How property developers can benefit from our portals
- Insights
The marketing industry is constantly changing while also becoming more complex with regards to data privacy. This includes the issues of GDPR and iOS 14, and most recently the challenges of third-party cookies. As a backdrop to this, we have now lived with the pandemic for well over a year, causing companies in most industries to adapt to new ways of operating and individuals to new ways of using their services and purchasing their products.
Customers today are increasingly demanding a seamless interaction with brands and a more personalized journey from their first point of contact until a purchase has been made. Further, they expect more secure platforms and more efficient processes. These trends are also relevant among home buyers, and the effects of the pandemic have fuelled this shift. Remote – or online - buying of real estate has grown quite dramatically just over the last few years. According to Redfin, 63% of homebuyers in the US and Canada made an offer on a home that they had not seen in person last year. Consequently, the marketing of newbuild properties must adapt accordingly.
But how can we meet the demand of today's homebuyers while also complying to the restrictions on how they interact and behave across the web? First, let's get an understanding of cookies and how they affect marketers.
A brief introduction to cookies
Cookies are pieces of code that are stored in user browsers such as Google Chrome or Safari. They are used to identify the user so that websites can offer personalized browsing experiences or advertisers can serve personalized ads. Cookies do not work cross-device, so someone using several devices and browsers will look like several different people.
The two main types of cookies are first-party cookies and third-party cookies. Marketing professionals have for many years relied on the latter, mainly for tracking, advertising and retargeting website visitors. They are created by domains other than the one you are visiting directly, hence the name third-party. The third-party vendor is what makes cross-site tracking possible. Due to the increased focus on data privacy and creation of new laws and regulations the last few years, third-party cookies are deprecated from Safari and Firefox, and Google will stop support in 2023.
This will cause limitations for marketers that have been relying on third-party cookies. First-party cookies, however, will not be affected by any of this. These can only be placed and read by the domain a user is visiting, meaning that insights are collected directly by the website.
How do our portals help combat these challenges?
Our portals Newbuilds.com and the Norwegian equivalent Eiendom.no offer an integrated data strategy where property developers can reap several benefits. First, we offer a logged-in user experience. This way, when a home buyer signs up as a user on our portals, they are leaving information about who they are such as name, location and email address. Moreover, the browsing behaviour of these users can be analysed for deeper insights. The data collected from the logged-in experience also works cross-device, so that we can track the right user regardless of its browsing pattern.
Second, since we historically have run a considerable number of campaigns, we already have first-hand data on what converts and what does not when it comes to marketing of different types of properties. The system also uses the second-party data, which is aggregated campaign data from many other campaigns, combined with behavioural data to improve the auto-targeting and auto-generated ads. This aggregated and anonymized campaign data can be used across different advertisers. For example, we can use this to identify what audiences or contexts usually work well for newbuilds. Our aggregated campaign traffic also enables us to do much more experimentation, eventually leading to a higher lead conversion rate on the website.
Finally, the portals facilitate a data alliance, which is imperative to follow trends of the overall market. This is something very few companies can achieve alone, especially smaller ones, but collectively we are able to see trends and behavioural patterns which will benefit us all. The more home buyers and property developers that use the portals, the more all parties will benefit from this accumulated presence. Those who are not listing their developments on our portals are simply missing out on this opportunity.
To summarize, the portals offer a logged-in experience which makes the collection of first-party data happen in an effective and safe way. By using second-party data from campaigns, the system can learn what usually works and what does not for newbuild properties. We can also keep track of overall market trends due to the data alliance. This all helps us create more personalized targeting so that developers can reach their full sales potential, while at the same time creating a more personalized, seamless and safe customer journey - a win-win situation for all.
Do you have questions about our portals or would like to list your projects?
Contact support@newbuilds.com / support@eiendom.no (for Norwegian queries) or call +47 23 96 69 07.
