Case Study:

Background:

Ohme provide intelligent at home EV charging solutions which help reduce stress on the grid by balancing supply and demand unlocking cheaper and greener charging for EV drivers.  They are part of a larger National Grid home energy ongoing flexibility study; CrowdFlex.

As part of the April 2024 trial Ohme was asked to increase the plug in frequency and duration of Ohme EV charger owners. They brought in Halo by Design to provide a behaviour change strategy covering recruitment, onboarding and engagement for Ohme to leverage during the three month campaign.

The Campaign:

The campaign goal was to increase Ohme charger owner’s EV plug in frequency over a period of three months so that Ohme’s intelligent chargers could work out the most ‘green’ way to charge.

Halo by Design created a digital strategy leveraging a range of behavioural strategies for the three week recruitment phase (April), one week pre trial set up phase (April) and three month engagement phase of the trail (May – July).

The strategy tested a variety of different behavioural tools (incentive, scarcity, social norms) to recruit people to the study via email. Then, during the set up phase, digital and physical habit hacks were shared to support behaviour change as well as ‘myth busters’ being deployed to pre-empt any concerns about plugging in more frequently. And finally, during the 3 month engagement phase, digital nudges covering a range of behavioural tools (incentives, social norms, feedback, loss aversion, scarcity) were used to encourage people to keep plugging in.  

Results:

o   Incentives performed well in recruitment but only marginally better than social norms and scarcity (6.66% difference).

o   Plug in behaviour improved within the trial with overnight plug-ins increasing by 50% and daytime plug ins by 80% vs pre-trial.

o   Plug in frequency increased month by month through the trial overall.

o   The strategy shifted a significant number of people into a ‘super pluggers’ group i.e. people plugging in consistently 6-7 times a week with for example

a) 20% of people moving from 0 – 2 times a week to 4+ times a week

b) 10% of people moving from 0 - 2 times a week to 5+ times a week

c) 5% of people moving from 0 – 2 times a week to 6+ times a week

o   The weekly email nudge throughout the trial increased plug ins significantly within that cohort but only for a period of 24 hours.

What the client said….

Working with the Halo team was great. They felt like a natural extension of my existing team whilst plugging in vital capabilities around leveraging digital + behavioural science to meet our campaign behaviour change ‘plug in’ goals. I would highly recommend working with Tam and her team to anyone wanting to explore how to shift engrained behaviour.

Claire Andrews Marketing Director at Ohme