Social Success: HousingAnywhere

Find out how an accommodation platform for students doubled customer enquiries when it used Facebook dynamic ads for real estate and carefully segmented Custom Audiences to reach relevant people at the right time in their customer journey.
There’s no place like home
When Niels van Deuren was studying in Singapore for an exchange semester, he struggled to find short-term housing and sublet his apartment at home. This experience inspired him to create HousingAnywhere, which allows students to safely and easily advertise, find and book short-term lets. The platform has grown quickly since its launch in 2010 and today, HousingAnywhere partners with over 180 universities and lists accommodation in over 400 cities worldwide.
With sights set on growth, HousingAnywhere wanted to find new customers and increase bookings and revenues without significantly increasing ad spend.
How did they achieve social success?
HousingAnywhere asked agency Sell Through Digital to help bring in the best possible results in a cost-effective way. They started by creating audiences for retargeting based on different stages of the customer journey by using specific conversion events, such as: viewing a property page but not viewing a room page; viewing a room page but not contacting the landlord, and contacting the landlord but not completing an enquiry. They then created city-specific Custom Audiences in Vienna, Berlin, Brussels and Amsterdam.
They then tailored different ad creative to each audience’s location and purchase stage to make sure that they were seeing the most relevant ads to them. Facebook’s dynamic ads for real estate were identified as the best ad type for this campaign because they allow advertisers to automatically generate photo and carousel format ads showing real-time availability of relevant listings, based on what people had already searched and viewed.
HousingAnywhere also looked for potential customers by targeting ads to people aged 18–25 in selected countries and also used international and multi-country lookalike audiences to find people similar to its existing customers. These ads typically used a “Learn More” call to action, while the retargeted ads used “Book Now” to create a sense of urgency. The ads were seen across multiple platforms including; Facebook, Instagram and Stories.
Did they achieve social success?
Between August 2018–May 2019, HousingAnywhere’s carefully targeted campaigns delivered over 1,000 enquiries per month and more than doubled customer enquiries—without increasing its ad spend. Amazing results! 
Enjoyed this or want the same social success for your business? Why not read more about social success stories here. Read the full case study here.