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.

The Energy Efficiency Learning Center offers a selection of trainings and resources to enhance participation in utility energy efficiency programs. It allows users to undertake trainings on the latest home performance standards and best practices on their own schedule.

This flyer provides information about the program's upgrade process, financing, benefits of the program and of home energy upgrades, and eligibility requirements.

This calendar provides Illinois Home Performance's participating contractors with information on upcoming residential energy efficiency trainings or events on topics such as HVAC quality installation and an introduction to building science.

This free hotline is provided by Illinois Home Performance to help homeowners and energy professionals find quick answers to building science questions.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on key challenges and opportunities to deploy interactive engagement strategies including customer segmentation, loyalty and reward programs, and gamification. It features speakers from Fiveworx, ICF International, and Cool Choices.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on ensuring contractor networks work for both energy efficiency programs and participating contractors.

This case study features Better Buildings Residential Network members Elevate Energy and the International Center for Appropriate and Sustainable Technology (ICAST), nonprofit members that develop energy efficiency solutions for multifamily and affordable housing communities.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on communicating non-energy benefits that homeowners and building owners are most interested in. Speakers include Elevate Energy, Green & Healthy Homes Initiative, and Skumatz Economic Research Associates, Inc.

The report, based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and a survey of tens of thousands of businesses across the country, provides detailed breakdowns of clean energy jobs not available previously, and it was developed and released in connection with a major U.S. Department of Energy study of all energy jobs in America.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on quality assurance of energy efficiency services.

Energy burden is the percentage of household income spent on home energy bills. In this report, ACEEE, along with the Energy Efficiency for All coalition, measures the energy burden of households in 48 of the largest American cities. The report finds that low-income, African-American, Latino, low-income multifamily, and renter households all spend a greater proportion of their income on utilities than the average family. The report also identifies energy efficiency as an underutilized strategy that can help reduce high energy burdens by as much as 30%. Given this potential, the report goes on to describe policies and programs to ramp up energy efficiency investments in low-income and underserved communities.

Lists a number of resources related to Michigan Saves, including contractor application, home energy loan implementation guide, and training presentations for residential contractors.

This report, informed by leading research and real-world examples, highlights practical online and in-person tactics that contractors can use to promote social interaction and social comparison among homeowners to make energy upgrades a "must-have" in U.S. homes.

The multifamily sector can be hard to reach when it comes to energy efficiency programs. Besides being diverse and complex, the sector presents a unique set of challenges to efficiency investments. The result is that multifamily customers are often underserved by energy efficiency programs. Drawing on data requests and interviews with program administrators, this report summarizes the challenges to program participation and identifies best practices that programs can use to reach and retain large numbers of multifamily participants.

This Guide is designed to help state and local policymakers to take full advantage of new policy developments by providing them with a comprehensive set of tools to support launching or accelerating residential energy efficiency programs. The Guide focuses on four categories of policies that have proven particularly effective in providing a framework within which residential energy efficiency programs can thrive: incentives and financing, making the value of energy efficiency visible in the real estate market, data access and standardization, and supporting utility system procurement of energy efficiency.

A number of states are beginning to recognize Demand Reduction Induced Price Effects (DRIPE) as a real, quantifiable benefit of energy efficiency and demand response programs. DRIPE is a measurement of the value of demand reductions in terms of the decrease in wholesale energy prices, resulting in lower total expenditures on electricity or natural gas across a given grid. This paper reviews the existing knowledge and experience from select U.S. states regarding DRIPE (including New York and Ohio), and the potential for expanded application of the concept of DRIPE by regulators.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on marketing techniques for lower income and other underrepresented populations.

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 packet contains all the contractor reporting and verification forms required by Energy Impact Illinois.

There are more than 17 million multifamily households nationwide, yet they remain a significant and mostly untapped opportunity for energy efficiency gains. Many cities and states that have embraced energy retrofitting as a job creator and boon to both the environment and economy have yet to address potential savings in multifamily properties, primarily because of obstacles not faced by single family and commercial properties. This paper discusses two barriers -- a lack of information and financing -- that stand in the way of multifamily energy retrofits.

Illinois Home Performance provides co-branding opportunities for participating contractors, including co-branding on program marketing materials.

This webcast discusses the background for U.S. Department of Energy’s Smart Grid Investment Grant (SGIG) consumer behavior study effort; the various utilities who are participating and what they each plan to include their respective studies; the quantitative results and qualitative lessons learned thus far from these studies; and the types of research will be undertaken by LBNL over the next several years.

This packet contains all the contractor reporting and verification forms required by Energy Impact Illinois.

Overview of Michigan Saves' employer outreach initiative to drive uptake of home energy upgrades.

This summary from a Better Buildings Residential Network peer exchange call focused on using social media for long-term branding and marketing.

This article provides 10 tips home energy contractors can use to update their marketing outreach and improve their customer service.

These outreach materials from BetterBuildings for Michigan include a photograph and quote from credible members of the Grand Valley State University (GSVU) community that served as early adopters for the program.

Matrix of participating lenders and associated loan information.

Flyer for contractors that explains the EI2 loan program and loan eligibility criteria.

Flyer for contractors that explains the steps needed to complete the EI2 loan process.

This case study discusses Energy Impact Illinois' marketing evolution from a broad outreach campaign to a Òhouse partyÓ approach that brought Chicago homeowners, neighbors, and friends together to learn about energy efficiency opportunities, while increasing demand for home energy assessments and upgrades.

This Focus Series interview discusses the semester-long, employer-assisted partnership between BetterBuildings for Michigan and Grand Valley State University (GVSU). This successful partnership involved an early adopter outreach campaign and served as a model for other program partnerships.

This video highlights Steve G. of River Forest, IL sharing his experience of how Energy Impact Illinois helped him improve the comfort and value of his 107 year-old home.

Energy Impact Illinois (EI2) conducted 1,600 phone surveys of mid- to high-income households. Its aim was to test program messaging and gauge attitudes toward home improvements and energy efficiency upgrades. The surveys provided a number of insights on the target audience's decision process.

In this video interview segment, Mary Templeton with BetterBuildings for Michigan discusses developing a readiness scale to determine if target audiences are ready to hear a program’s messages and take advantage of its offerings.

This peer exchange call summary focused on the relationship between contract pricing and customers.

This peer exchange call summary focused on sales training assistance programs for contractors.

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 presentation describes the Illinois Home Performance program and marketing strategy lessons learned.

This video explains how Better Buildings for Michigan's performance metrics and quality assurance enabled them to encourage high-performing contractors, to help underperforming contractors improve, and ultimately to dismiss some contractors.

This document provides an overview for incorporating workforce development principles into projects.

This video provides an overview of Better Buildings for Michigan's mentoring program for contractors, and the high value that contractors and the program gain from mentoring.

This case study discusses BetterBuildings for Michigan's targeted outreach campaigns which applied varying incentives and outreach strategies to neighborhoods with a goal to understand which rebates and strategies work best in the target communities.

These BetterBuildings for Michigan mailers show satisfied program customers claiming they have the power to make changes and bring results by increasing the efficiency of their homes.

This presentation provides the results of a 1,600-person survey of mid- to high-income households conducted by Energy Impact Illinois (EI2) to gauge attitudes toward home improvements and energy efficiency upgrades.

This report provides data from nationwide utility customer satisfaction surveys and two case studies to encourage utilities to offer high-quality energy efficiency programs and services for their customers.

This report helps policymakers understand how electric and natural gas utilities can achieve greater efficiency by establishing numeric energy savings targets and goals for energy efficiency programs.

This case study describes an innovative program design used by BetterBuildings for Michigan to "sweep" neighborhoods in order to effectively reach its residential audience and achieve an 80% participation rate among those canvassed.

These award winning videos show the benefits of residential energy efficiency.

This branding guide was developed for BetterBuildings for Michigan staff so they can consistently use the program's look and feel, messages, and tone in marketing and outreach materials.

This sample RFP from Chicago can be used as an example when developing a communications strategy.

This report summarizes the issues and approaches involved in motivating customers to reduce the total energy they consume through energy prices and rate design.

This report considers consumers' perspectives on policy and regulatory issues associated with the administration of energy efficiency investments funded by ratepayers of electric and natural gas utilities.

This report describes the effects of utility spending on efficiency programs, how those effects could constitute barriers to investment in energy efficiency, and how policy mechanisms can reduce these barriers.