Private Communities Registry (PCR) is an online search portal for active adult homebuyers looking for a lifestyle community. With hundreds of listings from all across the country, interested buyers are connected with communities on PCR through SEO-rich listing pages.
When a prospective buyer lands on a PCR listing page and requests more information, voilà—the community receives full contact information through PCR’s advanced reporting and real-time lead feeds.
The PCR Audience(s)
For marketing purposes, it’s important to differentiate PCR’s two main audiences:
- B2C: The prospective homebuyer, mostly 55+ active adult retirees looking for a home in a master-planned lifestyle community.
- B2B: The lifestyle community builder, developer, sales team, and real estate ad agencies—all those who can generate leads with a listing on PCR’s site.
Twelve Legs Marketing was brought in to focus on the B2B audience, with the goal of delivering a content strategy that further engaged current customers and drove NET new B2B prospects.
The Communication Strategy
The focus became clear from the outset: produce and distribute quality content. Instead of the current approach of sending only promotional emails, PCR’s B2B marketing communication would now be anchored by a quarterly newsletter. A newsletter that featured several articles from industry influencers and thought leaders offering tips, trends, and best practices to find, engage, and convert more homebuyers. It was a newsletter by community marketers for community marketers.
It was Master-Planned Insights.
Developing the Topic Roadmap
With PCR’s outstanding reputation throughout the industry, their connections ran deep. So we decided to use these existing relationships and begin cultivating a bank of content contributors. Successful people and businesses in real estate and lifestyle community marketing who were all too eager to share their knowledge and expertise through Master-Planned Insights. By working in lockstep with these experts in preparation for each edition of the newsletter, we were able to develop a roadmap of topics that revolved around a common and compelling theme.
One newsletter theme was lead nurturing and included content like “ The Magic of CRM,” “Email Lead Nurturing for Lifestyle Community Buyers,” “Open Better to Shorten the Sales Cycle,” and more.
Another topic focused on segmentation and the articles shared insight on “Leveraging Geotargeting for Active Adult Buyers,” “Making a Big Impact Through Interactive Kiosks,” and “Using Google Analytics to Optimize Your Community Website.”
In addition to being showcased in the email newsletter, every Master-Planned Insights article was posted to PCR’s blog where they lived in posterity—and were used extensively on social media and in digital marketing campaigns.
With each newsletter deployment came a windfall of viral exposure, PCR sharing, tagging, and spreading the word, and each individual contributor also doing their part to share among their network of contacts and followers.
Through it all, PCR’s engagement and web traffic soared among its B2B audience, and the content contributors received increased exposure and extremely positive feedback.
It was truly mutually beneficial.
The Spinoffs
As popular as each quarterly newsletter was, we knew one email every 4 months wouldn’t be enough. To gain further traction, each newsletter article received a standalone “spinoff” email that slightly repositioned the content while establishing a more significant connection to PCR and its services. With a few spinoffs sprinkled between each newsletter send, PCR kept a constant drumbeat going—without overwhelming its audience.
And because PCR’s B2B audience is so diverse and nuanced, four different versions of each spin-off were created that spoke specifically to each segment (builder/developer, community sales team, real estate ad agency, and real estate agents). This targeted messaging that spoke to the pain points of each persona was much more relevant, and the engagement proved its effectiveness.
Capitalize on Success with Digital Marketing
Master-Planned Insights By-The-Numbers
- Email drove a 74% increase in website traffic
- New users increased by 70%
- More engaging content propelled a 1.5% increase in time spent on the site
- Further exploration of key services with a 2.3% increase in pages viewed per session
- 28% average email open rate
- 10% average click-through rate
- Directly responsible for several new listing opportunities on PCR’s site, netting tens of thousands of dollars
Successful Results and a Proven Content Marketing Blueprint
Remember back to the original goal: deliver a content strategy that engaged current customers while driving net new B2B prospects.
After sending 5 newsletters, writing and publishing dozens of original content articles from the industry’s brightest minds, and strategically nurturing with email and digital, the results are in: Master-Planned Insights has not only become a success in delivering on PCR’s goal—it’s now a proven blueprint for others looking to implement an effective content marketing strategy.
