Half the hassle for British Gas Business

Challenge:

British Gas Business saw an opportunity to convert their existing single fuel customers into dual fuel buyers, to sell electricity to existing gas customers and vice versa.

In a tough, price-focused market, the daunting challenge was to do this without cutting any margins.

Consumers and especially account managers are very cost focused and see energy as just another commodity. However, British Gas Business was unwilling to undercut their competitors' prices or offer dual fuel discounts.

Therefore, the campaign message had to focus on British Gas Business's strongest selling point: the high levels of support and service offered by dedicated account managers.

Solution:

Because these customers already had accounts with British Gas Business, cross-sell direct mailers were appropriately used to speak to them on a personal level.

The campaign's strategy was to shift the focus from price to quality of customer services through a dedicated account manager. The benefit of having a British Gas Business dedicated account manager is that they not only already understand the customer's business from working on the other side of their energy supply, but they can also give reports and warnings whenever needed and shine light on industry developments.

The main benefit of dual fuel is that a customer has one dedicated manager to call for every energy concern, which makes the whole process on both the gas and electricity side of power supply more efficient. And less stressful.

In fact, half as stressful, as a customer now deals with one manager instead of two. That became the premise which we based this three-stage direct mail campaign around.

Results:

Total mailers sent: 961

Leads generated: 60

Conversion rate:  15%

New customers:  9

ROI: 1:2.9