Intelligent Tip Targeting
Intelligent Tip Targeting is a programmatic process used in the Oracle Utilities Opower products to select and display relevant energy efficiency tips for customers. For example, in Home Energy Reports, tips are selected for a customer and displayed on the front and back of the report to encourage the customer to perform specific energy efficient actions. In other Oracle Utilities Opower products, such as the Weekly Energy Update email, tips are often selected to provide customers with actionable information after they have seen their energy use insights.
Oracle Utilities Opower maintains a large and diverse library of energy tips from which to select. The Intelligent Tip Targeting algorithm uses tip filters, a tip scoring formula (also called "tip prioritization"), and tip selection criteria to select and display tips that are relevant to a customer's household at different points in time.
Tip Filtering
Tips are filtered out based upon the characteristics of each customer in the program. For example, if the customer only uses electricity, then the algorithm would filter out any tips related to gas. Other tips are only relevant in a certain context, such as when a utility is encouraging customers to use less energy during specific hours of the day.
Tip Prioritization
The remaining tips are assigned a prioritization score. The Intelligent Tip Targeting algorithm uses several sources of information for this score, such as a customer's profile information and the results of the Home Energy Analysis feature. Using this logic, tips are prioritized according to usefulness for the customer, if the customer has previously seen the tip, and whether or not the customer is likely to use the tip to reduce energy use.
Tip Selection
Logic is applied to the prioritized tips to select which tips to display in the product. In general, customers should not receive a tip that was displayed in a recent report or digital communication. Moreover, they should not receive more than one tip about a particular topic or a tip that requires similar up-front costs as any other tips that are shown in the same communication.
Note: Tip selection logic step is only used for outbound Oracle Utilities Opower products like emails and paper reports. It is not used in web products, since the web products can display the full range of available tips.