Project: Onto Braze in 50 days: realestate.co.nz
"We wanted to get our investment right, which meant seeking expert support from the beginning. We didn't want to get down the implementation path and realise we were missing something when it's too late"
realestate.co.nz are New Zealand’s longest-standing property portal site and now one of the biggest property portals with over 1.1 million monthly users and 15,000 active agents.
This long company history also came with a historical MarTech stack — having four siloed systems that didn’t talk with each other.
These included systems for:
- Sending marketing communications to their users
- Service communications
- An agent CRM system
- User database
Limited integration between systems often meant a slow, manual process while limiting the ways in which realestate.co.nz could communicate with both users and agents.
This siloed MarTech set-up also meant there was no way to personalise communications beyond ‘first name, last name.’
“Back in the day, an email message with ‘hi <name>’ was cool and it was enough to create attention. Not anymore. Now, personalisation looks like recommending a relevant property to a user based off the property listing they were looking at, within the same area” realestate.co.nz Email Marketing Lead, Munjal (MJ) Bhavsar explained.
MJ and the team needed a system that pulled all key marketing platforms together to create seamless journeys for their customers.
"We wanted to get our investment right, which meant seeking expert support from the beginning. We didn't want to get down the implementation path and realise we were missing something when it's too late,"
Email Marketing Lead, Munjal (MJ) Bhavsar
Not falling into the trap of a failed MarTech decision
Investing in a new platform is a huge commitment. realestate.co.nz secured The Lumery’s Advisory team to conduct a MarTech audit and fit assessment to ensure their business was ready for their preferred vendor, Braze.
“We wanted to get our investment right, which meant seeking expert support from the beginning. We didn’t want to get down the implementation path and realise we were missing something when it’s too late,” said MJ. The workshop series brought together all their MarTech stakeholders and senior leadership team to collectively understand how MarTech contributes to their overall commercial objectives.
From this workshop series, The Lumery proposed three tech recommendations, with additional information to empower the right decision. realestate.co.nz launched their mobile app in January, so doubling down on mobile customers was a key consideration when choosing Braze as their platform.
“The Lumery team were the experts for us, having deep Braze knowledge, and success with other clients who use Braze. The audit and workshop series gave us the confidence that we were in fact ready to take this huge step in our MarTech journey,” MJ said.
Augmented support for a seamless Braze implementation
The Lumery worked with both Braze and realestate.co.nz to ensure a smooth onboarding process and implementation. This meant providing supplementary and flexible support for the realestate.co.nz team whilst they stood up the technology.
“The Lumery’s Marketing Automation team helped direct our focus early on in the implementation journey and provided that ongoing, flexible support that aligned with the ways of working from our internal team” explains MJ.
The Lumery played a key intermediary role, helping the marketing team define and prioritise their use cases. This included working with the development team to integrate systems, implement SDK’s, and ensuring Braze was set up to deliver experiences across both mobile and web.
The Marketing Automation team provided augmented support, bridging knowledge gaps, and ensuring realestate.co.nz got the most out of their Braze implementation from the start.
“There were so many questions that popped up along our implementation journey. So having experts on standby to answer all our questions, really expedited the timeline.”
MJ said cultural alignment was an important aspect of this project. They wanted to feel like one team working towards a common goal.
“We saw and felt this alignment consistently across the entire project. Like most people, there are always stories of good and bad agency/consultancy experiences. In the past, I have worked with agencies that purely communicate through JIRA tickets or email. Our partnership with The Lumery was far more flexible. I could easily contact them via slack, and they made us feel like we were a part of the same team,” he said.
Ultimately, working together as one dream team, it took only 50 days to decommission the previous system and go live with Braze.
The Lumery and Braze have been working together closely as partners, to give clients that extra level of support during their onboarding.
Senior Customer Onboarding Manager at North Star / Braze, Julian Ryles says “The Lumery’s team have really helped deliver a successful onboarding implementation. This was the first time I’ve seen an agency more as an extended team member than just someone who is assigned to the project. They took the time to help wherever they could for the customers’ experience”.