A Northeast utility put its existing text messaging provider head-to-head against SBT. Within 90 days, better deliverability and engagement helped drive $50 million in approved payments, including $11 million from customers the utility had previously struggled to reach.
For utilities, sending a text message is only the beginning.
The message has to reach the customer. The customer has to recognize and trust it. They have to engage. And ultimately, they have to take action.
One major utility in the Northeast wanted to understand how much difference its text messaging infrastructure could actually make across that journey. Rather than simply replacing its existing enterprise messaging provider, the utility put its current program head-to-head against SBT. The results showed what can happen when deliverability, trust and customer action are treated as connected parts of the same strategy.
In just 90 days, the utility achieved:
• 96%+ delivery rate
• 7% increase in click-through rate
• 25% increase in payment completion rate
• $50 million in approved payments
• $11 million from previously unreachable customers
And it started with something deceptively simple: getting more messages delivered.
The First Problem to Solve: Text Message Deliverability
Before SBT, the utility’s text message delivery rate consistently hovered in the mid-80% range.
That meant a significant portion of its intended audience wasn’t receiving messages in the first place.
Improving utility customer engagement would require solving that problem before optimizing anything downstream.
SBT helped the utility improve its delivery rate to more than 96% within the first 90 days, with performance continuing to improve.
Two changes played an important role.
First, SBT helped clean and scrub subscriber data to improve data quality and identify numbers that should no longer be part of active messaging campaigns. Better subscriber data management meant the utility could focus its messaging on customers it could actually reach.
Second, the utility gained access to SBT’s vetted, compliant messaging templates. These templates are designed with messaging requirements and carrier expectations in mind, helping reduce the risk of legitimate customer communications being flagged as unwanted or spam.
The result was a stronger foundation for the entire program.
Because every engagement metric starts with delivery.
Better Delivery Created More Opportunities for Engagement
Improving delivery did more than make a percentage on a dashboard go up.
It expanded the utility’s reachable audience.
Customers who had previously fallen outside the reach of its text messaging program were now receiving communications. That created more opportunities for those customers to engage with important account and payment messages.
But reaching customers was only part of the challenge. They also needed to trust the message enough to act on it.
Using MMS to Build Trust in Utility Text Messages
Consumers are increasingly cautious about unexpected text messages, particularly when those messages involve their accounts, bills or payments.
For a utility, that creates an important challenge: how do you make it immediately clear that a text message is legitimate?
During the pilot, the utility expanded beyond SMS and began incorporating MMS into its outreach.
That included sending the utility’s recognizable logo as an image within the message.
It was a relatively simple change with an important purpose. Customers could immediately see a familiar visual identity associated with the utility, helping establish trust before they clicked a link or took another action.
Combined with stronger deliverability and vetted message content, that additional layer of recognition helped turn more delivered messages into engagement.
The utility saw a 7% improvement in click-through rate compared with its previous messaging provider.
More customers were receiving the messages, and more of those customers were engaging with them.
Then came the metric that mattered most.
From Customer Engagement to Completed Payments
Clicks are useful. Completed actions are better.
The utility measured what happened after customers engaged with its messages, including whether they went on to complete a payment.
During the 90-day pilot, SBT delivered a 25% improvement in liquidation rate, or the rate at which customers who engaged went on to submit payment information.
That improvement translated into $50 million in approved payments during the first 90 days.
But one part of that $50 million tells an even more important story.
$11 million came from customers the utility had previously been unable to reach through its former messaging provider.
These weren’t simply customers responding differently to the same communications.
They represented an audience the utility had struggled to reach at all.
By improving subscriber data management, deliverability, message quality and customer trust, the utility created opportunities for action that previously didn’t exist.
What Drove the Results
For utilities evaluating their customer communication strategy, the lesson from this 90-day pilot isn’t found in any single metric. It’s that every step of the messaging journey affects the next.
Better subscriber data can improve deliverability. Better deliverability means more customers receive important communications. Trusted, recognizable messages can encourage more of those customers to engage.
And stronger engagement creates more opportunities for customers to complete payments.
For this Northeast utility, that progression looked like this:
96%+ delivery → 7% higher engagement → 25% higher payment completion → $50M in approved payments
And within that $50 million was $11 million from customers the utility had previously struggled to reach.
All within the first 90 days.
What Should Utilities Look for in a Text Messaging Provider?
Utilities evaluating a text messaging provider should look beyond basic sending capabilities and consider how the provider supports the full performance of their messaging program.
Key capabilities to look for include:
• Subscriber management: Keeping subscriber data clean and current to improve audience quality and help utilities reach the right customers.
• Compliance and governance: Using vetted message templates and built-in controls designed for the requirements of regulated industries.
• Multi-‘channel’ messaging: Supporting multiple message formats beyond SMS such as MMS and RCS so utilities can use elements like branded imagery to build recognition and trust.
• Integrated payments: Giving customers a simple path from a text message to payment, with payment technology built into the messaging experience rather than treated as a separate step.
Utilities should also consider how well a provider can connect messaging performance to business outcomes. Delivery rate and click-through rate are important indicators, but the value of a messaging program ultimately depends on whether those interactions help customers complete the intended action, whether that’s making a payment, resolving an account issue or responding to an important service communication.
The right provider should help utilities improve performance across that entire experience, not just send the text.
