One of the keys to delivering the right message to the right audience is segmentation. By sending a message only to those who would be interested in receiving it, your communication is more targeted and engaging. You’ve likely been on the receiving end of segmentation via ads in your Facebook feed or specific emails from companies you frequent
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There are numerous ways to segment your audience, including by demographics (age, income, education), by behavior (interests, types of interaction with your co-op) or other attributes, such as length of co-op membership or their number of meters. If you are unsure how to access your co-op's demographic and behavioral data, check with your IT manager or CIS vendor.
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If there is useful data you are not currently capturing, consider ways to do so. Use surveys and polls to help fill in gaps and provide information specific to the members you serve.
Demographic Segmentation
Segmenting your email list by age is a good place to start. However, if member age data is not available or complete, you may be able to approximate a young adult sample by running a report with a combination of attributes: member of fewer than 10 years; online bill pay; has children who have applied for Youth Tour/scholarships. While this project defines the age of our target audience (25-45), it will be up to each co-op to dive deeper than age alone to determine how to best meet the needs and goals of your young adult members. Even within this age bracket, 25-year-olds are at a much different life stage than 45-year-olds, and every person will not have the same lifestyle and interests.
Behavioral Segmentation
When you combine age segmentation with behavioral segmentation, you will get better results. Behavioral segmentation looks at member behavior, communication preferences, product choices and interests to paint a clearer picture of your target audience. As you analyze and segment, where possible draw on additional knowledge gained through questions fielded by member services representatives, responses to programs, social media comments and surveys to continuously adjust and evolve your strategies and tactics. Below is an initial list of ways you could segment members depending on the goal you are trying to achieve, such as promoting energy efficiency or rebate programs.
Behavioral Segmentation Criteria
There are many ways to analyze members and segment your lists depending on your objective. You can gain significant insights based on a member’s business relationship with your co-op, such as their preferred payment methods, what district they live in or what co-op programs they participate in.
Below is a list of potential criteria you can use to segment your members, including many that directly relate to the values and interests of young adult members. Each of these criteria can be used alone or combined to provide increasingly specific insights that can help ensure you are sending the right communications to the right audience. As you experiment with combining different criteria to create lists and then measure the results against your goal, you will develop a deeper knowledge of your members and of what works. As a reminder, since your membership changes every day, be sure to pull the list as close as possible to its planned usage date to improve accuracy.
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- District designation
- Length of time as a member (new members, less than five years, etc.)
- Voting or non-voting members
- Voting channel—in-person, early voting through paper ballot, online voting
- Residential versus business or C&I members
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- Autopay or paperless billing
- Pre-paid participants
- Levelized billing participants
- Online bill pay participants
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- Energy assessment participants
- Energy efficiency rebate recipients
- Energy use (high, average, low)
- Electric vehicle program participants
- Demand response participants
- Purchased water heater from co-op
- Time-of-use program participants
- Electric vehicle program discounts
- Beat the Peak program participants
- Net-zero or Energy Star home building participants
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- Community solar participants
- Distributed generation participants
- Distributed generation and home battery participants
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- Annual meeting attendees or non-attendees
- Operation Round Up participants
- Service project participants
- Youth Tour alumni and family
- Scholarship winners
- Tree giveaway recipients
- Youth and student program participants and alumni
- Co-op Advisory Board participants
- Beat the Peak participants
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- Broadband participants
- Wi-Fi thermostat program participants
- Mobile app users
- Device type: iPhone or Android
- Smart device users: Alexa or Google Home
- Opted in to email
- Opted in to text/SMS
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Want more segmentation resources? Consumer-targeting company Claritas provides a free tool that allows you to see basic personas for people living within a ZIP code. This information can be used in conjunction with the data you receive from your billing vendor, NISC and SEDC to home in on the audiences you want to target for your various outreach activities.
Examples of Using Segmented Data to Deliver Targeted Communications
One way to approach targeted messaging to achieve a particular goal is to first understand who has already taken part in the activity you would like to promote. For example, if your goal is to increase the number of energy assessments in the young adult age group, first pull a list of everyone in the last five years who has completed an energy assessment. Then analyze that group for insights that help you narrow the list. You can then filter by age, district or length of time at the co-op to identify your best opportunities to achieve the goal.
Six examples using segmentation to create targeted email lists:
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Offer: Looking for ways to lower your bills and reduce energy waste? Start with an online self-audit of your energy use.
Segmented List: Pull list of homeowners who have high energy bills, are community solar participants, distributed generation participants, EV participants and Wi-Fi thermostat participants. With this list in hand, you can further segment by age, district and length of time with co-op for further insights into your targeted list.
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Message: Your voice. Your co-op. Your mobile device.
Segmented List: Create lists of members age 25-45 who have and haven’t voted in the past two years. Use past evidence of tech adoption to further refine your list, such as those have opted into text messages or those who use online bill pay. Deliver your message through multiple platforms and encourage electronic voting but mention other opportunities.
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Message: We make choosing clean energy easy.
Segmented List: Pull a list of all young adult members, efficiency rebate participants, EV participants, Wi-Fi thermostat participants.
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Message: We need your fresh ideas! Join us for Brats and Watts.
Segmented List: Pull a list of members ages 25-45 and invite them to attend a social event. If this creates an invite list that is too large, segment further using smaller age ranges, district criteria or length of co-op membership to hear from newcomers. Or host the event on two different dates.
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Message: Together we can help our community thrive! Help us identify your favorite non-profit’s greatest need.
Segmented List: Pull a list of past participants in a community-focused activity, such as Operation Round Up, as an indicator, then break down by age. Don’t forget to include co-op employees too.
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Message: Avoid billing surprises. Sign up for budget alerts today!
Segmented List: Pull a list of members with higher-than-average bills and prepaid billing, while excluding those enrolled in levelized billing. Segment by age or refine by other indicators of tech adoption, like online bill pay.
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