How a company built a connected growth engine that compounds year over year

A natural gas distribution utility wanted a single source of truth for their customer and marketing data, owned and operated within their own environment. The company’s marketing efforts were active but fragmented. Data was siloed, channels were managed in relative isolation, and customers making significant energy infrastructure decisions weren’t being engaged in ways that reflected their decision-making process.

The company wanted a full-funnel marketing model that engaged customers across awareness, consideration and conversion, not just at the decision point. The company also wanted to understand why customers choose natural gas or another option. 

RSM US signed on to help the company build a growth system where data, strategy and channels would work together as a connected whole.

The challenges: Fragmented data and an incomplete funnel

The company operated across multiple business units, each supported by distinct internal systems. Finance, human resources, legal, field operations, billing, marketing and compliance all ran on separate platforms. Leaders often made marketing investment decisions with incomplete information.

In addition, the company’s marketing program was concentrated almost entirely at the conversion stage, reaching customers who were already close to a decision. The earlier, often more influential parts of the journey—awareness and consideration—were largely unaddressed. Without that earlier-funnel activity, the company was competing for a small pool of buyers who had already made a decision rather than expanding their market, and the channels that existed weren’t part of a coherent customer experience. 

What RSM discovered about how customers decide

RSM started with fundamental questions: Why do customers choose natural gas? What motivates them to stay with it or prevents them from switching? Where does confusion, hesitation or drop-off occur along the journey? The answers reframed how the company thought about their customers and marketing.

RSM found that energy decisions often turned out to be emotional, not transactional. Customers were making stressful decisions and needed confidence and education, not just a call to action. Disconnected channels and inconsistent messaging were creating customer confusion at precisely the moments people needed clarity, and behavior-based segmentation —grounded in budget considerations, environmental values, and lifestyle and comfort preferences—outperformed demographic targeting by a wide margin.

These insights reframed the company’s approach to growth, from channel optimization to customer experience design.

Building the growth system

RSM built the transformation on two interconnected tracks: one establishing the data infrastructure to power sustainable growth, and one redesigning the marketing model from the ground up. Neither would have worked without the other, and the sequencing mattered. 

The data foundation came first as a prerequisite for intelligent marketing. RSM stood up a cloud-based enterprise data system integrating data streams from across the company’s operating systems—billing, operations, marketing and customer relationship management—enabling single-source analytics, predictive insight and market penetration analysis by geography and segment, all owned within the company’s environment. 

On the marketing side, RSM designed a full-funnel engagement model spanning awareness, consideration and conversion. The system built audience segmentation by motivation, developed more pay-per-click ad variations aligned to intent and segment, and coordinated digital, out-of-home, email and direct mail marketing into a single channel ecosystem. From there, RSM implemented a build-measure-learn optimization rhythm, continuously refining ad variations, messaging and channel mix based on real performance data.

What the company gained

The company’s outcomes were significant, and they compounded. Year 1 results reflected the impact of the data foundation and full-funnel strategy coming online together. The company saw an increase in lead volume, a lift in conversion rate and a reduction in customer acquisition cost. 

Beyond the numbers, the company gained a unified, data-driven view of their customers and market penetration for the first time. The full-funnel model expanded the company’s addressable market. In addition, the internal marketing and analytics teams adopted a shared measurement framework, enabling faster, better decisions without external dependency. The company also gained a scalable, repeatable model they can optimize and extend across geographies and business units.