Challenge
RentPath is a leading digital marketplace connecting millions of consumers with apartments, condos and houses for rent through its network of websites and mobile apps. RentPath’s category-leading brands include Apartment Guide, Rent.com, Lovely, Rentals.com, and RentalHouses.com. The company relies heavily on the email channel for client services, as well as general marketing outreach. The Brief RentPath began experiencing declining open rates and high bounce rates — both tell-tale signs of declining email deliverability rates. They needed to increase revenue by recapturing opportunities lost due to email delivery issues. They came to Trendline to help solve these issues.
Solution
The Story Trendline performed a deliverability audit on RentPath’s current sending practices and uncovered a few obstacles that were negatively affecting their deliverability. Trendline broke down the many factors involved in email campaigns, both technical and creative, to determine what corrective measures to take to ensure successful and consistent deliverability to the audience’s inbox. The deliverability audit uncovered that their emails were being blocked in Yahoo, and they also had broken DNS records, which were further preventing delivery of their emails to subscribers. While there were not many major issues that were discovered, each small bump in the road impacts the way an ISP views an email. In order to prevent further delivery issues, recommendations were made such as modifying ISP configuration, email-list segmentation, improving content, and consistent monitoring of email campaigns. These changes were made to ensure that all email sends were going to the customer’s Inbox. All in all, implementing better sending practices and building a solid infrastructure were key to improving RentPath’s deliverability. Trendline was and still is dedicated to RentPath’s email success and ensures that all recommended practices are being implemented by their marketing team. This has led to ongoing, successful email campaigns sending to both new and repeat customers. Rentpath has consistently seen top-performing metrics across all 4 key aspects of their deliverability: 100% inbox placement as well as 0.2% bounce rates. Unsubscribes are at a record average of 0.1% and open rates at 20%+. The advice and knowledge from the experienced strategists at Trendline have improved RentPath’s sender reputation and Inbox placement immensely. Monthly reporting from Trendline has educated RentPath on what to look out for that may hurt deliverability, as well as alerting them to any red flags that may have come up, thus allowing RentPath to take control of their sender reputation and plan for any future problems they may experience. In 2019, Trendline won more of RentPath’s business, expanding services from solely deliverability to include email programs as well. Trendline is currently working on establishing 3 master templates for RentPath, as well as a project on email journeys.
Results
15% increase in overall deliverability 74% increase in open rates 176% increase in conversions
Want fresh marketing stories in your inbox?
Get the weekly email that makes you a marketing genius.
Stay informed and inspired, for free.