Realtors Property Resource® (RPR®), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR), is a data platform and member benefit funded through NAR dues. It aggregates data from Multiple Listing Service (MLS) systems nationwide to give REALTORS® on-the-go access to the largest database of residential and commercial properties to help them wow clients and close deals. 

“A REALTORS® ability to quickly access and share property data directly influences their ability to effectively advise clients. We’re committed to making sure all REALTORS® are aware of the platform, and know how to use this valuable member benefit,“ explained Reggie Nicolay, Vice President of Marketing and Social Media at RPR. “In minutes, REALTORS® can create an RPR account, download the mobile app or use the desktop version and perform property searches to discover more about on and off market properties.” 

RPR also provides PDF templates to help agents and brokers create custom reports with key information—a biography, client testimonials, market statistics, their marketing methods, etc.—to better inform, engage, and impress clients. RPR also creates educational resources, from webinars to ebooks, to help REALTORS® understand how to use and maximize the RPR platform potential. 

While more than 1.5 million NAR members can access RPR, there’s a large percentage that don’t at all, that have only used it once, or that haven’t for some time. They are bombarded by real estate technology, and struggle to understand the purpose of each platform and what value they bring to their client work. REALTORS® also frequently enter and exit the profession with market fluctuations, which makes it increasingly difficult to find and reach them. 

RPR has dealt with these challenges, struggling to nurture audience awareness and understanding. Targeted, cross-channel, and timely marketing is growing more essential to engage with a vast audience, in a noisy market, but wasn’t easy with the solutions RPR used.

From “Bulletin Board” to Cross-Channel, Personalized Marketing

As RPR’s need for more dynamic, timely, personalized communications grew, they wanted to execute campaigns with different audience segments that their legacy ESP couldn’t scale to support. “We were basically doing bulletin board marketing, putting a big message out and hoping that people would see it,” shared Aaron Flatt, Director of Growth Marketing. It became cost-prohibitive given the scale and volume of RPR’s communications program. 

To successfully shift to more event-based, cross-channel marketing and demonstrate their value to more than 1.5M agents, RPR needed a modern ESP to complement and integrate with the other applications in its martech stack. This includes Appcues, which helps produce guided tours for users to better understand RPR’s business-building features and Zapier, which prompts communications based on user activity (e.g. webinar signups, taking surveys and providing feedback that’s positive or negative, or running certain RPR reports).

Iterable was a perfect solution: an easy-to-use, data-driven platform with open integrations to the RPR Mobile™ app. The flexible data model accelerates agility and the straightforward interface, combined with a robust feature set, supports multi-journey execution with different audiences. With Iterable, RPR can readily create individualized communications to deliver the right message, on the right channels, at the right time so agents know what it does, how it will benefit their work, and choose to regularly use it for nurturing client relationships and closing deals.

RPR’s Winback Journey Reduces Churn & Creates Record-Breaking Usership

After onboarding with Iterable, the RPR marketing team embarked on executing a daily winback campaign with two audiences identified by the Operations team: 

• The once-and-done user who created an RPR account, but activity shows they bounced after signup and didn’t return. 
• The unengaged user who was active with RPR, but their last activity was at least six months ago or as far back as two years. 

RPR wanted both audiences to get reacquainted with their platform so they created a single dynamic communication journey in Iterable Studio to accommodate both audiences. Once a user qualifies as either a once-and-done or an unengaged user, they are added to the winback journey and the paths split based on if they’re a commercial or residential agent. 

For example, if there’s a residential agent that hasn’t used RPR in the last 180 days, the first email they receive includes content about Shareable Market Trends, a newer RPR feature. If there’s no immediate activity with RPR after that first email, users receive another email prompting them to download the mobile app. If they act within the next 180 days, they’re taken out of the journey and receive different communications with personalized messages and content to support their work and RPR engagement. If they do not engage, they’re added to a winback churn list.

Taking this approach to better connect with their audience, RPR has experienced stronger conversion rates. Agents are more consistently using the app, and platform usage is maintained, even after the highest utilization peak for the year, which normally sustains through summer. Before, RPR typically saw usage dips as low as three or four percent after that peak.

“Iterable allows us to keep stronger usage than we’ve ever experienced this late in the summer. We have 10 years to look at where we can say that over and over. But this year, we’re consistently above the bar because we’re bringing agent’s in through this campaign,” explained Reggie. The more REALTORS® in, the better, so RPR can help them gain client trust and connection that leads to closed deals. 

Social Ad Retargeting is Key to Enhancing Agent Conversion

Meeting users where they are, including social media, is key to improving engagement. RPR strategically tapped into Meta as one avenue to enhance call-to-actions in its winback emails and created a complimentary retargeting journey. 

Users who are not engaging with the winback emails, meaning they opt not to open it, will see a retargeting ad in Meta, personalized based on whether they’re an agent who works in residential or commercial real estate. For example, if you’re an agent that stopped using RPR six months ago, and you opt not to open a winback email, the Iterable journey checks weekly to see if you’ve done any of the three events in the RPR market trends tool.

If you do one event, you’re removed from the audience, taken out of the ad set, and added into a new set that waits for another activity to be performed. If you don’t act, then you’ll stay on a hold tile and continue to receive the same ads. 

On top of using social media ad retargeting as a means to enhance the winback journey and user onboarding—with initial engagement success thanks to Iterable—RPR now has sights on leveraging more channels like SMS to amplify its messages, attract and retain users, and deliver more personalized experiences for all 1.5M NAR members.