APARTMENT RENTAL MARKETPLACE

Fast-Growing Startup, Zumper, Scales Leads by 384% with Advanced, Predictive Recommendations

Zumper is an end-to-end rental platform that aims to make renting a place to live as easy as booking a hotel. Their dynamic business model makes it critical to stay on top of availability, pricing, user preferences, and levels of user intent. As Zumper’s user base grew, and the number of listings and customer requirements increased significantly, the need for a marketing solution to engage their audience at a hyper-personal level, at scale, became a necessity.

+384%

Number of Lead Submissions

+198%

Message Volume with Same Resources

+128%

Click-Through Rates

BUSINESS

Zumper is on a mission to make renting a seamless and stress-free experience for everyone. One landlord, listing, and renter at a time.

HEADQUARTERS

San Francisco, CA // USA

INDUSTRY

Apartment Rental Marketplace

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THE TURNING POINT

In-House Solution Functionality Could Not Keep Up with Evolving Business Needs

Finding a place to live can be an all-consuming and frustrating process, especially when time is of the essence. Zumper needed to keep users engaged throughout their apartment search, which can range anywhere between 1 week and 6 months, and adapt to evolving preferences accordingly. At the same time, they need to constantly provide multiple, relevant alternatives, as rentals can quickly disappear.

After building a solution in-house that was heavily reliant on engineering resources, Zumper realized their business needs were evolving too rapidly to match users to the right rentals. They needed a fast, flexible system that could keep up with millions of listings at any given time.

OBJECTIVE

Increase Renter Engagement and Listing Discovery Through Data-Driven, 1:1 Recommendations

Zumper needed a platform that would ultimately enable them to:

Increase Engagement Through Tailored Content
Provide users with relevant listings and content personalized to their individual criteria, such as price, room size, term length or pet-friendly.
Re-engage Customers to Come Back In-market
Remind customers who dropped off or who have a lease ending that Zumper is the go-to resource for the perfect rental.
Create Valuable, Dynamic Customer Experiences
Craft dynamic, multi-stage lead flows that evolve with user preferences and behaviors, and keep users informed along the way.

“Blueshift is a responsive partner that has grown with us, supporting our drive to provide the best-tailored content to our users, through the correct medium, at the right time.

If we had stuck with our old system, we’d need to add a number of people across the board, data scientists, data engineers, and marketers, to achieve the complexity of what Blueshift does for us today.”

Russell MiddletonCo-Founder, Zumper

Strategy

Hyper-Personalize and Scale Campaigns with Advanced Recommendations and Triggers

Zumper ultimately turned to Blueshift to improve its customer experience through an AI-powered, rather than rule-based, recommendation engine. Blueshift’s unmatched quality of AI-powered recommendations covered all of Zumper’s use cases. The multifaceted messaging triggers and ability to bring in rental listings and catalog data enabled Zumper to tailor messaging in real-time based on catalog updates and user behaviors. Zumper benefited from Blueshift’s commitment to being a collaborative partner and as a result was able to scale with the evolving needs of the business.

Blueshift easily integrated with Zumper’s existing infrastructure. The platform quickly provided value and became an integral part of the multi-channel marketing approach within two months of launch.

The following capabilities were critical to Zumper’s success:

Personalized Recommendations
Zumper surfaced the right apartments for each user and helped discover new listings by matching user preferences (such as price, location, and amenities) and browsing behavior with its constantly changing listing catalog. Blueshift’s solution adopted recommendations as user preferences evolved throughout the apartment search.

Advanced Triggers
Zumper created rich, real-time user experiences by triggering messages and actions based on user behaviors, apartment listing changes, segments, and more.

Testing & Optimization
Zumper incorporated always-on testing into every campaign and optimized for rental application submissions by continuously improving every element of its campaigns, such as subject lines, content, and templates.

Next Steps

Based on the success Zumper has had with Blueshift in driving growth and scaling personalized email and push, Zumper plans to extend Blueshift’s recommendation and real-time personalization capabilities to improve customer experiences on their site with Live Content and Web Push Alerts. Additionally, Zumper plans to introduce Facebook and Google campaigns with Audience Sync.

“No customer journey is linear. Blueshift enables us to cater to the unique preferences of each renter. It’s a true extension of our product and helps our end users discover rentals that meet their search criteria.

Blueshift’s AI-powered recommendation engine allowed us to better serve our customers with targeted marketing and personalized campaigns at scale. The platform enabled us to turn user behavior into experiences that capitalize on actionable insights that were critical to customer experience.”

Kristy NgDirector, Lifecycle Marketing, Zumper