Solving affiliate-driven growth marketing for Google owned Cleantech startup

About Renew Home/ OhmConnect

Web: ohmconnect.com

Industry:

Client

Deregulated energy demands precise, state-bound user growth; that’s why they engaged Adbloom to source high-intent households via affiliates, bypassing national media saturation.

Renew Home, owned by Google and a merger between Nest Thermostat and OhmConnect, serves millions of households across the United States, managing over 3 GigaWatts (GW) of electricity across the grid.

Challenge

Renew Home/OhmConnect operates exclusively in three U.S. states: California, New York, and Texas. This created a fundamental geo-targeting constraint: most national media, bloggers, and influencers are built for broad, nationwide reach and cannot reliably target individual zip codes. As a result, standard acquisition approaches risked wasted spend and unusable traffic outside eligible territories. To reach scale within those limits, Renew Home/OhmConnect needed access to channels capable of targeting households at the state and zip-code level. In parallel, acquisition volume fluctuated seasonally, requiring flexibility in how new households were incentivized to sign up. The challenge was finding partners with location data while providing strategic guidance to the client’s need to meet scale goals in their target markets.

Solution

Adbloom’s strategy centered on a partner-led program designed for control over reach. Rather than pursuing broad influencer blasts or national media buys prone to geo-leakage, Adbloom activated over 250 affiliates with native, location-based data. Affiliate program strategy included: Verified Targeting: We prioritized Mobile apps, Shopping and Rewards apps, and Loyalty Networks that hold precise user location data. This ensured every click was geo-fenced to approved states, ensuring no wasted spend. Cognitive Simplification: We reframed complex VPP technical language into a rewards-driven value proposition. By focusing on "clean energy shifts" and household incentives, we established authority and intent. Dynamic Payout Structures: Execution focused on repeatability over volume hacks. We implemented dynamic bonuses for affiliates that encouraged prominent placements, ensuring partners scaled only on verified conversion events (registration and activation). This approach produced a predictable, affiliate-based growth channel that adhered to strict targeting requirements and regulatory controls.

Results

The program delivered 42k+ verified new households from 447k targeted clicks, contributing to 3GW of shiftable energy capacity. These enrollments generated over $2.5M in immediate revenue across 250+ partners, demonstrating that affiliate channels can source retention-eligible users at a scale typically reserved for national media. Operational Impact: Predictability: The model provided the ability to dial acquisition up or down by state and season, offering a level of control that volatile paid channels could not match. Model Validation: This volume of high-intent enrollments validated the VPP expansion strategy, supporting Renew Home’s trajectory toward 50GW of capacity. Risk Mitigation: By sourcing users through verified, location-aware networks, Renew Home/OhmConnect reduced unattributed growth and eliminated spend waste in ineligible territories. Note: Grid impact metrics (3 GW capacity and 25M+ energy shifts) are reported by Renew Home as downstream effects of the enrolled households.