Case Studies / Success with Skai

Leveraging Skai’s People And Technology To Move Opendoor’s Marketing Program In-House

Improved Scale and Performance

171 %
Conversions
144 %
Spend
20 %
CPA

Challenge: Managing a Multi-Million Dollar Social Program in-house

Operating in over 20 markets, Opendoor’s marketplace enables people across the US to easily buy, sell or trade-in a home. With over 5.34 million units sold in 2018, the housing marketplace is one of the largest high-value marketplaces in the world.

To accomplish their mission, it’s critical for Opendoor to have a strong paid social program to effectively reach, engage and drive potential home sellers to Opendoor’s platform. 

This led Opendoor to pursue transitioning their advertising program from an external marketing partner to in-house buying and planning. But with the sheer number of social campaigns Opendoor creates, managing their entire marketing portfolio became an even more daunting task than they could ever imagine. 

Along with this major challenge, Opendoor was also looking to increase their marketing investment to expand their national footprint.  This meant they had to somehow maintain their current performance while growing their advertising program.  

Solution: Best-in-class Technology and People

While Opendoor aimed to manage their social advertising, they needed a partner that understood how to best leverage social platforms, had the expertise to help guide their program and also the technology to leverage first and best in class bidding and optimization tools. 

That’s when Opendoor partnered with Skai’s Expert Services team to help them scale their program. Skai’s Expert Services team provided transitional support to help Opendoor move their marketing program from externally dependent to internally managed.

  • The Expert Services team at Skai began by swiftly onboarding Opendoor’s Facebook activity to Skai and managing all of their campaigns. This was to remove the burden of becoming independent while Opendoor learned Skai’s platform.
  • The ES team also created a template of who they should target and how their campaigns should be structured to better arm them to penetrate new markets. Once Opendoor began acquiring sellers within a new market, the Expert Services team helped Opendoor apply best practices to grow current markets these markets while simultaneously continuing to help with expansion.
  • The ES team then helped Opendoor track and optimize their true conversions better than they were doing so before. Previously, Opendoor leveraged Facebook’s pixel to trigger whenever a seller contacted Opendoor on their website. While this helped them identify leads, this did not paint the entire picture for them as Opendoor needed to still vet if they offered services in the potential seller’s area, assess the prospect’s home to see if it is the right fit, then send an offer and ultimately receive the signed contract. All of this happened within Opendoor’s platform which a Facebook pixel could not track. However, Skai’s open architecture, on the other hand, was able to trace the seller every step of the way and accurately attribute signed contracts to the ad that drove the conversion. 

Skai’s platform was an integral part to Opendoor’s ability to grow their marketing investment and market penetration. 

  • Opendoor leveraged Skai’s Creative Library to host and categorize all of their brand’s creative, regardless if they were promoted or not. This helped them create libraries based on location, type of home and theme. They then enabled Kenhoo’s Dynamic Creative Refresh capability to swap in new creative whenever an active ad was underperforming.
  • In order to identify and scale the ideal audience, Opendoor created Personas through Skai’s platform. Personas on Skai enable advertisers to create audiences with a combination of demographic, first and third-party data to then analyze the audience holistically, agnostic of campaign.
  • Skai’s Automated Actions helped safeguard effectiveness as Opendoor aimed to reach their growth goals and expand into new markets. Automated Actions is Skai’s proprietary rule-based optimization feature that updates creative, changest status of your campaigns and shifts budgets based on performance trends and external signals such as weather, health, and TV

Results – Increased Performance and Scale

Thanks to Skai’s team of social advertising experts and Skai’s platform, Opendoor experienced exponential growth. 

When comparing their performance leveraging Skai to last year’s performance, Opendoor was able to increase spend by 144% without negatively impacting performance. The total number of new sellers on Opendoor’s platform increased by 171%, while the cost to acquire new sellers went down by 20% as Opendoor continued to expand into new markets. 

Most importantly, Opendoor now manages all of their advertising in-house. No longer reliant on external partners to manage their program and still leveraging Skai’s platform to grow their business. 

Background

Since 2014, Opendoor has provided people across the US with a radically simple way to buy, sell or trade-in a home. Headquartered in San Francisco, Opendoor currently operates in more than 20 markets in the US and has over 1,100 employees.

Skai is the leading technology platform for brands looking to plan, activate and amplify effective marketing across the most engaging digital channels, such as Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Snapchat, Pinterest, and more. In addition to Skai’s suite of technological advertising solutions, Skai has a transitional services team that supports brands and agencies seeking to learn about the platform and train their teams to manage their programs via Skai.

Challenge

Opendoor sought to migrate their entire social marketing program in-house.

Solution

Opendoor partnered with Skai’s Expert Services Team to manage and transition their agency-led marketing program in-house. 

Results 

Opendoor was able to increase spend by 144% without negatively impacting performance. The total number of new sellers on Opendoor’s platform increased by 171%, while the cost to acquire new sellers decreased by 20% as Opendoor continued to expand into new markets.


“Skai Social helps us consistently grow our business with enhanced optimization solutions.”

Kimiye Karageorge, Senior Marketing Manager - Opendoor