Realtor.com optimizes email program with Expert Services
Time to read: 2 minutes
Realtor.com® is the leading online search destination for homebuyers, sellers, and renters. Founded in 1995, realtor. com pioneered the digital real estate industry and today offers the most comprehensive database of MLS-listed forsale properties among competing national sites.
Thomas Tinajero, Director of Marketing Operations, Engagement Marketing, and Jenna Chateauvert, Sr. Director of Engagement Marketing, focus on the strategic and operational aspects of engagement marketing at realtor. com, like maintaining best-in-class email deliverability.
“Email allows us to reach out directly to our most valuable consumers with relevant information, to help them in their home buying journey. It is a highly effective engagement tool due to its ability to be personalized at a unique individual level.”
Challenge
Realtor.com first built its custom email management tool on top of Twilio SendGrid’s delivery engine in 2011, and has continued to see consistently strong delivery rates with the platform.
As realtor.com grew its transactional email program, Jenna and her team noticed they didn’t have 100% deliverability in one of realtor.com’s subuser accounts, caused by blocks for domains managed by an internet service provider (ISP).
Since email is an essential channel for the realtor.com platform, Jenna and her team consulted with Twilio SendGrid’s Expert Services to investigate the issue and to better ensure the effectiveness of their email program.
Solution
With full access to realtor.com’s account data and sophisticated third-party analytics tools, email deliverability experts uncovered two key delivery risks:
- High hard bounce rates for another realtor.com subuser, due to an invalid address, that was putting the deliverability of that mail stream at risk.
- A 10% block rate for an inactive lead-routing domain was putting the deliverability of other lead-routing domains at risk.
Twilio SendGrid’s Expert Services team, which has relationships with ISPs like Google and Microsoft, also shared insights on how different ISPs react to sending activity and how Jenna and her team could better adapt their email strategy to these nuances.
Result
Jenna and her team were able to proactively resolve the detected delivery risks before they could turn into larger issues:
- Domain blocks were lifted and delivery improved from 0% to near 100%
- Bounce rates dropped by half for the top ten email service providers after cleaning the list
- A block was resolved for the inactive lead-routing domain, safeguarding deliverability for other routing domains
Now realtor.com has stronger overall delivery rates, at over 99% for sending accounts, plus a healthy and reliable platform setup and list hygiene.
“This engagement restored our confidence in our email program, and we were able to continue our day-to-day operations with confidence,” Jenna says.
Bottom Line
Twilio SendGrid was the partner realtor.com needed to improve its email program with:
- Expertise: Email experts at Twilio SendGrid have over 100 years of combined experience with email
- Industry relations: Twilio SendGrid is the only email service provider with industry leadership in all major organizations
- Deliverability: Built for deliverability, Twilio SendGrid is trusted by the world’s leading senders
“Without a strong list hygiene and deliverability strategy, you may not have the chance to get to the next step of the funnel with your customers. With a knowledgeable team focused on deliverability, Twilio SendGrid has helped us measure our campaigns, confirm areas of success, identify areas of improvement, and follow up on key action items thereafter.”
