Problem
Zillow's mortgage emails were underperforming, especially in lead quality. Zillow has a quality score metric that helps determine lead quality. Our target is 25% or higher. Yet a number of our emails had quality scores that were much lower. Or, they drove such a small amount of revenue that we couldn't even track it.
In the email flow below, all of the quality scores in red come from emails that are sent early in the homebuyer's journey, which is consistent with our research This is consistent in our research that shows home shoppers won’t talk to an agent or lender until they are feeling confident, which will likely will be mid-way through active stage. The emails with green quality scores indicate emails that are sent at this time. Again, backing up our research that home shoppers will talk to lenders later in their process. Yet the CTA of all of these emails was to connect home shoppers with lenders.
Additionally, one of our team's biggest challenges is brand awareness. Everyone thinks of Zillow as a place to buy a home, not get a mortgage.
OLD Email Flow (with quality score)
Solution
I created a email nurture path to drive greater long-term mortgage engagement and to connect home shoppers to lenders only when they are ready. My work on this project included:
Analyzing the performance of current emails.
Researching homebuyer’s pain points with UX researchers.
Creating article topics that addressed buyers’ pain points, and hired freelancers to write articles.
Creating email flow chart, including topics, triggers, send dates, etc.
Writing the content of all emails.
Pm'ing the design of all of the emails.
Created an epic and tasks in Jira for developers to build this project.
