaving, and those with increased probability of customer adoption/conversion. For example, the Management Analytics Portal can help identify and create new campaigns that will drive more change in water or energy usage, such as a Best Next Action campaign to encourage customers to switch to LED lighting, which reduces energy by x5 compared to traditional halogen bulbs. This is also important for the ROI of your customer engagement campaign.
It’s also worth noting that your company’s brand guidelines must allow for some level of flexibility in your customer engagement communications. If they’re too restrictive they can prevent creativity in campaigns and promotions as well as efficiency towards specific customer groups. Obviously there needs to be consistency within your communications, but there needs to be built-in room to flex creativity and come up with the most effective communications and approach. You don’t want your audience to get the feeling they’ve seen every communication before, or they’ll start to switch off!
The good news is, according to the Digital Consumer Trends Index 2021, the majority of customers have an appetite for loyalty and want personalized engagement. So isn’t it time you started using Data Science and Behavioral Science to drive your messages home? Talk to us today to find out more about our customer engagement programs for water and energy companies. We’d love to help you.