Utility marketing is a tough brief. Electricity, gas, heating and water are essential, but to most customers they are invisible until the bill arrives. Products look alike from one supplier to the next, switching is easy and price is often the only thing people compare. Yet energy and utility companies need what every marketer needs: marketing permissions, qualified leads and customers who stay.
Gamification has become one of the most effective tools in this category. Danish energy companies such as Andel Energi, EWII and DCC Energi use interactive campaigns to collect permissions at scale, explain complex topics and keep customers engaged all year. This guide shows how, with their real results and the KPIs to follow.
Utility marketing challenges
Energy and utility companies share a set of challenges that make traditional marketing hard work.
A commodity product
A kilowatt-hour is a kilowatt-hour. When products look the same, customers compare on price, and price-led marketing rarely builds loyalty.
Churn
Customers can compare suppliers and switch with little effort. Retention is a marketing job, not just a customer service job.
Low engagement
Most contact with customers is transactional: bills, meter readings, service messages and price changes. As DCC Energi puts it, energy is not an impulse purchase. It is rational, price-sensitive and often commoditised.
High data requirements
Utilities often need more than an email address to qualify a lead: a phone number, an address and the right permissions. Andel Energi's team describes it as a high-friction reality, where they need all the information in one go. Long forms lead to drop-offs.
Complex products
Heat pumps, solar panels, EV charging, broadband speeds and variable tariffs all need explaining. Customers who do not understand an offer rarely buy it.
Collecting marketing permissions at scale
Email and SMS flows only work if you have permission to send them. For many utilities, permissions are the foundation of cross-selling, upselling and retention.
Earn the interaction first
Andel Energi, Denmark's largest energy company, found that the problem was not the form itself, but everything before it. When users hit a long form without a reason to fill it in, many dropped off. By making the experience more engaging first, more people willingly shared their information.
That is the core idea: give people a fun minute and a chance to win, and they are far more willing to share their details and say yes to hearing from you.
Make the exchange fair and clear
- Keep the form as short as possible for your needs, and only ask for what you will use.
- Make the permission a clear, separate choice, so people know exactly what they agree to.
- Consider double opt-in to make sure email addresses are real.
- Choose a prize that matches the effort. The more you ask for, the better the incentive should be.
If you use competitions to collect marketing consent, check the current rules in each market. In Denmark, the Consumer Ombudsman publishes guidance on forbrugerombudsmanden.dk.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Rules differ between countries and change over time, so check the current rules and get legal advice before you launch a campaign.
Track every channel
EWII runs campaigns across up to 20+ channels, from Facebook, Instagram and affiliate partners to customer service links, magazines, email and its website. Each channel gets its own unique link, so EWII can compare which channels deliver the best leads and switch off the ones that underperform.
Read more about collecting quality sign-ups on our lead generation page.
Energy-saving quizzes
Energy topics are complex, and that is exactly why a quiz works so well. It turns information that people would normally scroll past into a small game they want to finish.
Quiz ideas for utilities
- "How energy smart are you?" Questions about everyday habits, with saving tips explained at the end.
- Myth or fact. Does standby really use power? Is it cheaper to run the dishwasher at night? People learn something, and you show your expertise.
- "Which product fits your home?" A guided quiz that asks about home size, heating and habits, and recommends the right product, such as a heat pump, solar panels or a broadband speed.
- Green transition quiz. Questions about renewable energy and what customers can do at home.
Real examples
EWII uses quizzes to teach customers which internet speed fits their household, which electricity programme fits their lifestyle and what EWII offers beyond their current products. As EWII's marketing consultant puts it, gamification makes energy and tech topics understandable and fun.
DCC Energi has used Scratcher for knowledge quizzes, for example about natural gas, for interactive product recommendation flows and for a heat pump calculator. Customers enter their home size, heating type and property details and get tailored recommendations. The calculator was built in a day.
Use the answers
Every answer tells you something: who has a house or a flat, who is curious about solar panels, who drives an electric car. Send the answers to your CRM or email tool and use them to segment your follow-up.
Seasonal campaigns
Seasonal moments give utilities a reason to reach out that has nothing to do with bills.
Christmas calendars
A Christmas calendar with a new door every day in December is one of the most effective formats for utilities. It turns one campaign into 24 touchpoints.
DCC Energi's Christmas calendar became a multi-day engagement driver, a structured permission engine and a loyalty activation moment, with data synced to Salesforce. It reached 142,859 impressions and 108,862 interactions, a 76.2% interaction rate, and more than 530 hours of total engagement time.
Easter and spring
Andel Energi's Easter campaign, "PÃ¥skejagt i Energihaven", was a playful hide-and-seek experience. Users explored a visual garden full of hidden Easter eggs, each one unlocking a separate game through a mystery box. The goal was simple: generate leads and collect permissions.
Winter and heating season
As the heating season starts, a quiz about heating habits or a "get ready for winter" checklist is both useful and timely. It is a natural moment to talk about heat pumps, insulation or smart thermostats.
Christmas cards and direct mail
EWII sends customers a Christmas card with a QR code that leads to a quiz about EWII. If they answer correctly, they can win an instant prize and at the same time give marketing consent, entering a targeted email flow about EWII, customer advantages and other relevant products.
Case examples
Andel Energi: 55,000 participants in one activation
Andel Energi built a dedicated gamification team responsible for lead generation and customer engagement. Its Easter campaign drew traffic from paid media, email, the website, the app and other customer touchpoints. The results:
- 55,000 campaign participants, nearly 50% of them new users
- 37% funnel conversion, from campaign entry to submitted contact information
- 2,467 total engagement hours, with an average of 1 minute and 26 seconds per participant
- 82% of users confirming their contact information after sign-up
Interactive campaigns also helped activate existing customers. Participation in customer surveys increased three times compared with the previous month when tied to a more engaging experience. Read how Andel Energi uses interactive campaigns to generate high-quality leads.
EWII: 60% more logins and permissions at a lower cost
EWII uses Scratcher across the whole customer lifecycle: lead generation, loyalty, education and cross-selling. Every month, it runs a customer-only game inside the login area of its website, often co-sponsored by local partners. Logins went up 60%, including among internet-only customers who previously had no reason to log in.
EWII's "Vind KitchenAid" campaign asked people to sign up for the newsletter and answer three quick questions for a chance to win a stand mixer. It reached 36,518 impressions, more than 25,000 users interacted with it, and 14,852 completed the full experience, a 40.67% participant conversion rate. Read about EWII's customer journey with gamification.
DCC Energi: permissions, loyalty and events
DCC Energi expanded its use of interactive campaigns from acquisition to pleasing existing customers too. Beyond the Christmas calendar, it uses games at trade shows and events, where the game becomes the conversation starter. Read the DCC Energi approach.
KPIs for utility marketing
Pick your KPIs before launch, and track them per channel.
- New marketing permissions: the core metric for most utilities
- Funnel conversion: the share of visitors who complete the sign-up
- Confirmed contacts: for example, the share who confirm via double opt-in
- Cost per lead, compared with your other channels
- Interaction rate: the share of people who see the campaign and engage
- Engagement time: total and average time spent with your brand
- Logins or app activity among existing customers
- Cross-sell and upsell conversions from campaign leads
- Results per channel, using unique links
Turn a low-interest category into a high-engagement one
Utility customers may never get excited about a kilowatt-hour, but they do enjoy a good game, a useful quiz and a chance to win. The Danish energy companies above show that interactive campaigns can deliver permissions at scale, better leads and more engaged customers, all year round.
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