Nicor Gas - Marketing Campaign of the Year - Government / Institutional / Recruitment

Company: Nicor Gas, Naperville, IL
Company Description: Nicor Gas is one of four natural gas distribution companies of Southern Company Gas, a wholly owned subsidiary of Southern Company (NYSE: SO). The company serves more than 2.2 million customers in a service territory that encompasses most of the northern third of Illinois, excluding the city of Chicago. The Nicor Gas Energy Efficiency Program started in 2011, and it has helped 840,000 customers save
Nomination Category: Marketing Campaign Categories - Industry
Nomination Sub Category: Marketing Campaign of the Year - Government / Institutional / Recruitment

Nomination Title: Operation Warm – Warm Homes, Warmer Hearts

Specify the date on which this campaign or program was launched: The campaign launched on October 1, 2020.

During the first half of 2020, the Nicor Gas Energy Efficiency Program (EEP) team was keeping a close eye on furnace rebate participation. Due to the pandemic, we were seeing less rebate redemption activity than expected. We wanted to find ways to boost participation to support our customers with their energy savings. With the notoriously cold weather rapidly approaching, it was imperative that we find a new way to reach customers with our furnace rebate messaging.

Simultaneously, our parent company and its affiliates were seeking ways to help customers who were economically impacted during this period. Families across our enterprise footprint were struggling to meet their basic needs. We wanted to see if we could partner our EEP initiative with more community-focused opportunities.

Our EEP team identified a great opportunity to partner the program’s initiative with the mission of Operation Warm, a non-profit organization that manufactures brand new winter coats and distributes them to children in low-income communities. The organization was a good fit for our company’s vision and philanthropic strategy. One of the key benefits of natural gas, and gas furnaces in particular, is warmth during the winter. The main purpose of Operation Warm is to provide warmth, confidence and hope to children in need. The partnership provided the perfect way to promote the availability of furnace rebates for customers who were looking at upgrading to energy-efficient model while helping the communities we serve. This is how the Warm Homes, Warmer Hearts campaign began to take shape.

Through the Warm Homes, Warmer Hearts campaign, Nicor Gas committed to donating one coat for every furnace rebate application received in October. Based on existing forecasts, we expected 1,254 furnace rebates for the month of October. We expected that with the Operation Warm campaign, we could attain an additional 146 furnaces, for a total of 1,400 applications. We worked with the Southern Company Gas Foundation to commit $30,800 to Operation Warm – enough for 1,400 coats. Once the goals were set and funds were secured, we were able to launch our marketing planning in earnest.

With a limited budget and a very tight turnaround, we decided on a multi-pronged campaign including an inline bill insert, email, Google Display video ads and social media posts that could be produced in-house. The next step was to give the campaign a name and develop our key message. Since there was a joint purpose of increasing furnace participation and promoting goodwill in our communities, the campaign was named Warm Homes, Warmer Hearts.

Working in coordination with a representative from Operation Warm, we were able to use real pictures of students who received coats through the organization in our creative. Through each creative iteration, we shared our progress with the Operation Warm team for their approval. The bill insert ran in the October customer bills along with digital ads and social media posts that ran simultaneously.The email campaign dropped mid-October. Social media posts also ran through December during coat distribution.

During October, we received 1,550 furnace rebate applications – 150 over our goal, and nearly 300 over the original October forecast. It was a 23.6% increase over the same period the year before. We worked with Nicor Gas Corporate Giving team to cover the additional coat donation, contributing another $15,000. In total, we were able to deliver more than 2,000 coats to children in need. The marketing tactic results were as follows:

- Inline bill insert was delivered to all 1.3 million paper-billed customers in the Nicor Gas territory
- Email was sent to a list of 839K customers that had been identified through predictive analytics for potential participation in our furnace rebate offering. The email garnered a 26.81% gross open rate (compared to similar email efforts averaging between 15 and 18%).
- Google Display ads received 258K impressions and 6.1K clicks – 42.3 impressions per click – 25 times more effective than ads running the same time from during the previous year with 1,100 impressions per click.
- Our coat distribution event post on Facebook was the second-most liked post for the year for Nicor Gas behind the company's notice of service disconnection suspension due to COVID-19. The featured post garnered a total of 102 likes.
- Our coat distribution effort was picked up by two local news stations—it was featured five times and reached more than 460,000 viewers for an estimated $87,544 in earned media value.