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 presentation includes examples of 16 programs' creative marketing materials.  The Better Buildings Residential Network held a March Madness tournament to find the most creative residential energy efficiency messages during March Peer Exchange Calls. Sixteen marketing campaigns were featured in a bracket challenge on the calls, and participants made their picks. Residential Network member the Fuel Fund of Maryland was chosen as the winning message for its Watt Watchers campaign.

Utilities and regulators increasingly rely on behavior change programs as essential parts of their demand side management (DSM) portfolios. This report evaluates the effectiveness of currently available programs, focusing on programs that have been assessed for energy savings. This report focuses on behavior change programs that primarily rely on social-science-based strategies instead of traditional approaches such as incentives, rebates, pricing, or legal and policy strategies. The objective is to help program administrators choose effective behavior change programs for their specific purposes.

This report identifies opportunities for Connecticut's Home Energy Solutions program (HES) to increase savings related to air sealing, duct sealing, and insulation.

This report is the process evaluation of the Connecticut Multifamily (MF) Initiative, which leveraged the state's Home Energy Solutions (HES) and Home Energy Solutions-Income Eligible (HES-IE) programs. The objective of this process evaluation is to provide actionable recommendations about how to improve the design, delivery, and administration of the MF Initiative.

This report presents the results of the evaluation of National Grid Rhode Island's 2014 EnergyWise program. EnergyWise is designed to achieve energy savings in single family (1-4 unit) residential homes by directly installing efficient lightbulbs and water heating measures, providing devices for homeowner use, and offering building shell retrofit rebates.

This report provides the electric and natural gas impacts from the suite of National Grid Multifamily Retrofit Programs as determined through a billing analysis.

This report summarizes the impact analyses of National Grid's and Eversource Energy's Home Energy Report (HER) programs. The evaluation team conducted three distinct impact analyses related to these HER programs: Cohort-Specific Impact Analysis; Mapping Analysis; and Dual Treatment Analysis.

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.

This technical reference manual provides detailed, comprehensive documentation of resource and non-resource savings corresponding to the Energy Efficiency Fund program and individual Conservation and Load Management (C&LM) program technologies.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on how to use web and mobile applications to generate and increase customer demand.

Among the many benefits ascribed to energy efficiency is the fact that it can help create jobs. Although this is often used to motivate investments in efficiency programs, verifying job creation benefits is more complicated than it might seem at first. This paper identifies some of the issues that contribute to a lack of consistency in attempts to verify efficiency-related job creation. It then proposes an analytically rigorous and tractable framework for program evaluators to use in future assessments.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on combining solar and home performance energy efficiency.

This resource provides best practices and highlights case studies for how utilities, policymakers, building managers, and community stakeholders can improve access to energy usage data while working towards the goal of improving efficiency in their communities.

The study involved on-site visits to 180 single-family homes across Connecticut. The team assessed compliance with the weatherization standard using both the prescriptive and performance paths and made recommendations to improve program quality.

This summary report provides scientific results, lessons learned, and recommendations for driving energy efficiency in existing buildings on an urban scale. It includes program marketing lesson learned, such as: personal outreach and call to action events are critical marketing opportunities.

This report presents the results of ACEEE's third national review or utility-funded energy efficiency programs, completed in 2013. The report identifies and profiles 63 leading programs that span the wide array of program types offered to utility customers, and highlights key trends and observations that emerged from reviewing these programs.

This publication summarizes some of the incentives offered by Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners.

In this video interview segment, Mick Dalrymple of Energize Phoenix shares how the program used information about its audience to create a fun and appealing brand.

This peer exchange call summary focused on how to calculate and communicate program activities and results.

This report provides results, lessons learned and recommendations for driving energy efficiency in existing building on an urban scale based on the second year of the Energize Phoenix energy efficiency program.

Reviews and summarize energy efficiency financing models and strategies. Models are analyzed according to funding sources, program structures, limits to scale, repayment vehicles, and project risks. Strategies consider applicable building sectors, models, levels of establishment, growth potential, advantages, and disadvantages.

This paper explores ways in which program administrators are using social norms to spur behavior change and, as a result, curb energy use. In recent years, home energy reports (HER) programs have applied the concept of social norms to the energy efficiency context. These feedback programs inform customers of how their energy consumption compares to their neighbors' and provide other information about their usage, with the goal of enticing customers to change their energy use behavior to improve their relative neighborhood ranking.

This peer exchange call summary focused on the challenges and strategies for marketing commercial financial products and attracting financial institutions.

This presentation includes the brands, website addresses, and images for most of the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners.

This report provides results, lessons learned and recommendations for driving energy efficiency in existing building on an urban scale based on the first year of the Energize Phoenix energy efficiency program.

This report describes different approaches to energy efficiency finance taken by utilities.

This guide describes a structure and several model approaches for calculating energy, demand, and emissions savings resulting from energy efficiency programs that are implemented by cities, states, utilities, companies, and similar entities.