For utilities, holidays and season changes offer key opportunities to connect with customers in creative and relevant ways. Utilities can use these times of the year to strengthen customer relationships and promote valuable programs. Whether it’s educating customers about LED lights during the holidays or promoting assistance programs ahead of summer high bill season, planning communications around the seasons can enhance long-term customer satisfaction.

Utilities across the country are making seasonal communications a priority to drive engagement, increase program enrollments and provide greater value to customers.

Planning strategic seasonal communications

Utility marketers are mapping out their seasonal communications in advance, ensuring that messaging aligns with customer needs as well as utility goals. Utilities are launching communications around important milestones, such as the first cold snap in fall, as well as popular holidays and awareness days.

As seasons change, utilities are seizing the moment to educate customers about ways to reduce their energy or water usage, lower monthly bills and prepare for potential severe weather and outages. A seasonal schedule might feature energy-saving tips, financial assistance programs, rebates and incentives, community events and other timely information. 

“Strategic seasonal planning helps us to anticipate what our messaging will look like throughout the year,” says Jenny Foss, Communications and Administrative Coordinator at Elk River Municipal Utilities (ERMU). “With four very distinct seasons in Minnesota, it’s easy to differentiate our messaging and have some fun as well. We try to communicate important information in an engaging manner through a variety of platforms for message consistency and repetition.”

Engaging customers through festive fun

Holidays are a great time to engage with customers and reinforce valuable messages about energy or water use, safety and sustainability in creative ways. For utilities, adding a festive theme to communications can boost engagement and make messages more approachable and relatable.

For Elk River Municipal Utilities, holidays provide an opportunity to connect with customers face-to-face at community events. Every October, the utility participates in Downtown Trick or Treat where employees dress up in costumes and give away candy and other treats to kids, along with sharing rebate information to their parents. According to Foss, the event is a unique opportunity to talk to customers in person about any questions, concerns or feedback they may have.

“It’s such a great opportunity for us to get to know our customers on a more personal level, not just through social media,” Foss says. “It’s a super-fun event, and we look forward to meeting families in our community and engaging with them.”

For Nashville Electric Service (NES), community events are an avenue to prepare customers for winter or summer high bill seasons. For example, utility employees will attend local festivals to help attendees understand the importance of weatherization and the impact on their bill. After those events, NES will invite customers who qualify for energy efficiency assistance to their headquarters to fill out an application, ensuring they receive the right support.  

“On top of our seasonal messaging, we also utilize a hyper-local approach,” says Brent Baker, Vice President and Chief Customer and Innovation Officer at Nashville Electric Service. “We do a lot of partnerships with local organizations, churches and nonprofits that help us reach the community. Even though Nashville is a large city, we are dedicated to a hyper-local focus. It’s at the heart of being a municipal utility.”

Spreading cheer… and savings  

The holiday season is a popular time for people to invest in home upgrades and make appliance purchases. That’s why November and December are timely months for utilities to offer special holiday promotions, incentives or rebates. It’s also a time of year associated with increased energy consumption. Reminding customers to be mindful of their energy use and carbon footprint aligns with broader environmental goals and positions utilities as trusted partners in their communities.   

ERMU’s Communication team takes advantage of the city’s annual Holiday Lights Tour to educate customers about the LED holiday lighting rebate. Elk River residents register their home lighting displays, and the city creates a helpful map for residents to use when driving around to see the holiday lights. ERMU offers customers up to $10 per string of ENERGY STAR^® certified LED holiday lights purchased. The rebate encourages customers to use LED holiday lights to reduce their electric bills and environmental impact.

NES communications are tailored around specific holidays to maximize the impact and better resonate with customers. For example, the NES Communications team sends an email campaign around the Fourth of July to encourage customers to grill outside (versus using their oven) to keep their home cooler and save energy in the summer months. During the holiday season, NES educates customers about how hosting holiday events impacts their energy usage, preparing them for potentially higher bills.  

“Customers are sometimes surprised about an increase in energy or water use when they are hosting a holiday event at their home,” Baker says. “We always want to prepare customers and share helpful tips on energy savings and appliance safety around the holidays.”

Preparing customers for seasonal challenges      

Utility customers are more likely to think about their energy usage during the winter and summer months when bills can be higher due to home heating and cooling. By providing timely energy efficiency tips, assistance programs and other resources during season changes, utilities can help customers lower their bills and reduce impact on the electric grid.

“Seasonal communications are more effective in the sense that customers will not be too interested in AC tune-up rebate information in January when our temperatures don’t get much above zero degrees,” Foss says. “But if we time this message coming out of spring and into summer, it is timely information.”

Beginning in the fall, ERMU shares vital information about payment assistance, weatherization and other programs that support customers during the harsh Minnesota winters. For example, the state’s Cold Weather Rule protects customers facing hardship from electricity or natural gas disconnection from October 1 to April 30. ERMU notifies residential customers of Cold Weather Rule requirements and shares weatherization resources to help customers reduce their energy bills.  

“In addition to informing customers about Minnesota’s Cold Weather Rule, it is also important to provide home weatherization tips when entering the winter months,” Foss says. “We share a variety of messages to address a variety of customer needs.”

In advance of winter and summer, NES educates customers about the impact of very cold and very hot temperatures on energy bills and reliability. According to Baker, customers are not always aware of the connection between high energy bills and outside temperatures.

One of the utility’s most successful seasonal communications was a weather alert campaign ahead of a summer heat wave. The campaign informed customers about impending hot weather and shared helpful energy savings and safety tips.

“We sent communications leading up to a week of extreme temperatures,” Baker says. “While out in the community, our employees were hearing from customers about how much the emails had helped them. We have open rate and other data that show that the emails were well-received but getting anecdotal evidence really confirmed that the emails had a positive impact.” 

For Alliant Energy, communications are driven by the season, primarily summer and winter. In addition to energy savings and efficiency tips, the utility focuses on safety information, including educating customers about outage resources and sharing reminders to avoid downed power lines.

“Should we experience extended outages due to Mother Nature, we provide regular updates on our social media pages and in our newsroom,” says Cindy Tomlinson, Manager, External Communications at Alliant Energy. “We know how frustrating it is to be without power, regardless of the cause, and strive to provide frequent updates to help customers make decisions for the safety of their families.”

Alliant Energy also focuses their spring and fall messaging on the agriculture community, sharing safety messages ahead of the planting and harvesting seasons. For example, the utility shares educational content for local farms, such as harvest safety tips, grain bin safety rules for overhead lines, and how farmers can avoid hitting underground gas and electrical pipelines.

The utility also promotes the Farm Wiring program, which provides proper wiring and grounding of electrical systems to increase the safety and wellbeing of Wisconsin livestock farms. Agriculture customers can receive incentive grants up to $10,000 per wiring project.

Year-round customer engagement

By creating thoughtful, timely seasonal communications, utilities can keep customers engaged year-round, providing valuable energy savings advice, promoting assistance programs and serving as trusted community partners. Utilities have the opportunity to foster stronger relationships with customers and help them navigate seasonal energy challenges with confidence.

“Be willing to have some fun when creating engaging seasonal communications,” Baker says. “Just because we’re a utility doesn’t mean it has to be super formal and serious. Customers resonate with fun content – just make sure you’re giving them the helpful information they need.”