ReconMR BlogTracking Brand Awareness Should Be a Priority for CCAs

by Christian Riepe, SVP of Insights and Analytics

For Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs), brand awareness provides the foundation for customer trust, program participation, and long-term success in the community. When residents are familiar with their CCA, they’re more likely to support its mission, enroll in programs, and advocate for community energy goals. Many CCAs still rely primarily on enrollment, opt-out rates, or customer complaints to gauge success. While those metrics provide operational insights, they miss out on the full story. CCAs benefit from knowing how well the community knows it, what they believe about it, and how they feel about its work.

At ReconMR, we’ve partnered with several CCAs across California to design and conduct brand awareness studies that deliver actionable and cost-effective results. We follow industry best practices for accuracy while finding ways for our CCA partners to reduce costs for the survey.

Brand Tracking Matters

As CCAs mature, maintaining public understanding becomes just as important as launching new programs or hitting enrollment targets. Many residents still confuse their local CCA with the incumbent utility or are unaware they have a choice at all. Measuring brand awareness provides a clear picture of how effectively your outreach efforts are working and where additional education or engagement may be needed.

Regular brand tracking also builds credibility with boards and stakeholders by showing data-driven progress. It’s an essential input for marketing strategy, community engagement, and communications planning.

Benefits of Strong Brand Awareness for CCAs

• Builds Trust and Legitimacy
  Many residents don’t understand what a CCA is or how it differs from a utility. Consistent brand awareness helps build familiarity; and familiarity leads to trust. When people are familiar with the CCA, they’re more likely to view it as a legitimate, stable organization that represents community interests.
• Strengthens Support for the CCA’s Mission
  Strong brand awareness and favorability translate directly into public support for the CCA’s clean energy and community-focused goals. This support becomes critical when CCAs propose new programs, rate changes, or infrastructure investments.
• Increases Participation in Programs
  Program participation improves dramatically when residents recognize and trust the CCA brand. Awareness reduces confusion and drives engagement in demand-response programs.
• Enhances Communication Efficiency
  When awareness is high, every marketing dollar goes further. Residents who already understand what a CCA is don’t need reeducation with each campaign, allowing communications to focus on benefits and actions, not definitions.
• Builds Political and Stakeholder Capital
  High public awareness and favorability are powerful assets when communicating with elected officials, community partners, or state regulators. Demonstrating that residents understand and support the CCA’s mission can strengthen credibility and influence funding or policy decisions.
• Provides an Early Warning System
  Tracking brand perception over time can alert CCA leaders to shifts in public sentiment. If awareness or favorability drops after a rate change or new program rollout, communications teams can respond proactively before issues escalate.

The Right Way to Measure Awareness

Accurate sampling is key to credible awareness tracking. CCAs can provide a list of all households in their service area, but it’s critical to include both active customers and opt-outs to ensure all residents are represented. From there, ReconMR draws a random sample based on the desired final sample size and segmentation goals. We typically see response rates between 4–6% and target 300–1,000 completed surveys for reliable results.

If certain subgroups, such as CARE/FERA customers, require readable base sizes, we oversample these households in the initial pull, since response rates are generally lower for these populations.

While the survey is conducted online, survey invitations are mailed out to the randomly selected households in the service territory. We have found that this is the most reliable way to accurately sample the target audience.

To protect objectivity, we recommend using a neutral third-party “sponsor” for the research. We recommend using the third party’s logos and letterhead for survey invitations. This adds legitimacy and credibility while avoiding bias — since saying the research is conducted on behalf of the CCA is not an option for an awareness survey. To boost participation, we also include a small cash incentive through a sweepstakes drawing, which has proven effective in increasing response rates.

The value of awareness tracking goes beyond a single score. At ReconMR, we measure key metrics throughout the persuasion funnel, ranging from unaided and aided awareness, familiarity, favorability, and usage. By analyzing how residents move (or don’t move) through that funnel, we can pinpoint where marketing and communications should focus.

For example, if familiarity is high but favorability is low, messaging may need to emphasize the benefits of local control or clean energy investments. If awareness is low, broader education and name-recognition campaigns are the right starting point.

Make Brand Awareness a Strategic Habit

Brand awareness is not a one-time campaign. It’s the foundation of how a CCA connects with its community. By tracking awareness regularly, CCAs can better communicate their value, strengthen public trust, and sustain support for their mission of delivering cleaner, more reliable, locally controlled energy.

At ReconMR, we help CCAs build that foundation with cost-efficient, data-driven brand awareness tracking, turning community understanding into lasting community support.

Contact us today to learn more about what ReconMR can do for your CCA!