The Ouest France Immo Story
Probance provides Ouest France Immo with automated marketing for shifting communities of buyers and sellers that improves their experience, and boosts revenue.
Historic Partners Ouest France Immo and Probance Develop Multi-faceted Marketing Solution for Real-Estate Buyers and Sellers
The number one real-estate portal in Western France calls on Probance to improve communication to complex communities of buyers, sellers and renters, including individuals and professionals.
Part of the Ouest France Media Group, Ouest France Immo is a company that manages online real-estate classifieds, specialized in the region of western France. Their website, ouestfrance-immo.com displays a vast number of properties to buy, rent or sell. In addition to different communities of private buyers, renters or sellers, they also work with real-estate agencies and developers of new properties.
What’s the secret behind their position as the number one real-estate site in western France? Says Anne Graignic, Head of Web Marketing, “Our competitive advantage over Se Loger and Le Bon Coin is our local knowledge. We’re experts in Brittany, Normandy and the Pays de la Loire regions, with a huge network of sales contacts on the ground who are very well informed.”
#1
real-estate site in Western France
5
of marketing team
17%
average conversion rate
A Shifting Community of Buyers and Sellers
Ouest France Immo is a massive operation, a complex project with multiple sources of data. With millions of constantly changing classified ads and diverse and shifting user populations, they have their work cut out for them in terms of personalized marketing automation. They’re also working within different time frames: on the one hand, they need to engage renters over short term. On the other hand, they need to engage buyers over the long term, and encourage them towards a purchase that might take more than a year.
Developing a Long-Term Partnership
Both companies started out together in 2012, which makes Ouest France Immo one of Probance’s longest running clients. As the years have gone by, both sides have worked towards developing and refining the approach that is so effective today.
Anne Graignic, Ouest France Immo’s web marketing chief, explains. “Years ago, when we started out with nothing, we set up many different scenarios for many different segments, and tons of emails, based on our theories about which might work. We wanted a marketing ‘war machine’! And then we gradually realized which ones were the most effective, so we’ve refined those further, and since added new ones.” Probance too, benefited from these experimental years, which today enables them to offer best-practice scenarios from the outset to more recent clients.
Anne Graignic
Head of Web Marketing, Ouest France Immo
“Probance has enabled us to better structure our CRM initiatives. We have greater precision which means increased personalization. And we’re fully independent – we don’t have to ask a developer to do anything.”
Probance Enables Market Intelligence
One of the benefits of Probance for Ouest France Immo has been as an enabler of effective data marketing: “Probance has enabled us to better structure our CRM initiatives. We have greater precision which means increased personalization. And we’re fully independent – we don’t have to ask a developer to do it.”
The reports are really useful too. “We can see just what was clicked through, and dig deeper into our data to get more information on what works. Which enables us to further personalize communication and be more accurate in our targeting. And we can show sponsors the results, which justifies their subscriptions.”
Probance data enables market intelligence that helps Ouest France Immo to better serve all their communities, and increase revenue. For example, property developers can learn who is interested in purchasing property in which areas. “This kind of local knowledge is valuable information for our professional customers, but we always ensure that we maintain quality, and are careful to be relevant to buyers and what they’re looking for too. We want to maintain trust and loyalty, and serve both our buyers and our sellers.” With an average 17% conversion rate underpinned by Probance’s automated email scenarios, it seems that trust is rewarded.
For Anne Graignic, the quality support and service offered by Probance has always been a plus. “Each time we create a new product, and go to Probance to set up the scenarios, it’s easy, and we always speak to the right person. The sales and technical teams are very professional.”
Ultimately, Probance allows Ouest France to stay on top of a constantly evolving market, and offer both their buyer and seller communities experiences that are seen as a service.
Scenarios and Work Flows that Sell
With a small team of 5 people, Anne Graignic relies on effective automated marketing that’s easy to manage by anyone on the team – and that frees their time to focus on developing new services and products.
Buyers or renters receive an initial email in real time that confirms their account has been created in real time. A day later, they get a “welcome pack” email that reminds them of the different services they can access. This is also an opportunity to cross-sell or up-sell new products and services. “There are other emails, like favorites or last ads seen. And if a buyer hasn’t come back for a while, we’ll send a message encouraging them to widen their criteria.”
Sellers are also catered for. “Just as we send emails with small ads from our real-estate professionals to our individual buyers, we send emails of potential buyers to our real-estate professionals. To help them find the buyers that are a match for their properties. Always in respect of the buyer’s criteria of course. We’re currently developing services to increase those seller leads at the moment, as in today’s real-estate market, demand is outstripping supply.”
“For each of our services or products, we have a scenario with Probance. For example, our ‘property price indicator’ allows us to send valuable info to our users, who can subscribe to the service for a particular area.” Useful information that Ouest France Immo can then share with their seller-subscribers. This kind of communication benefits both buyer and seller communities.
“This year we’re aiming to further develop our marketing to leverage our new services, like the ‘property estimation’ service that we introduced recently. We’ve launched a new scenario for this service, which benefits our users and our real-estate agencies.”
Benefits
Handles Complexity
Probance keeps up with multiple and always changing communities with constantly shifting needs.
Provides Market Intelligence
Data collected by Probance enables enhanced personalization and more valuable services for buyers and sellers
Messages Seen As A Service
Emails contain useful information, fully-customized to each community, and which are seen as a service, not an intrusion.