What you need to know:
Innovative Partnership: REA Group partnered with Tealium, adopting a “best of breed” approach to transform its operations, placing customer data and personalised experiences at the forefront, which led to significant operational efficiencies and enhanced marketing insights.
Challenges Addressed: As REA grew, it faced challenges with custom-built tools, siloed data, and varying levels of channel sophistication, necessitating a unified data solution for effective collaboration and personalisation across its dual-sided marketplace.
Successful Implementation: After a rigorous evaluation process, REA selected Tealium for its real-time capabilities and Braze for omni-channel communication, resulting in a Proof of Concept that expanded into broader data applications, greatly impacting customer experiences.
Remarkable Outcomes: The integration of Tealium has allowed REA to process over 65 million daily events, execute real-time campaigns, deliver 7.5 million personalised recommendations daily, and achieve significant increases in user engagement and media optimisation, while streamlining its tech stack for cost efficiency. Additionally, the use of real-time personalisation has enabled $10 million in earned media. Utilising real-time event data in-app triggered campaigns has resulted in a 23x higher click-through rate (CTR) and a 10x higher conversion rate.
REA Group’s Transformation through Real-Time Data and Personalisation
For close to three decades REA Group has been at the forefront of tech innovation in property search. Over the last 10 years, it has become one of Australia’s market leaders in personalisation at scale and understanding early on the power of real-time data. Simply put, the REA team has never been shy at breaking new ground in digital and tech innovation.
By partnering with Tealium and onboarding a “best of breed” approach, REA Group was able to undergo a root-and-branch organisational transformation — putting customer data and personalised experiences at the centre of its operations.
REA Group, through its multidisciplinary technology teams, has achieved dramatic operational efficiencies, a better utilisation of marketing and advertising spend, and insights across the marketing funnel that are deeper and much more valuable.
The Business Challenges that Led to CDP Adoption
REA Group was early in delivering personalised solutions to its customers. But as the business grew in revenue and size, its teams recognised that it was time to onboard a robust solution that would enable high volume, real-time activation.
In this mission, REA Group faced several challenges.
- It was using custom-built, disparate tools that had led to escalating costs and complexities.
- Its data was walled-off and siloed between different teams and departments, leading to fragmented customer data.
- While email was a standout channel for delivering deeply personalised messages to consumers, its other channels were unable to match this sophistication.
- Siloed teams, as well as data banks and customer definitions, meant that teams could not share information around critical audiences, hindering collaboration and scaled personalisation.
A Multi-faceted, Dual-sided Audience Strategy:
For REA Group, the audiences require different levels of interaction and service. Operating in a dual sided marketplace with customers and consumers, users expect relevancy and personalisation and real estate agent customers expect ease of service and unique insights For instance, a young couple looking for a rental property requires very different levels of information — and at different speeds — to house buyers. Real estate agents, whether selling or renting properties, require a very different service again.
Evaluating this set of challenges, it was clear that REA Group needed a unified data solution to consolidate its rich first-party data and streamline its distribution across various platforms. This would also enable critical data access to a broad range of teams including Lifecycle Marketing, Product, Personalisation and Media & AdTech.
First to Market with Best of Breed
To solve for this, REA Group embarked on a comprehensive RFP process to procure both a Customer Data Platform (CDP) and a Customer Engagement Platform (CEP). They evaluated the full-stack solutions and compared it to the best of breed approach. Ultimately REA Group decided to go with the best of breed approach for its flexibility and scalability.
REA Group selected Tealium for its ability to handle large data volumes, real-time capabilities, user-friendly interface, and extensive connector marketplace.
For the engagement platform, Braze was selected for its advanced capabilities in omni-channel communication (particularly in mobile channels) and compatibility with Tealium.
The CDP journey began with a Proof of Concept (POC) to demonstrate value to the marketing team and build trust with the senior leadership at REA Group. Following its success, the scope expanded to encompass broader datasets necessary for driving campaigns and revenue outcomes. Five years later and the majority of customer experiences across REA Group are powered by Tealium, with all business units recognising its impact and potential.
Fast forward to today and this strategy has meant REA Group has flexibility to deliver scalability as the business grows. It has future-proofed the business, and by investing in a first-party data strategy, REA Group is ahead of the curve for any legislative or technical changes. Cookies or no cookies, the team at REA Group is prepared. As business needs evolve, be it through legislative changes or acquisitions, REA Group is able to innovate and invent without legacy technologies impeding progress.
“As a team, we always strive to make the property experience more seamless for both consumers and real estate agents. Partnering with Tealium has allowed us to turn consumer data into real-time personalised experiences at scale. This strategic alignment has not only scaled our approach but also provided us with deeper insights and more effective marketing strategies, driving significant growth and innovation across REA Group.”
Sarah Myers
GM Audience & Marketing, REA GROUP
Reaping Rewards at Scale
The integration of Tealium has enabled REA Group to achieve remarkable results:
1. Data Processing:
Tealium processes an impressive volume of data, handling over 65 million events daily. Through seamless integration with Braze, REA Group updates more than 40 million rich data points every day, ensuring a robust foundation for personalised experiences.
2. Real-time Campaigns:
With over 80 unique real-time events transmitted from Tealium, REA Group executes campaigns with unparalleled speed and precision. These events not only trigger campaigns in real-time but also serve as conversion events for other campaigns. This agility allows for rapid experimentation and automated campaign decisions, delivering the right message to users within milliseconds of their actions.
3. Campaign Performance:
A standout campaign example is the “Save a Search” initiative, where users are prompted to save their searches for the first time. Utilising real-time event data, REA Group’s in-app triggered campaign achieves remarkable results, boasting a 23x higher click-through rate (CTR) and a 10x higher conversion rate compared to scheduled email campaigns. This underscores the pivotal role of real-time messaging in maximising campaign effectiveness.
4. Personalised Experiences:
Tealium’s integration with REA’s app and website facilitates personalised experiences, with Tealium AudienceStream powering recommendations on the homepage. Leveraging Tealium’s unified data platform, REA Group delivers 7.5 million personalised recommendations via hundreds of different layout combinations daily, ensuring a consistent and tailored experience for users across platforms.
5. Personalised Communications:
Since implementing Tealium, REA Group has witnessed an eightfold increase in visits from its owned channel over the past five years. This surge in traffic has enabled REA Group to accelerate success by reinvesting in new strategic initiatives, leveraging personalised communications to engage users effectively. In August alone lifecycle channels delivered over 30 million property views which contributed to over $10m in earned media each year.
6. Media Optimisation:
Tealium’s integration has empowered REA Group to confidently redistribute media and marketing investments, optimising resources where they are needed most. By reallocating savings into alternate campaign strategies, REA Group has achieved greater efficiency and effectiveness in its marketing endeavours.
7. Tech Consolidation:
Through the adoption of Tealium, REA Group has streamlined its tech stack, retiring outdated platforms and systems. By migrating off the previous communications platform, decommissioning in-house built systems, and retiring the Data Management Platform (DMP) in 2023, REA Group has realised significant cost savings while ensuring a more consistent, secure, and privacy-first tech infrastructure.
Powerful lessons REA has learnt along the way:
- Power of Proof Of Concept: Start with the simplest but highest impact use cases. Take a ‘silver bullet’ approach which is essentially picking a use case where you test the end to end pipeline. Involve the right mix of people – technical, product, marketing and most importantly end users of the platforms.
- Power of People: Ensure marketing and product are aligned with their objectives. Break down the silos early between Marketing and Media teams, ensuring a shared understanding of 1st party data.
- Power of Reusability: Look towards creating a centre of excellence to keep scaling across business units and brands. Focus on using the same audience and personalisation data across product, communications, adtech and experimentation. Build it once and reuse as much as you can.
“The partnership between REA Group and Tealium is truly best in class and we are incredibly proud that REA has entrusted Tealium to activate their world class first party data strategy. They were one of the first to market with the Tealium CDP and their best of breed approach and have steamed ahead with their performance by leveraging the power of real-time. What’s most impressive is that they continually iterate and incorporate learnings to drive innovation. REA Group leads the way in terms of delivering incredible CX for their customers. The results are outstanding and it’s so exciting to see the business go from strength to strength.”
Caitlin Riordan
VP of Customer Success APJ, Tealium
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