Communicate program results to contractor partners and workforce development stakeholders.
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Solidify your program strategy and decide which customers you will focus on; what products, services, and support you will provide; and how you will partner with contractors and others to deliver services to your customers.
Determine processes for collecting and sharing data about key contractor metrics and workforce development activities.
Create your organization’s business plan, which describes how your operational and financial structure will support the delivery of energy efficiency services.
Define your business model, including market position, products and services, type of customers, financial model, governance structure, and the assets and infrastructure your organization needs.
Monitor the effectiveness of marketing and outreach strategies and adapt as needed.
Create your program's branding guidelines and materials to elevate program visibility and support your marketing and outreach efforts.
Develop a plan to implement your financing activities, with defined roles for financial institution partners, contractors, customers, and your program.
Develop a plan and metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing and outreach strategies.
Develop a marketing and outreach plan that details your strategies and tactics, workflows and timelines, staff roles and responsibilities, and budget.
Decide on priority target audience segments, messages, and incentives that will motivate customers.
Design a residential energy efficiency program that integrates marketing and outreach, contractor coordination, incentives, financing, and program evaluation to provide customers with the products and services they want through a customer-centric process.
Spur consumer demand for your program's services by understanding your target audience and motivating them to act using effective messaging, marketing and outreach tactics, and attractive program offers.
Develop contractor engagement, quality assurance, and workforce development plans that include strategies, workflow, timelines, and staff and partner roles and responsibilities.
Improve your program’s efficiency and effectiveness through regular information collection, assessment, decision-making, adaptation, and communication.
Develop the necessary materials, tools, and staff capacity to effectively deliver and manage your program.
Solidify your program strategy and decide which customers you will focus on; what products, services, and support you will provide; and how you will partner with contractors and others to deliver services to your customers.
Establish metrics and measurement strategies for understanding whether you are effectively achieving your program goals and meeting your customers’ needs, while identifying areas that can be improved.
Support and partner with the workforce who will deliver your program’s energy efficiency services by understanding their capacity, recruiting contractor partners, enabling technical training and business development support, fostering clear communication, and refining program processes over time, in partnership with your workforce.
Several successful residential energy efficiency programs offered multiple types of home energy assessments to appeal to a wider spectrum of homeowner interests and needs. These ranged from online home assessments to brief walk-throughs to full diagnostic testing. A comprehensive evaluation of over...
A residential energy efficiency program’s success is dependent on the quality of work that contractors conduct in customers’ homes. Indeed, an in-depth examination of selected program strategies found that effective quality assurance and quality control programs provided a foundation for quality...
Paper-based or spreadsheet-based information collection processes can be low cost to develop and easy to roll-out, but more often than not, they become cumbersome to aggregate and store the data from many sources. Many Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners found that investing in...
Given all of the other things that compete for your audience’s attention, it is critical that program participation steps are straightforward and easy to understand. Many programs have found that complexity makes it harder for interested homeowners to complete upgrade projects. These programs have...
While homeowners may be interested in the benefits of an energy upgrade, many are deterred from completing an upgrade project because of the complex and unknown process. Often, a significant portion of homeowners who receive energy assessments do not continue with the upgrades. As part of the Better...
Many programs struggle with communicating the value of financing to homeowners. Financing can be a complicated topic, and ensuring that homeowners understand how their loans work and the benefits they will realize is important for converting interest into action. Many Better Buildings Neighborhood...
Following up on leads that result from your marketing and outreach efforts quickly and consistently will help your program convert them from interested parties to satisfied customers. Many programs found a sizable drop-off in action if they or their contractors were not able to follow up within a...
Low-cost financing for home energy upgrades does not increase customer demand for upgrades on its own. A comprehensive evaluation of over 140 programs across the United States found that homeowners must be sold on the benefits of home energy upgrades before financing can become valuable to them...
Publication Date
Organizations or Programs
Enhabit,
NeighborWorks H.E.A.T. Squad
This webcast includes slides and information on programs' use of concierge programs to support contractors. It highlights two program examples: Clean Energy Works Oregon (now Enhabit) and Vermont NeighborWorks.
Publication Date
Organizations or Programs
Enhabit,
NeighborWorks H.E.A.T. Squad
This webcast includes slides and information on programs' use of concierge programs to support contractors. It highlights two program examples: Clean Energy Works Oregon (now Enhabit) and Vermont NeighborWorks.
Publication Date
This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on energy advising and concierge services without American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grants.
Publication Date
This white paper from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory describes the benefits and costs of energy advisors, and describes how residential energy efficiency programs have made use of them in their program design.
Publication Date
Organizations or Programs
Florida Weatherization Assistance Program,
New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)
This report presents a review of selected home energy auditing tools. The energy audit tools reviewed in this study include REM/Rate, BEACON Home Energy Advisor, EnergyInsights, Home Energy Tune-uP, EnergyGauge, TREAT, the National Energy Audit Tool (NEAT), Home Energy Saver Professional (HESPro), and RealHomeAnalyzer.
Publication Date
Organizations or Programs
EnergySmart Colorado
Overview of lessons learned from EnergySmart Colorado's energy advisor model.
Publication Date
Organizations or Programs
Enhabit
This presentation from Clean Energy Works Oregon (now Enhabit) covers their "One-Stop Shop" Home Energy Remodel process where customers were guided through a four-step process: apply, assess, finance, and transform. This simple process gave customers access to a comprehensive package of services that included assistance from an independent energy advisor.
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Organizations or Programs
Connecticut Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge
Connecticut's Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge uses dashboards that display key project data for administrators and contractors to monitor progress over time. The program has evaluated performance at different steps in the process and identified strategies to improve performance where needed, such as sales training for contractors, energy advisors, monthly contractor scorecards, and multiple customer "touches." These improvements increased the close rate from 26 to 60 percent in one year.
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Organizations or Programs
EnergySmart Colorado
Example survey about a homeowner's experience with a visit from an energy advisor as part of EnergySmart in Boulder County, Colorado.
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Organizations or Programs
RePower Kitsap,
RePower Bainbridge,
RePower Bremerton
In this video interview segment, Yvonne Kraus of Conservation Services Group describes how energy advisors were an important strategy for building trust with customers in the community.
Publication Date
Organizations or Programs
NeighborWorks H.E.A.T. Squad
In this video interview segment, Ludy Biddle with Neighborworks of Western Vermont describes the benefits of one-on-one communications between customers and the Neighborhood H.E.A.T. Squad program's energy advisors.
Publication Date
Organizations or Programs
Denver Energy Challenge
This case study discusses Denver Energy Challenge's adjustment from focusing on door-to-door outreach to an energy advisor model that allowed customers to receive one on one support throughout the home energy upgrade process.