The real estate industry is no stranger to unexpected and intense fluctuations. Ups and downs are very common and especially during the last year with Covid-19 pandemic causing major economic uncertainty. Stay-at-home orders and job losses are a couple of reasons why people stopped looking for new homes.
Real Estate Marketing
Is no secret that innovation and adoption of new technologies is key to success in any business. But if there has ever been a time when this is essential, it is now for the real estate industry. A seamless digital marketing strategy that integrates the newest channels plays a big role in growing the business and catching the attention of potential clients.
Keep in mind that 92% of buyers use the internet to begin their house hunting, according to a study from the National Association of Realtors. This means that having a strong online presence that simplifies communication between buyers and sellers can make a huge difference to the success of the business.
Web Push Notifications for Real Estate Marketing
Web push notifications are the new retargeting without ads channel that allows sites to engage subscribers without any type of personal data through their entire customer journey. With the use of dynamic parameters it’s possible to send hyper-personalised relevant messages based on an individual’s behaviour.
In this example of a web push notification for real estate using dynamic parameters you can see:
- Image of the apartment.
- Specific details about the characteristics of the listing, such as the number of bedrooms and bathroom and size in square meters.
- City/Area of the listing
Even though web push notifications are more common for e-commerce sites, the truth is that this is an amazing retargeting channel for any type of industry. Real estate marketing can greatly benefit from the advantages of using them:
- Generate more leads from anonymous users: web push notifications don’t require any type of personal data such as email addresses from users. They just need to click “Allow” in the opt-in prompt from the browser to become a subscriber and start receiving them. This means that, by collecting subscribers, you’re creating an additional database of users you can contact later without the need of them filling out any form or sharing their information.
- Reach users when they’re not on your site: this channel has the power to reach subscribers when they have left the web and are browsing any other site.
- Reach through desktop and mobile: web push notifications can reach users on both desktop and mobile without the need of installing an app.
- Direct communication: unlike emails, when using web push notifications you can communicate with users in real time. You don’t have to wait for them to check their inboxes in order to get the message across: as soon as they open their browsers the notification will be delivered.
Now that you know how you can benefit, let’s talk in depth about how to boost your real estate marketing strategy with web push notifications.
First things first: Identify you user’s journey and define events in your site
The success behind any digital marketing strategy is planning. Before you start designing your messages and setting up your web push notifications campaigns, you must have determined different scenarios that trigger the messages based on users’ behaviour on your site.
In order to do this you must have a very clear understanding of your business marketing funnel. What’s the process users go through from the moment they enter your web for the first time until they reach conversion? What stages do they experience?
The sequence of messages you create for your automated web push notifications campaign is directly tied to every action and step users take while browsing your website. That’s why it’s so important that you have complete knowledge of how the decision making process goes for your target audience and how you can engage with them in every stage.
It could look something like this, for example:
- Initial visit to the real estate website: user enters the site for the first time
- Chooses a location: country, city, neighborhood
- Selects a listing category: could be apartments, houses, offices
- Applies a series of filters: price, size, number of bedrooms/bathrooms
- Viewing of a specific listing page
- Finally filling out a contact form requesting more information
If you determine that these could be the steps users go through when browsing for a listing, you can easily determine that you need to use automated web push notifications campaigns that are triggered by each and one of these events. If a user leaves, before going to the next one, he/she will receive a notification with the objective of pushing them down the funnel.
Create sequences of messages with automated notifications
Once you’ve defined your triggering scenarios, you can go to the next step and create a sequence of automated web push notifications for each one: homepage visited, category viewed, listing viewed, form filled out. The objective is to keep the communication flowing through a period of time that helps maintain the interest and lead to the conversion.
With a platform like Frizbit you can define as many scenarios you want with as many sequences as you consider appropriate. A combination of 5 events with 3 sequences each, would be ideal to show great results. You can schedule them to be delivered after the amount of time you see fit, for example: 1 day, 3 days and 7 days after the event if the user still doesn’t convert.
In real estate it’s a great strategy to appeal to a sense of urgency that the listing is going to be taken by someone else who is also interested, and sequences of automated web push notifications are a great way to do just that. Let’s jump right into some specific examples for every scenario:
Practical use cases of web push notification for real estate:
a) Retargeting based on City/Area
This would be one of the first things a user would do when browsing a real estate site. After entering the web, users will choose a category to start looking for options that interest them. This category could be a location for example, a country, city or more specifically, a neighborhood.
If users browse through a listing category and then leave the site without going any further with their search, you can retarget them via web push notifications reminding them about the listings in that city or area. A category can also include a type of listing.
b) Retargeting based on filters
Once users decide the category they want to browse, they’ll start applying filters to get the result that meet their needs the best. Parameters such as:
- Size
- Number of bedrooms
- Number of bathrooms
- Price
All can be used to later send hyper-personalised messages via web push notifications to inform them about new listings with the same specifics. The main benefit of using these parameters is that they appeal exactly to what users searched for: they have already expressed interest in this information and will be appreciative of getting a reminder suited to their needs.
c) Retargeting based on listing viewed
Once a user clicks on a listing and visits its page, but then leaves the site without going any further with the process, you can send a web push notification with said information encouraging the user to come back a schedule a visit.
This message can include all the details about the listing the users liked, increasing its relevance and value.
d) Schedule a visit
This would be the equivalent of a cart abandonment recovery message from an e-commerce site. You can send a web push notification to users that visit a page listing but leave the site without filling in a form to schedule a visit.
e) Similar Listings Recommendation
Additionally to being able to create scenarios and sequences of messages with automated web push notifications campaigns for every step of the user’s journey, you can also create campaigns with recommendations.
Once a user has visited and showed interest in a specific listing, adding filters for every characteristic, you can use this information to create an automated campaign that sends notifications after a period of time you decide if the user doesn’t convert.
When people are looking for a new home, they want to keep posted about new listings that they might like. Going online every single day to check all the sites for new opportunities can be very exhausting. By sending web push notifications with recommendations, you’ll save a lot of time and effort to your subscribers,they will appreciate it and you’ll generate a lot of new visits and leads.
f) Favorites reminders
When people search classified pages, they look at a lot of different options before finding the one they like. That’s why these types of pages always have a “favorite” bookmark option to save the listing in a separate category.
With automated web push notifications campaigns you can use this information to send hyper-personalised reminders to users who have added a listing to their favorites. You can send reminders encouraging them to schedule a visit as soon as possible appealing to a sense of urgency that someone else is going to take it off the market.
Tips and strategies to improve your campaigns:
1. Send bulk campaigns to announce new listings and price drops
Manual web push notification campaigns are sent to all the subscribers list, unlike automated ones that are delivered based on individual user behaviour and triggered by events on the site. That’s why they’re the best channel to communicate important information you don’t want anyone to miss out on.
Bulk campaigns can be sent immediately or scheduled to a specific date and time. This feature comes in hand when you want to plan ahead and make sure you communicate any update in a timely manner, even if you’re out of the office
Specifically for the real estate industry that’s constantly changing with new listings and price drops that subscribers surely don’t want to miss, manual web push notifications become an invaluable asset. You can send bulk campaigns every week to alert users updating them about all that’s new.
Additionally, these types of campaigns are great quick traffic generators. Even though their objective resembles a lot to the objective of newsletters, in this case you don’t need to rely on users checking their inboxes on time to learn about important and time-sensitive information.
Massive web push notifications campaigns reach users on time and get them to go back to the website encouraging them to take action immediately.
2. Use segmentation
If you choose the right web push notifications service provider, you’ll have the chance to use a lot of features that will help you make the best possible campaigns. One of them is segmentation.
By segmenting users you’ll have the ability to send them super relevant information that specifically suits them, which ultimately will improve the performance of your campaigns and improve overall user experience. You can use segmentation for:
- Localization: if there’s an industry that revolves around localization is real estate. If you target users by country, city or neighborhood you can send them extremely relevant information about new listings in their area as soon as they become available.
- Listing type: you can identify users by the type of listing they want: if they are looking to buy or to rent, for example. Then, you can target them with a notification letting them know about new listings that might interest them that have the same features. This can also be applied with other characteristics like size, number of bedrooms or bathrooms.
3. Choose the right service provider
Keep in mind that before getting into specifics about campaigns, sequences and strategies the first thing you need to do is to choose the right web push notifications provider for your business. This is the most important step because depending on the provider you select, you’ll have more or less features to play with, amongst other things.
Here’s a list of the most important ones you should keep an eye out for:
- Ownership and subscriber portability
- Campaign automation by triggering events
- Personalisation capabilities
- Campaigns tracking and improvement: segmentations, A/B testing, scheduling
- Pricing plans
- Customer support and account management
Make sure you’re clear about what type of notifications campaigns you want to send and make a list of which features are the most important for you and your business. Is it important to be able to send automated notifications? Do you want additional features such as A/B testing capabilities?
Ask yourself as many questions as possible,as the type of web push notifications strategy you are looking to implement and then search for the right service provider that offers a solution suitable to your needs.
Real estate marketing, classifieds and web push notifications
Web push notifications are reigning in the e-commerce world bringing customers back, recovering abandoned carts and more. But the potential they have for other industries, like real estate and classified pages, is boundless.
You can notify subscribers about new listings, price drops, let them know about new opportunities in a specific area they are interested in and include all sorts of details related to their searches. Keep in mind that, since web push notifications are so versatile and adaptable to any type of site, you can use all of these strategies for classified platforms as well.
With platforms like Frizbit this is possible. If you wish to try it out for yourself and unleash the potential of this new channel for your real estate business, get in touch to request a free demo trial.
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