RealtyTrac experiences a 35% increase in conversions to their
subscription service at Yahoo!

Industry: Real Estate, Online Marketplace

Product: Return Path Platinum and Return Path Certification

Background

RealtyTrac is the leading online marketplace of foreclosure properties, with more than 2 million default, auction and bank-owned listings from over 2,200 U.S. counties, along with detailed property, loan and home sales data. Hosting more than 3 million unique monthly visitors, RealtyTrac provides innovative technology solutions and practical education resources to facilitate buying, selling and investing in real estate. RealtyTrac's foreclosure data has also been used by the Federal Reserve, FBI, U.S. Senate Joint Economic Committee and Banking Committee, U.S. Treasury Department, and numerous state housing and banking departments to help evaluate foreclosure trends and address policy issues related to foreclosures.

As an active and busy online marketplace, RealtyTrac relies on email to communicate with subscribers and visitors, deploying more than 30 million emails per month to drive and maintain subscriptions to their service. Their complex email program includes property alerts, newsletters, subscriber communications, affiliate and partner communications and a variety of other messages designed to promote their services to realtors and individual buyers.

Challenge

Email is RealtyTrac's primary channel for communicating and providing value for subscribers and prospects. As a monthly subscription service, email is critical to their business so when RealtyTrac emails fail to arrive in the inbox, it has a direct impact on their revenues and overall performance. Moreover, a picture truly is worth a thousand words in the real estate business. Since most of RealtyTrac emails, particularly their Daily Alerts that are sent to 18 million subscribers, include photos and images of homes, email rendering became an important marketing tool to drive conversions to their free trial program and maintain a loyal customer base for ongoing email communications regarding available foreclosures and services.

Over time RealtyTrac discovered that they were facing significant deliverability issues at Yahoo! - a domain that represents 27% of their list. Beyond, Yahoo!, the RealtyTrac team needed to ensure high inbox placement at other key ISPs like Hotmail, which represents another 17.5% of their file and find a way to deliver emails with images and links enabled so they could improve response rates and drive more revenue.

Solution

RealtyTrac knew that investing in deliverability improvements was essential to maintaining strong customer relationships and a healthy online marketplace so the company engaged Return Path. They elected the Platinum level service to solve their challenges with Yahoo! and serve as their partner in deliverability monitoring on an ongoing basis.

The Return Path team diagnosed the major issues contributing to RealtyTrac's deliverability challenges including analysing their sender reputation, determining which ISPs were blocking and why and devising strategies to lower their complaint rates and improve the subscriber experience.

After improving their reputation metrics, RealtyTrac applied for and was accepted to the Return Path Certification Whitelist. Third-party whitelists are proven to improve deliverability at specific ISPs and protect businesses from changes in blocking and filtering techniques. More specifically, RealtyTrac would be able to have their email delivered with images and links automatically enabled at ISPs like Yahoo!, MSN and Hotmail; a prime benefit of the Return Path Certification program.

Results

Since joining Return Path, RealtyTrac has earned inbox rates in excess of 90% at Yahoo and after becoming Certified in the Return Path Certification program, experienced a 40% lift in open rates at Yahoo!. Furthermore, "images on" at Yahoo!, Hotmail and other Microsoft domains have provided a corresponding 35-40% increase in their conversion rates from their 7 day free trial program. Additionally, access to detailed daily reputation reports ensure RealtyTrac has the data they need to proactively diagnose, fix and prevent deliverability failures issues so they can yield the maximum email ROI.

Customer Feedback

"Yahoo! is by far the most prevalent domain on our list, representing 27% of our file. Hotmail represents another 17.5%. When we experience delivery failures at these ISPs, we know exactly how much revenue we are losing with each deployment. With access to the detailed daily reputation reports and support from the Return Path team, we can proactively address potential deliverability issues before they negatively affect our revenue streams. Moreover, the improved delivery and image enablement at Yahoo! gained from Certification earned us a 40% increase in open rates and a 35% increase in conversion rates for our highest performing channel. After using other popular email certification programs, we quickly realized that the cost/benefit did not compare to Return Path Certification. In fact, Return Path Certification pays for itself making the entire Return Path solution a no-brainer for us."

—Brian Simmons, Director of IT