A competitive retail energy supplier serving residential and commercial customers across multiple US and Canadian markets had purchased Salesforce Marketing Cloud — but a year later it was sending nothing more than generic monthly newsletters. KVP's Adoption & Enhancement Services restored deliverability, launched lifecycle journeys and unlocked 4x marketing-attributed revenue in 9 months.
Audience
Multi-million customers
Industry
Energy Retail (Residential & Commercial)
Timeline
9 months
Outcome
4x attributed revenue
The customer is a competitive retail energy supplier in the North American deregulated energy market, serving millions of residential households and commercial businesses across multiple US states and Canadian provinces. Their portfolio spans fixed-rate and variable-rate electricity and natural gas plans, green-energy options and value-added home protection services — all sold and serviced direct-to-consumer in a highly price-sensitive, switching-prone market.
Already running on Salesforce Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, the company purchased Marketing Cloud (Engagement) to power lifecycle communications — onboarding, billing engagement, renewal & retention, plan upgrades and win-back. A year later, the platform had become an expensive newsletter tool. Open rates were falling, deliverability was deteriorating and the CFO was questioning the original business case. Leadership engaged KVP's AES practice to revive the investment — not to start over.
Marketing Cloud bought, barely used
After a year of ownership, the team was sending only generic monthly newsletters from Email Studio. Journey Builder and Automation Studio were essentially untouched.
Deliverability declining
Sender reputation had eroded — open rates were below 9%, bounce rates above 6% and parts of the contactable base had been suppressed by ISPs.
No lifecycle journeys
No onboarding, no abandoned-cart, no win-back, no renewal nudges. Every campaign was a one-off broadcast.
Data extensions in chaos
300+ data extensions, most undocumented, many duplicates. Marketers couldn't find the right audience to send to.
Sales & Service Cloud disconnected
Marketing Cloud existed in a silo — no real-time sync with Sales/Service Cloud, so engagement signals never reached reps or agents.
Internal team overwhelmed
A 2-person marketing ops team was firefighting — no time for strategy, optimisation or testing. The platform's potential was invisible to leadership.
Our AES framework starts by stabilising the platform (deliverability, data, consent), then layers lifecycle journeys, AI personalisation and integration — without throwing away anything already built.
Week 1–3
Week 4–8
Week 9–12
Week 13–20
Ongoing
Throughout
Welcome, onboarding, first-purchase, cross-sell, renewal, churn-risk, win-back and birthday — all in Journey Builder, governed by a single calendar.
From 300+ chaotic DEs to a curated, documented set with clear owners, refresh schedules and Automation Studio jobs.
Sender reputation re-warmed, suppression rules fixed, consent recaptured for at-risk segments. Open rates climbed 3x in two quarters.
Einstein Send Time Optimization, Engagement Scoring and Content Selection — plus generative AI for subject lines and copy variants.
Real-time sync of engagement events into Sales/Service Cloud, so reps and agents see what marketing has sent and how customers responded.
Marketers no longer firefight. They run the calendar, the tests and the reporting — with KVP as the embedded AES partner.
4x
Marketing-attributed revenue
Within 9 months of AES kick-off
3x
Email open rates
From <9% to 28% across journeys
75%
Drop in hard bounces
Through deliverability remediation
18
Lifecycle journeys live
vs. 0 at the start of AES
60%
Reduction in data extensions
Cleaner, governed, documented estate
2x
Customer LTV uplift
Driven by retention & win-back journeys
"We had bought Marketing Cloud, paid the licences and quietly written it off as overkill. KVP's AES team didn't ask us to start over — they made what we already owned actually work. Today, Marketing Cloud is one of our most quoted sources of growth in board reviews."
— Chief Marketing Officer, North American Retail Energy Supplier
You don't need a re-implementation. You need an AES partner who knows Marketing Cloud, deliverability, journeys and the integrated Salesforce stack. Let's audit where you are.