Data and AI business 257 announced the launch of Pink, a market intelligence platform aimed at lowering customer acquisition costs for residential solar and electrification. 

The company said it seeks to help residential energy providers grow faster and slash acquisition costs in the $500 billion-plus market that spends an estimated $20 billion per year on marketing home energy products. 

The platform, which is free to use for the planning and analytics stage, delivers data on the roughly 130 million homes in the US through a chat-style interface. Pink provides household-level market intelligence aimed at supporting adoption of solar, HVAC, energy efficiency, heat pumps and more. 

For example, the company said its platform identified 135,000 owner-occupied homes earning over $100,000 year across NJ, NY, PA, and MD that rank very high on its solar propensity scoring algorithm. It also identified 438,000 homes in New England currently on oil or propane heat would benefit from a heat pump retrofit. 

“Over the next decade, US households will spend more than $5 trillion on energy products and services—$40,000 per home on average. Tens of millions of homes today would benefit from solar, heat pumps, or new energy plans, yet providers struggle to connect with them,” said a press statement from 257. 

The startup said its market insights are provided at no cost. It charges providers when they decide to move forward with marketing campaigns accessing audiences cross Meta, Google, connected TV, direct mail, and more. 

“As electricity demand surges with AI, onshoring, and electrification, we need to put every electron to its highest use,” said Mark Kuntz, CEO Mitsubishi Electric Trane HVAC US. “257’s data-driven tools help pinpoint where advanced heat pumps can replace inefficient resistance heating and outdated ACs, freeing energy and capacity for higher-value purposes.” 

The company said it has helped a rooftop solar partner cut customer acquisition costs of $2,000 per customer by one-third using 257’s solar propensity, income, and power outage data to target homes eligible for California’s SGIP incentive program. 

“257 has been a valuable partner in accelerating our growth in the solar and storage market. Their platform allows us to quickly and precisely identify the right households, streamline outreach, and improve marketing efficiency while also reducing operational overhead,” said Vinnie Campo, chief executive officer of Haven Energy, which offers a no-upfront cost solar product to California customers living in areas served by Clean Energy Alliance.

Soft costs, which are costs not related to the cost of equipment and components, make up more than half of residential solar project costs in the United States, according to research from SI2. Solar design software provider OpenSolar estimates about $0.43 per W can be removed from costs due to streamlined customer acquisition and sales costs.