This toolkit describes how to strengthen residential energy efficiency program outreach and marketing efforts through data-driven, tailored efforts to change behaviors. One of the greatest challenges facing the residential energy efficiency market is motivating people to take steps to save energy. This toolkit provides guidance, resources, and examples for applying community-based social marketing (CBSM) to increase the number of homes that are energy efficient.

This conversion rate spreadsheet was developed to assist Home Performance with ENERGY STAR (HPwES) participating contractors.

This marketing plan template was developed to assist Home Performance with ENERGY STAR (HPwES) participating contractors develop their marketing plans.

This marketing tactics spreadsheet was developed to assist Home Performance with ENERGY STAR (HPwES) participating contractors.

Home Energy Score is an online tool used by assessors to rate a home’s energy efficiency on a scale of 1 to 10, with a score of 10 indicating that the home has excellent energy performance and a score of 1 indicating that the home needs extensive energy improvements. Once a home is scored, homeowners receive recommendations on how to improve their score.

This online tool was designed to help Americans save money and energy by improving the energy efficiency of their homes through recommended, customized, and prioritized home improvement projects. The tool guides homeowners through a do-it-yourself energy assessment to create an ENERGY STAR home profile. Based on the newly created profile, the tool provides customized, prioritized recommendations for improvements. From these recommendations, users can create their own to-do lists of projects and update their home profiles over time as they make improvements. The home profiles can also be printed and used as a marketing advantage when homeowners sell their homes.

National Housing & Rehabilitation Association has collected a number of energy efficiency factsheets and resources on their Preservation Through Energy Efficiency Initiative Library.

The Marketing & Outreach Implementation Plan Template will help you develop a strategy for planning, operating, and evaluating your marketing and outreach activities.

The Better Building Residential Program Implementation Plan Template will help you develop a strategy for planning, operating, and evaluating a successful residential energy efficiency program. The template includes sections for all six program components (i.e., Market Position & Business Model, Program Design & Customer Experience, Evaluation & Data Collection, Marketing & Outreach, Financing, and Contractor Engagement & Workforce Development).

The Better Building Residential Program Implementation Plan Template will help you develop a strategy for planning, operating, and evaluating a successful residential energy efficiency program. The template includes sections for all six program components (i.e., Market Position & Business Model, Program Design & Customer Experience, Evaluation & Data Collection, Marketing & Outreach, Financing, and Contractor Engagement & Workforce Development).

The Better Buildings Residential Network Designing Incentives Toolkit can help residential energy efficiency programs design incentives that motivate potential customers to act by lowering the risk, decreasing the cost, or offering additional benefits with home energy upgrades. This toolkit provides easy access to various case studies, presentations, and tips related to incentive design.

The Better Buildings Residential Network Social Media toolkit can be used to help residential energy efficiency programs learn to engage potential customers through social media. Social media can build brand awareness concerning home energy upgrades and the entities working on them, which can lead to more energy upgrade projects taking place in the long run. This toolkit will help program managers and their staff with decisions like what social media works best for various program needs. When aligned with other marketing and outreach efforts, social media can be a useful tool in attracting home energy upgrade customers. Note that social media changes constantly, so users of this toolkit need to regularly reassess their methods and review results to ensure goals are being met.

A one-page template that helps program administrators visualize activities and associated timelines for their marketing efforts.

This worksheet can help you organize your ideas and methods for creating an effective evaluation plan.

The Database for Incentives and Joint Marketing Exchange (DIME) is an online, searchable tool to help manufacturers and retailers identify incentive and marketing opportunities for promoting ENERGY STAR certified products, and to enable all partners to coordinate with the appropriate contact from other partner organizations on promotional opportunities.

This instructional template offers instructions on how to write a press release.

Example proposal evaluation scoring sheet to rank qualifications of financial institution bidders for energy efficiency upgrade loan programs.

The State Energy Data System (SEDS) is the source of the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) comprehensive state energy statistics. EIA’s goal in maintaining SEDS is to create historical time series of energy production, consumption, prices, and expenditures by state that are defined as consistently as possible over time and across sectors for analysis and forecasting purposes.

This database provides comprehensive information on state, federal, local, and utility incentives and policies that are in place to support renewable energy and energy efficiency.

The Small Town Energy Program (STEP) toolkit gives a complete overview of STEP from planning to implementation. It also includes access to a wide variety of materials developed by the program, including: local asset materials, partner materials, personnel materials, program administrative materials, outreach materials, and surveys. STEP has posted these toolkit documents with the hope that it will assist other small towns and communities in building and running more energy efficiency programs.

Homeowner survey created by the utility to inform their whole home upgrade program.

This audience brainstorming and categorization worksheet assists programs in determining their target audiences and which audiences to prioritize.

Short survey for Connecticut's Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge workshop participants. The workshop allowed the program to share its energy efficiency offerings with homeowners.

One-page template to use when developing a partnership agreement between an energy efficiency upgrade program and another organization.

This worksheet can help key program and marketing staff collaborate to develop a brand platform.

Survey form used by Energy Upgrade California to assess open house tour attendee interest in obtaining further information about upgrade opportunities.

This sample phone survey template for program drop-outs, created by the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program, was designed for programs to find out why applicants that applied to participate in a program ultimately dropped out.

This sample phone survey template, created by the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program, was designed for programs to use with applicants who have been screened out from participating in a program.

This sample email survey template, created by the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program, was designed for programs to develop their own survey of successful program participants in order to assess customer experience.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Message Map and Value Proposition Worksheet is designed to help programs determine the key messages to best communicate to priority audiences.

This document provides a tutorial of MY ENERGY STAR Account (MESA).  MESA is a Web portal that houses program marks for ENERGY STAR Sponsors and contractors as well as various marketing pieces.

This document provides a menu of initial questions for a program administrator or implementer to build on and use in developing a real-time evaluation survey to collect qualitative data from program participants.

Sample script Los Angeles County used to survey homeowners about energy issues.

This calculator provides a simplified tool to demonstrate the business case for energy efficiency from the perspective of the consumer, the utility, and society.

This website provides resources for those working to foster sustainable behaviors. Users can access to the book, Fostering Sustainable Behavior; search databases of articles, case studies, and turnkey strategies; and participate in discussion forums.