How Ergon Energy energised BPAY take-up (October 2011)
Ergon Energy is the electricity retailer for one million square kilometres of regional Queensland. They have more than 650,000 customers and wanted to improve their BPAY payment volumes. So they asked the BPAY marketing team to join them in a campaign.
The shape of the campaign
According to Nigel Mann, Residential Segment Specialist - Customer and Stakeholder Engagement, the joint campaign used classical direct marketing techniques including segmentation, a competition and direct mail to drive response numbers.
"We selected customers that we wished to migrate from more high cost payment methods like credit cards, Australia Post or cheque and communicated the benefits of paying their electricity bill by BPAY to them ," says Nigel.”
Around 10,000 of these customers were sent a flyer highlighting BPAY's key benefits and offering them a chance to win an Apple laptop if they paid their next bill by BPAY. A follow-up flyer was dispatched with the targeted customers' next bill (one to two weeks after the first flyer).
Campaign results
"We were looking for a typical direct marketing conversion rate of 5%," says Nigel Mann. Instead Ergon Energy's campaign achieved a stellar conversion rate of 12.4%. The company is monitoring the targeted customers over the next 12 months to make sure these results stick. Depending on long term stickiness, they plan to run a similar campaign next year.