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Welcome to the Movers and Shakers podcast. Join us as industry leaders and experts discuss important marketing topics and share actionable insights and unique perspectives on the latest marketing, strategies, technology, and trends.
*This content has been adapted from our Movers and Shakers podcast.
Larisa: I think when a lot of marketers hear the term “mover marketing” they still think of it as only being direct mail, which I know is a great channel. When I’ve moved in the past and I received something in the mail, I hang on to that. But just the term MoverTech and hearing you talk about the different ways that you can target these mover audiences, it sounds like you do a lot more beyond the mailbox. Can you talk just a little bit more about that, and how brands are able to reach your audiences?
Michelle: Absolutely, So, let’s talk about our segments first and then I’ll dive into actually where we’re going Larisa because that’s the perfect question of strategy and where we want to go.
We do have a few segments here that are really important to understand and that make us different and make our 90+% insights on all U.S. movers possible.
The Move Journey
Possible Movers
Our first segment we refer to as possible movers. Possible movers are consumers who are out there researching move-related items and services online. They haven’t listed a home for sale yet, but we are able to catch that they’re out there browsing.
For example, they may be looking to see what home prices are, or they’re looking for a new mortgage, or they’re looking to move into a certain area and are gathering information about the area. We’re not finding them on our real estate sites. We don’t find them within our own first-party data assets, but we know that they’re really interested in moving because they are out there researching. This is a really important segment. It’s 100% digital because we have e-mail across the entire universe, but it’s a very early indicator of a move.
The reason why that’s so important is that if you’re working with a storage company or a company that books moving services, the earlier you can start marketing to that consumer who’s interested in moving services, the better result you’re going to get.
Direct mail is also a really great way of hitting those people. We can engage with them digitally for sure, but if you also combine the direct mail with the digital piece, it’s something they could stick on the bridge. And, if you reach them early enough, when they get to the next stage which is our likely movers segment, they already have your information in front of them and are ready to go.
Likely Movers
Likely movers are the next stage, where more of the real estate data kicks in. This is when people have their house up for sale or we have other types of indicators that tell us they’re going to move. Unlike the possible movers where we don’t know for sure, they’re going to move, with likely movers we are over 90% confident that these people are going to move sometime in the near future.
However, they have a little bit more of a journey ahead of them because they still need to sell their home or have other services that they need to complete. So, we know that they’re not moving sometime in the next 4 to 6 weeks.
Verified Pre-Movers
Our verified pre-movers are the people that we’re over 98% confident will be moving within the next 4 to 6 weeks. So, they’ve either completed a home inspection or have a pending contract on their home. They’ve booked, they’re moving services. They have a brand-new mortgage. They’ve done all of these things. They have these high intent triggers that said, “Hey, I know for sure I’m gonna move.” There are always things that could happen, but we are 98% confident these people are going to move within a really short period of time.
Post-Movers
Next is our post-mover segment, which is a universe of people that have already moved. We create a post-mover universe from day one of move all the way up to 12 months because there are really a ton of products and services to be able to market to people who have recently moved.
Property Insights
Another key component to reaching movers and homeowners is being able to leverage property insights. However, the property data that’s been available on the market was limited. You might get names, listing prices, and basic property information, like addresses, but you haven’t really been able to know much more than that about the properties a consumer is moving from and to.
To bring something unique and helpful, we went ahead and took an extra step within our audiences to include property data on the current house that they live in and the property data on where they’re going to be moving to.
For example, you’ll know if they’re moving to a bigger home or a small home. You’ll know how many bedrooms they have, how many bathrooms they have, as well as the home’s square footage.
Purchase Intent Insights
We also have tons of demographics. We’re able to understand someone’s income, how many children they have within their household, and whether their children are older or younger. We also have active shopper data that helps us understand which consumers are likely to buy your products and services. For example, are they out there looking to buy a new roof or new windows? Are they interested in remodeling their kitchen?
We understand what type of active shopping behavior consumers are demonstrating while they’re in this mover segment. This really creates another huge opportunity for personalized campaign targeting and messaging.
We also have event triggers within the whole mover spine. And, soon to come we’re going to have home inspection data that we’re going to be able to execute on, which, again, is just a premium, an attribute that nobody else out there in the ecosystem has.
This property data allows us to understand what types of appliances are in the household and when they need to be repaired or replaced. For example, we know the year of the HVAC system, the dishwasher, the refrigerator, etc. These types of insights really create actionable campaigns. It’s just a game changer for us out here in the industry and it’s really exciting.
Larisa: Yeah, just looking through this, being able to target movers throughout the move process is really impactful. It’s not just about having this bucket of pre-movers. It’s really segmented with rich details about who they are, what they’re shopping for, and even what their home looks like. I mean, that’s incredible and offers incredible targeting options for brands out there.
Michelle: Absolutely. So, as you can imagine, we’re really proud of the data that we have and we’re really protective of it. So, we are on a mission and our main strategy is to build what we’re going to refer to as the Porch Media Network.
The Porch Group Media Network
Within this network, brands are going to be able to have the opportunities to act upon our entire spine. Because it’s first-party data, it’s very protected. We have a lot of privacy constraints around it and we keep it inside of our walls. But, what we do want to do is be able to connect a consumer to a brand that they’re interested in talking to, you know?
So, again, the whole story comes with, when you’re moving, there are services that consumers are definitely interested in, right? And, through the services that consumers are definitely interested in, we’d like to be able to help that person meet the best brand to help them through that purchase and create an easier move journey for that consumer.
It’s not even just about the entire move, right? The move is the first phase of how we look at this. And then we look at the homeowner journey, which is the second phase. Because once somebody moves they’re typically in that home for average of seven years. For some people, it’s much longer and for some, it’s a little bit shorter. But, the average is in their home for seven years. Within seven years of the homeowner journey, there are tons of brand and consumer connections that we would love to be able to make.
You know, things like, if somebody is interested in talking to somebody about plumbing services or someone is interested in talking to somebody about updating their appliances or doing a home renovation. We’d love to be able to make that connection. If somebody does not know about a particular store in their area, we would love to help them make that connection, right?
We’ve created a customer journey example to showcase how the Porch Group Media Network works.
Let’s take Kathy through this journey and here’s all the information we know about her. We know she’s in the moving journey, where she currently lives, and where she’s moving to. And then, we have certain information about her air conditioning unit, right? We know that it needs to get fixed, and so we’d love to be able to help her, to get that taken care of. And, then, take her on the rest of her home journey, knowing information about her household’s appliances and continue the relationship with her among many different brands.
So, how do we do all of this? We have all of this rich audience data. We also have it linked with something called the Porch ID, which creates the ability to really create a cohesive environment across all of our different channels. Then, we will execute campaigns in digital media, CTV, paid social display, all within our private media network within branded campaigns, and then we close it all up by taking it all through our sales dashboard. Our web-based sales dashboard ties it all together and tells you about your KPIs for your campaigns.
Additionally, if we work with a brand that provides us with their customer information, our sales dashboard can track these metrics that correspond with sales. This shows us what campaigns worked best for you and which ones brought you new customers. This really takes a complete closed-loop optimization process through the entire network. That is a game changer for what a lot of companies are doing. A lot of networks today really kind of focus on activation, but not on full closed loop of attribution.
And so, not only do we make it special by having a lot of data there that’s not available in the marketplace, we have tons of channels available, including CTV, linear, and all the other channels, that take it all the way through closed-loop optimization which really creates that full-service solution for our customers.
How is Porch Group Media Preparing for a Cookieless Future?
Larisa: This is incredible. One of the things that my team talks a lot about is the move being a permission-to-spend event. But, clearly, with the home being one of the biggest investments a consumer makes over his or her lifetime, this offers a valuable opportunity for brands.
Could you talk a little bit about how the solutions we’ve discussed today will help brands in a cookie-less future? I know that brands aren’t going to need to really rely on these first-party audiences. The rich audiences Porch Group Media offers provide a great way for brands to get in front of people that may have previously not been accessible to them. Can you delve into that a little bit more?
Michelle: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s funny that you say that because I feel like the cookies going away story continues to expand every year. Every time we get to that end, it seems to expand. So now, I think that they announced that it’s going to be in 2024.
However, to your point, first-party data is going to be key, along with being able to identify that data across the complete ecosystem. That’s why we are taking the effort to really create what we’re referring to as the Porch ID. It creates the ability to create still target audiences effectively and still do all of that digital marketing across all of the different entities.
So, we will not be relying on cookies at all. Cookies for first-party data are a little bit different than cookies for third-party data, but we’re really creating the entire ecosystem within the network. So, we’re not going to be reliant on third-party cookies.
There’s a lot of talk about the new iOS of Apple and Android and privacy concerns on mobile identification, but none of that impact what we’re doing because we’re creating our entire ecosystem. This gives us the ability to reach the audiences that we would like to reach across all our channels.
Larisa: This is really exciting Michelle. I’m glad that we had an opportunity to share this with our audience. Before we wrap up, is there anything else that you want to tell people about the port media network where they can find us? What’s coming next?
Michelle: I am just super excited. We are definitely going through a journey, and Porch Group Media has come a long way in a year and a half, so we are just very excited about where we’re going in the future.
If anybody ever wants to reach out, they can find me on LinkedIn, and I will be happy to engage in that conversation.
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