Moving Utilities from EE and DR to Electrification

October 3, 2018 | Blog

The energy industry is changing in monumental ways. Apogee’s utility clients are concerned about topics such as promoting beneficial electrification, the advancement of renewables, DER, and net metering. At the end of the month Apogee will release its 2018 feature pack to address these subjects and more. Taking these concerns into consideration utilities need to develop relationships and improve communications with their customers to improve brand perception, and public image now more than ever.

Siting a study by Microsoft, CISION, the well-known marketing and communications firm, stated that the average human being now has the attention span of about 8 seconds. This is down from 12 seconds in the year 2000. Incredibly, research from Jampp found that human attention span is decreasing 88 percent every year thanks to digital technology. Customer communications must be relevant, timely, and simple to be effective. Apogee’s team has created a set of creative digital engagement tools specifically designed to catch the eyes and ears of their customers.

This new release will address the issue of digital engagement with enhanced delivery on mobile devices, through social media, and video messaging. The outbound messaging platform, Envoy, is designed to send personalized alerts and bill analysis videos with a focus on relevance and timing. The success our clients are seeing with Personal Video Messaging has led to an explosive expansion of our video library as well. Energy Advisor, Apogee’s online data gathering platform, now has electric vehicle and solar modules set up for the mobile environment.

Throughout the year Apogee listens to the challenges faced by utility professionals.  Our account managers then deliver that feedback to Apogee’s development team. This year the team has focused on ways of effectively communicating these complicated topics with digital technology to meet customers’ expectations. As an added value, collecting data through these digital platforms allows us to provide even more personalized and relevant communications by understanding the individual and personal needs of their customers. This helps utilities build trust with their customers.  Apogee is helping utilities adapt to an industry in transformation by enabling them to personally engage customers regarding energy efficiency, demand response, and electrification.

Apogee knows the energy industry. We listen intently to our clients’ needs. Issues around community solar, electric vehicles, and communicating new rates have been top of mind this year, and forward-thinking utilities are addressing these issues proactively.

About The Author

Dalford Lynn England, Chief Marketing Officer, Apogee Interactive

Lynn England is the Chief Marketing Officer for Apogee Interactive, Inc., directing Apogee’s Marketing and Sales efforts, major account initiatives, supporting the client services team in building business cases, and managing communications with the firm’s largest utility clients.

England brings to the role more than 38 years of business and utility industry experience. His career began at Georgia Power where he started as a statistician and marketing/load research specialist providing energy modeling, financial modeling, and market research design and analysis and became the Southern Company Services manager for Demand-Side Management and End-Use Load and Load Research. He then founded a start-up electric and gas utilities consulting and software development firm that ultimately became GoodCents Solutions, a national turn-key marketing, demand-response, and energy-efficiency company. Under England, GoodCents served more than 180 large utilities in North America with over 500 employees. After a majority share acquisition, England left GoodCents and became involved in several energy and non-energy related entrepreneurial ventures.

England is a graduate of the University of Montevallo where he studied business, market research and computer science. He also holds a master’s degree in applied statistics and decision sciences from Georgia State University.

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