National Grid
National Grid was seeking significant improvement to their paperless billing enrollment across their customer base. They set an aggressive goal to enroll 300,000 residential and commercial customers per fiscal year over the next horizon. They enlisted us to develop a campaign to drive awareness and spark enrollments for initial 3-month period.
The concept of paperless billing is rife with customer inertia. While there is a growing awareness of the environmental benefits and cost-efficiency associated with this digital format, a significant portion of customers remain hesitant to make the transition. The biggest concerns come down to digital security, unfamiliarity with online platforms, previous negative online experience, and a general resistance to change deeply ingrained in payment habits. We know that addressing these underlying factors head on was crucial for customers to make the switch.
We developed custom strategies and tailored messaging to five priority targets (Everyday Customers, Digitally Active, New Joiners, Service Anniversary and Commercial & MBA). Not only did this allow us to emphasize the advantages but we also alleviated specific apprehensions stopping customer engagement during this shift. Our integrated communications plan included new paperless billing landing page, highly targeted emails with ongoing nurture strategy, and social media campaign on Facebook/Instagram and Snapchat.
Overall, we delivered emails to over 1.6M emails customers during the initial phase, with a very strong average open rate of 53% with one-click enrollments, which is over double the benchmark. Within this, 560K Everyday Customers were targeted resulting in 13K net new enrollments and saw significant open rates with Digitally Active and New Joiners on average at 60%. The campaign also delivered over 5.8 million social media impressions. Both Facebook/Instagram and Snapchat outperformed benchmarks, with the messaging around “making the switch to more convenience, organization and security” delivering more than 5Xs the number of clicks vs. messaging around “making your payment anytime, anywhere.”
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