Choosing which home-heating customers to prioritize

The question

The first question was which customers in the whole market to prioritize.

Behind it was a second question: which way of describing the company’s existing service proposition would work best for the customers it put first. The plan only made sense if both answers pointed at the same people.

Our approach

We built a quantitative segmentation of the market, sized each segment, and set out the rationale for which to target.

Then we tested versions of the company’s existing service proposition and read the test segment by segment, so the offer was judged through the same segments as the targeting.

Each person saw one version, allocated at random in balanced groups, so the versions could be compared fairly. Interest in signing up was asked on condition of buying a new heating system, so we read it as conditional intent.

What the team came away with

Marketing leadership had a segmentation report with a size for each segment and a rationale for targeting, followed by a proposition test read through the same segments.

With one set of segments behind both, the targeting and the offer could be planned for the same customers.