Houwzer enjoys 300% increase in email open rates with Copper + ActivePipe

Email marketing is the bread and butter behind much of Houwzer’s success, but the company’s leadership knew they could improve their results with a tighter email nurture program. Because, even though they’ve achieved 100% CRM adoption among their agents — a rare feat — playing the long game in real estate is a challenge. The Houwzer exec team had been feeling the pain of inconsistent follow-up for a while. They were using tasks and reminders in Copper, but even after harassing their agents, the team fell short with consistent nurturing activities, which are especially critical in real estate.

“It’s been a massive hurdle for us… maintaining those top-of-mind-awareness touches with clients long term. Because there’s such a gap between the action and the payoff for salespeople,” and following up with leads over 6 months to a year didn’t provide that short-term payoff many agents were looking for. Houwzer needed to find a programmatic way to run long-term nurture campaigns at scale. That’s where integrating ActivePipe with Copper came in. A real estate email marketing solution, ActivePipe offered the targeted tailoring that Houwzer needed.

Houwzer dove in, syncing ActivePipe with Copper, and began to build out extremely specific journeys for every type of lead they get through the door. After only two months, they’ve seen very promising results. “The kind of activity we’re seeing in the pipeline with what we’d normally consider ‘dead’ leads is immensely valuable,” Dave notes. “The numbers are quadrupled in terms of response rates, open rates, engagement rates. It’s blown away any sort of generic email campaign we’ve run in the past.”

So what exactly differentiates ActivePipe + Copper from other email marketing solutions? Dave listed three big differences:

• Truly individualized, 1:1 communication: Emails show up in a recipient’s inbox from the individual agent. People recognize that person’s name, and so the open rates have been 3 times what they used to see with generic marketing emails. Leads reply directly to their realtor, sparking a direct conversation. “The ultimate goal is to keep that relationship alive, keep it real, keep it fresh. The software gets out of the way from being in the middle of that.”
• Feed personalized, targeted content: They can pull in extremely targeted, real-estate specific content based on the search area, giving individuals in specific journeys hyper-relevant information to engage with.
• Segment based on intent: The segmentation possibilities are very granular, enabling Houwzer to create journeys around buyer intent in addition to geographical location. This makes the content in each journey more relevant and impactful, whether it’s for first-time home buyers, retirees or investors.

Thanks to the close integration of the two tools, Houwzer can work effortlessly with its CRM data within ActivePipe, helping drive campaign success with accurate, up-to-date information.

“Using Copper as the brain and ActivePipe as the ‘limb’ that’s doing the work has been a huge win for us.”

Long-term nurture “has been a massive problem for us for years and Copper + ActivePipe really does solve it,” shares Dave.

With the new ActivePipe integration, the potential for improved customer engagement is extremely exciting. “We’re sending out 31,000 emails at a time, and 34-45% of those folks open and click those emails… it’s exciting to see what the long-term impact is, but early indicator metrics are really encouraging and exciting.”

Looking ahead, Dave is particularly excited about building out campaigns that tap into the post-buyer journey. The team has plans to develop a very tight process for nurturing home buyers into sellers over the long term, with Copper + ActivePipe powering this nurture program.

They’re also looking forward to using all of the data they’re beginning to populate from ActivePipe to refine their targeting around buyer intent, and getting more granular with seasonal campaigns based on the feedback they receive. Copper’s custom reporting will enable the team to visualize that data and act on it as their programs evolve and scale.

With its recent $118M Series B funding round and launch of all-cash-offer services, Houwzer doesn’t plan on slowing down their growth anytime soon. And with Copper as their CRM partner, Dave says, “We don’t have any fear about its ability to scale with us.” See the company’s full results with Copper, and learn how they got there, in our case study here.

About Houwzer

Houwzer is a next-generation real estate brokerage and home services company built around the customer. Its full-service, salaried agents and loan officers help homeowners save when they sell and trust when they buy. Houwzer’s proprietary technology is an end-to-end platform that streamlines the entire transaction from beginning to end with an integrated one-stop shopping experience. The company employs unique salaried agents as dedicated seller or buyer agent specialists who receive salary instead of commissions, allowing them to focus on service, not just sales. Houwzer has maintained an industry-leading Net Promoter Score of 84 and an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars from over thousands of client reviews online. Since launching in 2015, Houwzer has saved home sellers along the East Coast over $35 million and helped clients buy or sell thousands of homes worth almost $2 billion. To learn more, visit www.houwzer.com