A brand you'd trust with your biggest decision
Homeowners can get an instant offer on their home, sell quickly, and make a compelling offer on their next home—all in one place.
Customers loved the appeal of an instant offer, but engagement dropped significantly after they received it. Research showed that buyers and sellers were unfamiliar with Opendoor’s simplified, digital approach to real estate and wondered if it was too good to be true.
In order to reassure skeptical customers and gain their trust, Opendoor’s CRM needed to convey the personal touch of traditional brokers and encourage potential buyers and sellers down the funnel.
Image: Opendoor's legacy (before) lifecycle emails.
My role
In 2022, I hopped aboard the Opendoor Lifecycle Marketing team, tasked with revamping their email communication channels. My involvement spanned the entire spectrum of design, from meticulous audits and comprehensive research to innovative explorations and rigorous iterative testing.
Trust as our Northstar
When we started working with Opendoor, we noticed some opportunities to ensure messages were delivered and experienced as intended. To ensure emails showed up correctly, we explored the following:
To identify the right solution, we lead four cross-functional workshops with trust as our northstar. Together, we examined the customer journey, revealed opportunities, and ranked ideas on effort and impact.
Three teams, comprised of a blend of our clients and our internal team members, engaged in a discovery workshop. Each team assumed a unique persona as they meticulously dissected the email communications of both Opendoor and its competitors.
Each team evaluated the creative content from various brands, including Orchard's welcome series, using a thumbs-up or thumbs-down approach to identify elements that effectively engage or fail to engage their persona.
They reflected on the Opendoor Complete Welcome Series, encompassing a comprehensive 16-day communication sequence, and used sticky notes to annotate where the brand’s foundational attributes are being represented, or where they are lacking.
Designing messages with purpose
We applied the resulting list of enhancements across Opendoor’s workflows:
1
Images of happy customers and employees
2
Trust-specific modules (ratings, reviews, testimonials)
3
Clear, customer-focused value propositions
4
Charming, engaging animations
5
Soft colors and shapes that convey ease
6
Thoughtful visual hierarchies
Examples of live emails
We then implemented updated designs into templates and used Iterable’s editor to QA test their functionality. Iterable is Opendoor’s email automation tool. Many of its capabilities were being underused, so our team tapped into its full potential.
We use Iterable’s A/B experiment tool to run precise tests on subject lines, preheaders, copy, and a variety of creative treatments. Once winners are found, our creative teams iterate new options—supported by Iterable’s AI tools—to test on the designated test segments we defined through Iterable.
Check out the image below for our rendition of enhancing Opendoor's Welcome email, integrating the welcoming vibes of the brand without disrupting key metrics through overly radical modifications.
For Opendoor's Buyer Feed email, we conducted two design iteration tests and determined that Test 2 emerged as the optimal choice, now deployed as the live version.
The results
Our reimagined content approach saw a massive increase (156%) in buyer engagement and a 16% spike in seller re-engagement.
Internally, the collaborative approach and efficient processes we introduced have helped Opendoor’s customer-focused teams work smarter, faster, and more cohesively.
+156%
Increase in email engagement
+16%
Increase in repeat conversion of lapsed sellers
40+
Emails fully re-strategized and redesigned in Q2 2022
240k+
Truncated daily sends remedied
Thank you
Kudos to an incredibly collaborative team! Katie Wright, Ephraim Joseph, Sierra Clar, Bernard Louise, Mili Garbers, Alistair Spatz, Anna Reily, Laverna Ellis, Julia Lynch, Syahara Pietersen, Benjamin Tellier, Armin Delalić, Aisha Ghazanfar.