Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) is a not-for-profit publicly owned power utility company servicing 849,000 people in 13 counties. As a public power utility, OPPD must act in response to the needs and desires of its customers and the communities it serves. This includes offering its customers ways to save on energy and be more energy efficient. Using less energy lowers customer utility bills, limits the need to invest in additional infrastructure to meet demand and reduces the community’s carbon footprint by lowering greenhouse gas emissions.
October is National Energy Awareness month, so OPPD wanted to find a unique way to educate customers on how they could be more energy efficient, as well as drive traffic to the content hub on the OPPD website, which was full of digestible tips and tricks.
We considered two things:
- We know that customers are heavily influenced and motivated by saving money.
- We know that, in October, customers are out enjoying fall activities, like going to pumpkin patches. And one of the most heavily trafficked pumpkin patches in Omaha is Vala’s. (Vala’s sits on 400 acres of land and is more like a mini amusement park than a pumpkin patch, with something for the whole family to enjoy.)
With this knowledge in mind, we devised a one-month social media campaign called “Save Your Energy for Vala’s.” We encouraged OPPD customers to create an energy-saving-tip video and share it on their social platforms, using the hashtag #oppdsavings. For doing this, the first 100 OPPD customers would receive a four-pack of tickets to Vala’s.
For the creative, we led with the incentive, focusing heavily on the Vala’s experience that participants can enjoy after they enter in the contest. The statement “Save Your Energy for Vala’s” was ambiguous in the sense that we were encouraging participants to do a small energy-saving act around their house, as well as save up their physical energy for a fun day/night at Vala’s. Because Vala’s is a family-friendly outing, this creative featured children – because, let’s face it, they are the reason you need to save your energy. Plus, parents scrolling through social stop more often on photos of children.
The campaign utilized the following tactics: paid Facebook carousel ad; organic social media posts; campaign landing page; email to current OPPD customers; a homepage feature on OPPD.com; a direct mailer with tickets that was sent to the winners.
OPPD had met its goal of 100 video submissions demonstrating in-home energy efficiency tactics 10 days after the campaign kicked off. The videos included everything from changing the direction of your ceiling fan to turning off/unplugging unused items to washing your clothes with cold water. Because the incentives were depleted earlier than expected, we took the remaining ad budget and put it into additional organic creative. We compiled some of the best user-generated videos and reposted them in OPPD’s channel. The Facebook ads achieved 205,000 impressions with 476 clicks. The Facebook posts had a 5.89% engagement rate with 355 clicks, 140 comments and 1,678 video views.
