FirstEnergy

The digital campaign that sparked huge savings for an energy company.

Energy & Sustainability

Advertising // Branding // Content // Design // Digital // Performance Marketing // Research // Social Media // Strategy & Planning

Out of FirstEnergy’s 6 million customers, only 1.5 million were signed up for electronic billing and text alerts, which save FirstEnergy $5 per customer each year and greatly reduce call center volume.

happy meter

Only 25%

of customers were signed up for electronic billing and text alerts.

Where we came in.

With a free tool that brings customers convenience and safety, FirstEnergy needed Mower to figure out why millions weren’t biting. FirstEnergy initially wanted to campaign around the paperless “green” aspect of electronic billing. So we got to work coming up with concepts related to the hassle of having so much paper and its harsh impacts on the environment.

But did it pass the test? Not at all.

Once we tested these concepts, we realized FirstEnergy customers had different motivations for going paperless. Helping the environment is cool and still an important benefit of going digital, but what they really wanted were reminders, alerts and a place to neatly file their statements.

55%

of customers agree their electric utility
improves the lives
of customers.

VS

33%

of customers agree their electric utility
makes the environment better.

Scratch that. New plan.

With these new test results in mind, we made a new plan. First, we leaned deeper into the back-end book smarts to analyze customer segmentation data and insights, research customer motivations and note sign-up barriers, which helped us get to know FirstEnergy customers better than ever before.

Power up the people.

Based on the customer segmentation, we created characters representing the different personas we identified as the best targets for ebill adoption.

Using bright quirky photographs of real-life charismatic characters people can relate to, paired with bold benefit messaging, we leveraged a fully charged campaign. By featuring unique rich media tactics, paid search and social, and smart digital target marketing, we powered big registration results.

117% Increase

in Electronic Billing Registrations

Nice, but what’s the big deal?

Mower started from the bottom to spark some serious change for FirstEnergy, but it didn’t come easy. We were able to take a concept that was not aligning with customer needs, show FirstEnergy that it would not be successful before it even launched and shake off hours spent falling in love with creating those concepts to restart…completely.

But because we did, we created a campaign that yielded an impressive 117% increase in electronic billing registrations, made millions of customers’ lives easier and saved the company over $300,000/year.

To us, that’s the difference having an agency full of fierce friends makes. Because hey, a friend wouldn’t let you buy a sweater that they knew didn’t fit you, would they?

$300,000+/year

in Company Savings

We turn brands into friends.

Through highlighting FirstEnergy’s very own employees, we created a story that showed FirstEnergy as genuine people, just like you, who have a passion to serve their communityultimately changing the stereotypical consumer language of “I’m stuck with my utility company” to “I’m proud of my utility company.” 

Key Brand as Friend® drivers:

Hey! Our name is pronounced Mōw-rrr, like this thing I’m pushing.

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