Credit Bureau data improves qualified leads for utility company

Business challenge

In states with deregulated utilities, consumers can choose their utility company. Because competition is so stiff, energy providers are constantly on the lookout for new and better ways to market their services, along with retaining and attracting customers who are constantly moving in and out of their service area.

As one of the leading utility companies in the country, our client was using single-bureau credit data to identify potential credit-qualifying customers, resulting in a 40% match of available customers in their markets, where they could only previously find an identity. They needed to reach more.

Solution

Deluxe was brought into the relationship as a new data provider to help with their prescreen acquisition mail and credit appends program. Using a tri-bureau approach consisting of the most up-to-date and accurate data available to match utility households to credit-worthy customers, our goal was to identify the person in the house with the highest credit score to whom we could offer the best rewards and credit terms.

Results

Our approach tilted the economics of the client’s acquisition program in a much more favorable direction. By finding and mailing to more credit-qualified prospects, we were able to eliminate the cost of remails while driving more conversions and ultimately increasing revenue. Previously, the client would continue to remail consumers in the hope of raising their response rates. Using our tri-bureau approach, they were able to yield an 80% match rate (twice what they were getting with their previous data provider) while eliminating the time, effort and money it took to continuously remail.

We conducted two credit match tests against the client’s prospect universe, the first yielding almost 2x the universe and the second validation test yielding almost 3x the reach, numbers that are in line with what our top tri-bureau customers regularly see. In conclusion, we found that the tri-bureau approach delivered 2-2.5 times more credit matches and prospects to whom the client could mail each quarter, leading to more customers, more revenue and more growth.