How we helped Octopus Energy reach consumers at crucial life stages with home mover marketing.

Octopus Energy are consistently at the top of the customer services charts. They made it a priority to put the customer at the centre of their proposition. From the CEO answering every tweet personally through to reaching consumers in their time of need. We helped Octopus go above and beyond with their customer service and marketing through the analysis of home mover data.


On average, four million adults move home every year, that’s 7.5 per cent of the UK population aged over 18. External triggers in consumers’ lives, in particular something as big as a home move, create significant increases in spending.

Insights delivered by the client, Octopus Energy, pointed towards home movers making decisions on utility suppliers from the second week post-move. In addition, they wanted to highlight that an inherited energy supply would put an empty home on the most expensive plan. A plan that would be close to the maximum permissible under the Government’s price cap. You could say that it was a public service to inform house movers that they should, at their earliest convenience, think about switching to Octopus.

Analysing home mover marketing data.

Working with our strategic partner, in-market and property data specialist Street Group. We approached Octopus with an idea that consisted of delivering a potent message at a time when the reader would be most receptive.

Timing is hard to judge, as new homeowners and tenants often work at their own pace. After unpacking the kettle and setting up their favourite streaming platforms on the TV. If consumers were crazy busy, our message had a chance of being side-lined for another day, or worse, condemned to the recycling bin.

We had to overcome this challenge by spreading our communications over several weeks, starting from the date of completion.

  • First Week : 10,000 addresses of home movers 8 weeks past move in
  • Second Week : 10,000 addresses of home movers 6 weeks post move in
  • Third Week : 10,000 addresses of home movers 4 weeks post move in
  • Forth Week : 10,000 addresses of home movers 2 weeks post move in

The value of life stage marketing data.

Home Movers Marketing, otherwise known as in-market or on-market data, provides multiple business types with a unique opportunity. The home move remains a relatively rare life event and obviously it is a moment for change. Thanks to publicly available information through an aggregation from multiple sources, we can define the best time to reach people in the moment they are most likely to switch energy suppliers.

The range of data tags are truly exciting from a sales and marketing viewpoint:

  • Full address
  • Houses for sale
  • Houses to let
  • Price of property
  • Agent currently listed with
  • Time on the market
  • Fall throughs
  • Withdrawals
  • Estimated completion dates for houses sold
  • Estimated tenancy renewal dates for houses let
  • Landlord data

The types of businesses that can benefit from this level of data is boundless. Especially if we overlay audience insight to match existing customer profiling.

Precision Connects: Automating campaigns.

This is where true marketing-in-the-moment comes in. Richly detailed and highly granular data sets give insights into the key milestones in people’s lives that act as purchase triggers, especially when moving home. These insights can be used by businesses to create contextually targeted marketing programmes that cut through to customers at exactly the moment they require a product.

To help put this into context, furniture buying kicks in before people move, DIY shopping happens at the point of moving in, electrical goods are bought a month or more afterwards, and holidays become a big purchase between two to six months post-move.

Attracting and retaining customers doesn’t have to be expensive or elaborate, but a sharp focus upon comprehensive data is key to avoiding blind spots. This is where automation plays its part and why Precision Connects is such an important product. Connects automates the process from data selection through to campaign execution.

Dynamic QR code reporting.

A QR code can house a number of triggers that can be reported on in real time through the Precision Connects platform.

Each code is generated as a unique code housing the target line of address. The code can trigger a virtual experience through simply opening up the camera on a phone and focusing on the code. This could be a web site, a promo code, a virtual tour - anything that can be hosted online.

At the exact moment that code has been scanned, a notification is sent to the QR code creator containing vital, downloadable lead data. This is an extremely useful part of our Connects platform. Which was employed during this campaign, enabling us to turn cold data into warm leads for Octopus Energy.