Going Paperless for Retail Energy with Salesforce Marketing Cloud

A leading retail energy provider wanted to simplify the way new customers sign-up for paperless billing.  These customers would receive an electronic bill via email rather than a physical paper bill in the mail. Currently, the energy provider is spending over $7 million per year on paper mailings. This amount is expected to increase as the company continues to grow and the cost of paper and postage rise. The energy provider also wanted to ensure the solution included an intuitive customer experience and immediate feedback of the customer’s opt-in for paperless billing to the billing system. Once customers respond, they are not included in future email campaigns regarding paperless billing.

Increasing paperless billing sign-ups would lead to reducing the impact of paper waste on the environment, reducing the cost associated with sending physical mail to customers, as well as better serving an increasingly digital customer base. Many customers today prefer to receive bills electronically because they are accessible anywhere and provide an easily searchable history in their inbox.

The solution consisted of an ongoing marketing journey campaign linked to Cloud Pages hosted in Marketing Cloud. The Cloud Pages utilize an API call to the client’s back-end system to register the selected billing preference of mail or email. However, this presented several technical challenges including the client team’s first API integration with an external system. This required coordinating code updates and issue resolution across technical teams, and focused integration testing to get the final solution working as designed.

The MRE team designed the overall solution and then worked with the client team to implement the various components together. The solution consisted of an on-going Email Journey and Marketing Cloud Pages with an API call executed via AMPscript and SSJS.

The campaign targeted new customers who had not yet responded as to whether or not they wanted to receive paperless bills. An on-going Journey sent multiple emails to the target audience featuring 2 options:  Opt-in or Opt-out of paperless billing. The customer is redirected to a Cloud Page hosted in Marketing Cloud which provides a confirmation message to the user letting them know that their selection has been recorded. When the confirmation message is presented to the user, AMPscript and SSJS are used to record the customer’s selection and call an internal server API endpoint (client back-end system) for timely updates to customer preferences. If the customer selected opt-in, they will start receiving paperless billing notifications to their email on file. If the customer selected opt-out, they would no longer receive the campaign emails.

Through the solution, the energy retailer was able to:

• Provide one-click opt-in OR opt-out options within the email
• Provide a confirmation message of the customer’s selection
• Reduce overall paper waste
• Reduce paper and postage costs associated with physical mailings
• Save millions of dollars over several years
• Improve customer satisfaction and provide direct links to important updates