REA Group Ushers in a New Era of Customer Engagement With Braze

Founded in a garage in the Melbourne suburbs in 1995, REA Group has since expanded to become a global technology leader. REA’s purpose is to change the way the world experiences property, with a relentless focus on innovation to drive unrivaled customer value and consumer engagement. Their business has operations on three continents and boasts a team of almost 2,800 people.

The previous marketing platform used by REA lacked key features that severely limited the types of campaigns the business could create. They were looking for a marketing platform that could better support their requirements to create cross-channel campaigns with a particular emphasis and strength within the app. Segmenting and personalizing experiences for users in real time was also critical. In addition, the existing ways of batching data into their system were becoming more arduous, due to growing send volume and personalization requirements. When data file integrations would fail, it could delay a send an entire day, running the risk that the content shown to consumers would be out of date. This created the need to evolve their martech for a world where data was more readily and easily at their fingertips.

Data At Their Fingertips

REA realized that the rules of customer engagement were changing, and they needed to evolve with them to more effectively capture and retain their audience. So they turned to Braze.

Real estate transactions operate on a long cycle, so REA knew they needed to show value on their app with a regular cadence to stay top of mind for their audience. Mastering the lifecycle journey would be the key task of their new messaging. Because REA was already using Braze Alloys technology partner and customer data platform (CDP) Tealium to manage their customer data for real-time, contextual personalization, it was simple to integrate the unified customer profile created there into messaging via the Braze Currents high-volume data export feature.

Centralized profiles were then used to build reusable audiences that could receive powerful, relevant communications triggered by their own actions. Some use cases included monthly valuation updates for home purchasers, encouraging prospective buyers to contact an agent on properties they are interested in, and alerting sellers when buyers were looking to purchase in their area. With access to enriched datasets in Tealium, the combined Braze/Tealium solution gave the REA marketing and product teams an enhanced ability to create personalized user journeys for buyers and sellers.

Braze Content Blocks, modular elements that can be used multiple times across channels, are a key part of REA’s system. Multiple marketing and product teams have access to these blocks, which pull in real-time property listings, market insights, and more via APIs. They’re easily replicated and used across touchpoints, and when new data points are available to be exposed, they can be quickly updated and tested.

Braze also created massive efficiencies in REA Group’s marketing. They save at least two hours on every single campaign, as they can implement personalization without looping in the data team every single time. With data streaming directly through their APIs, they’re saving even more time every week.

REA’s Results: A New World Of Possibility

By using Braze and Tealium, REA has been able to execute their business goals faster, evaluate their messaging more efficiently, and adjust campaigns in real time to focus on conversion events. They’ve seen positive increases across multiple business-wide metrics, with new teams regularly signing on to use Braze messaging.

“Braze is a powerful platform for REA. The Lifecycle marketing team are empowered to deliver real time personalised campaigns, without relying on other teams to deliver the data. Braze has also created huge efficiencies, saving at least two hours on every single campaign. We are very lucky to have such a strong mar-tech stack at REA and Braze is at the heart of this”

—Sarah Myers, Executive Manager, Consumer Marketing, REA Group

Final Thoughts

With Braze, REA was able to quickly and efficiently integrate informative data and insights into valuable messaging that increased engagement and extended the user lifecycle of every consumer, no matter what their position in the market.

For more on transforming your data infrastructure to a system that can supercharge your marketing, read our new guide on exploring data management and customer engagement.

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