EvoEnergy are one of the largest independent solar installers in the UK. They design and install bespoke solar photovoltaic (PV) and Thermal systems for homes and businesses around the country.

As an ‘Online Marketing Associate’ within the marketing team at EvoEnergy my role was prominently to maintain, update and analyse the customer facing website, which accounted for over 33% of solar photovoltaic sales.

Alongside the responsibility of the website were a number of equally important tasks to complete including producing email campaigns, analysing overall marketing performance, sharing responsibility of Pay Per Click budgets and keeping on top of fast moving solar industry news.

Website Design & Development

Maintaining the EvoEnergy.co.uk website required a range of skills, including understanding of Content Management System architecture (WordPress) and a proficiency in HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, Javascript and other languages. Tasks included link auditing, enquiry form examination and structure inspection.

Updating the website was separated into two sectors, the first being daily duties. These consisted of landing page construction, banner placement and alterations of dated pages. Branching into solar Thermal in late December 2012 increased the daily workload, requiring a large section of the website’s domestic area of to be replicated for new products on offer.

The second sector of work was updating the site. Key responsibilities included input to the design and arrangement of the website, coding the structure, generating some imagery and eventually turning the site around for its customer launch.

The final area related to website design and development was the involvement of hosting and database connectivity, including a server switchover during the Christmas 2011 period. An understanding of hosting concepts, knowledge of CPanel / PLESK and collaboration with a migration specialist was required.

Email Marketing

Responsible for developing solus emails to often strict third-party requirements. Additionally, producing emails to be sent via EvoEnergy’s mailing system (DotMailer) to mailing lists containing 1000’s of existing and potential customers.

The referral program, which focused on C2C marketing, was heavily reliant on two emails: The first being sent to customers who proceeded with an install, the second being sent to their friend via EvoEnergy. These complex emails needed to be turned around relatively quickly in time to meet campaign deadlines.

Optimising and analysing emails was also an important part of email marketing. Testing emails in multiple inboxes for rendering issues split testing images and layouts and reporting process indicators such as unique open rate, click to open rate and unsubscribes.

Marketing Analysis

Google Analytics was a fundamental tool when analysing the websites performance. With over 1000 visits per day elements such as time on site, bounce rate, demographics, behaviour and traffic sources were critical to proactively identifying potential issues and focusing on areas of success.

Conversion rate was the area of focus, tracked using goal completion analysis within Analytics. This was also fed with telephone enquiries from AdInsight (Telephone agency) to give a broader picture, all of which was analysed to monitor performance.

The site’s other main traffic source was with paid adverts, generated using Google AdWords. Liaising with a PPC agency to control a monthly budget included studying cost per conversion, click-through rates, average position and quality score on campaign and keyword levels.

With government changes, court actions and appeals regarding micro-generation incentives (Feed-In Tariff) between November 2011 and March 2012 the market became interesting and uncertain. Keeping on top of news as it happened (via sources such as Twitter and Google News) was paramount to manoeuvring the business. Communicating changes to the Head of Marketing and satellite management meant the marketing team could produce timely promotion with the energetic attitude the company shared. Tools such as Google Trends helped identify changes in the market over given periods for brand, industry and consumer attitudes.

Pay Per Click & Search Engine Optimization

PPC campaigns were regularly set-up and monitored to ensure the correct number of leads were being generated via the website at the correct cost (cost per lead). Placement, traffic estimation, contextual targeting and other AdWords tools were utilised in order to maximize efficiency on a variety of long-tail and brand specific keywords.

Split testing display and contextual adverts allowed the PPC budget to be more effectively placed, whilst increasing quality scores ensured EvoEnergy could be ideally positioned. Identifying new opportunities was another area of interest, moving with changing trends to ensure maximum public awareness within the given budget.

Effectively using SEO strategies helped push EvoEnergy to the top of many organic search results. Topping the organic results for the keyword ‘Solar Panels’ was one of many advantages developing and deploying both on- and off-site search engine optimisation.

Liaising with SEO and PPC specialists and acting on their suggestions, in addition to in-house tactics, meant EvoEnergy was a robust contender on Google and other search engines, with a strong online presence.

Additional Marketing Duties

Although online marketing was the emphasis of my role at EvoEnergy, other marketing duties and concepts were adopted in order to further enhance marketing effectiveness.

Daily, Weekly and Monthly KPIs were produced for a variety of internal and external individuals, including Head of Marketing, Marketing Manager, Chief Executive Officer and Account managers for various agencies.

Furthermore, various lead generation companies were contacted in order to produce additional lead sources when required. Negotiations regarding cost (commission based), qualification criteria and trial periods were discussed on various occasions to ensure leads were viable and met EvoEnergy’s standards.