Retargeting, analytics, testing and automation tools
I find interesting to check which technologies might be using other players in our industry, based on the traces in the source code. As part of a competitor research, it can give us an idea of which are their marketing activities and can also help us to discover new tools.
So this time I’ve analyzed 20 top property portals worldwide and this is what we have. Please take it just as a 3rd party reference:
Retargeting
For retargeting we can just use the native option provided by each network like Google or Facebook. But if we want to have a centralized control, increase reach and escalate our activities, a nice option is using tools like Criteo, AdRoll or RTB House.
Among property portals Criteo is the most popular one. I used it in the past for JustProperty and I can tell is a good tool, although I didn’t like that their algorithm was more optimized for e-commerce than real estate. Because for portals is more interesting to share the leads among different listings than concentrating them in the best performing ones.
A/B Testing
Basic to increase the conversion rate, we can see many portals using Optimizely, a classic which is probably the leading tool in the field. And also Google Optimize 360 and Visual Website Optimizer (VWO).
I’ve tried Optimizely myself and I can tell it’s a very complete solution. Google Optimize (not 360) it’s very basic, but if someone wants to start with A/B testing and personalization, I think is a good option for free.
Web Analytics
Not a surprise to see all the portals using Google Analytics. Some are lucky to enjoy Google Analytics 360, the (expensive) enterprise version that offers professional support, extra features, higher limits and getting rid of the often annoying data sampling ;)
Some portals chose to combine GA with a second solution, which I think is wise to compare both when strange situations arise. And the Spanish leader Idealista.com uses AT Internet, alternative that I knew when I worked in Dubizzle, with some advantages over the free version of GA but that I wouldn’t recommend.
UX Analytics
A must to create heatmaps, record user sessions, analyse funnels and in the end, to understand better how the users interact with our website. The most used ones are two classics: Hotjar and CrazyEgg. We have other portals using Mouseflow, ClickTale or TealLeaf, part of IBM’s Watson.
I’ve used both CrazyEgg and Hotjar and I’d say both of them are fine. This tools are specially interesting to improve navigation and measure the impact of design changes. It’s always interesting to see how visitors behave, sometimes very differently to what we think.
Audience Insights
The majority of the portals use comScore for audience insights and measurement. We have some others using the well known Nielsen and Effective Measure (now Narratiive) solutions. No one uses Quantcast which could be an alternative too.
Marketing Automation
Tools for automation are more difficult to spot within the source code, but we can see several portals using two big marketing suites which provide that option: Oracle Eloqua and Adobe Marketing Cloud. Some others use Exact Target Email, part of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and Towerdata.
I haven’t tried any of those but a similar option that I know is Silverpop by IBM. It’s a nice software to handle transactional emails and create complex automation flows.
Conclusions
For us marketeers it’s important to keep testing new technologies and alternatives of what we are currently using, specially if we are not so happy with them. There are many marketing tools available, so this kind of analysis can definitely help us to chose.
For example, I didn’t know about Kameleoon, used by the leading portal in France. They offer a predictive personalization solution that sounds worth checking.
Apart from this, could also be interesting to check the technologies offered to visitors: 360° virtual tours, live chat, map search, mobile app, push notifications, … But I leave that for another time ;)
Would you recommend any other marketing technology? Please let me know below!
