Case Studies / US Realty Records
Subscription Growth · Real Estate Data219,009 Memberships Sold, and a $150 Million Valuation
US Realty Records set a big number and a strict rule: generate more than 100,000 memberships over five years, and hit it profitably or not at all. We more than doubled the goal, held the cost per acquisition through a market that got more expensive every year, and helped grow the company into a $150 million business that added 120 employees.
The King of Property Record Data
US Realty Records was founded in 2015 with the objective of creating the most reliable and easy to interpret real estate and property record data reports available.
They provide anyone buying or selling a home with the data they need to make critical decisions: neighborhood information, insurance claims on the house, and nearby home sales history, so a seller can set the right price and a buyer can make the proper offer.
Their model is subscription-based. Members pay a flat monthly fee to download multiple reports, which makes customer lifetime value, not the first sale, the number that matters.
Volume the Investors Wanted, at a Cost the Model Required
The mandate was more than 100,000 memberships while maintaining specific profitability metrics over a five-year period. They started with a small budget but had secured funding to scale quickly, as long as results stayed within strict cost-per-acquisition targets.
- Two masters at once. Investors wanted volume of sales while the model demanded a $60 CPA in phase two and $50 by phase three.
- A market getting more expensive. Real estate competition increased year after year, driving up cost per click and forcing an aggressive optimization strategy just to hold the target.
- Scaling without waste. Display could deliver enormous traffic that was not in-market, so volume had to be found without diluting quality.
Learn the Economics, Then Buy Growth Inside Them
The project required multiple campaigns across different networks on Google. We chose to start with Search, then rapidly expanded into Display through retargeting, similar audiences, placements, in-market audiences, custom audiences based on keywords, and custom audiences based on competitor URLs. The work was broken into three phases to guarantee a rapid start, strong client base development, and profitability.
Understand What the Model Can Actually Afford
We needed memberships both to build an initial customer base and to create a proof of concept for the business. Because the company sold a monthly subscription, we accepted that the first conversion might lose money, knowing a 12-month average customer retention created long-term profitability.
Two learnings shaped everything that followed: what conversion rate the current website could achieve, and what spending level was reachable while keeping CPA below $60. Together they produced a profit and loss model that told us exactly what investment 100,000 memberships would require. We started with Search alone to convert people already in-market, then added Display when Search volume proved insufficient.
Acquire at Volume, Inside the Target CPA
Generating consistent leads at a $60 CPA sounds simple and was not, because competition and cost per click in real estate rose constantly. We achieved it by testing new Display campaigns continuously, finding new Search keywords, and above all testing bidding strategies while optimizing negative keywords, negative placements, and ads.
The budget deliberately stayed fixed during this phase: we were acquiring users at an initial loss, waiting months of activity for each conversion to become profitable, and US Realty Records had built a revenue projection on that budget that had to be met for investors.
| Campaigns Since 2015 | Count | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Total campaigns created and tested | 233 | Across Search and Display networks |
| Search campaigns | 35 | Capturing existing in-market demand |
| Display campaigns | 168 | The growth engine, thanks to its reach of new customers |
| Display campaigns tested in total | 400+ | Testing volume was the strategy |
| Display campaigns kept active | 198 | Only those converting inside the target CPA |
Turn Members Into Recurring Revenue
From 2018 we shifted the whole marketing focus toward retention, maximizing the monthly recurring revenue generated by the users acquired in phase two, and capitalizing on the more than 160,000 memberships generated and retained during that period.
We did not stop acquiring. We lowered the target CPA to $50, which required restrategizing the entire account to keep volume high at a tighter number, and we continue to add roughly 3,000 users every month. Growth now comes from increasing brand recognition through YouTube video ads and expanding the Display campaign portfolio, because the more campaigns we test, the more we find that can meet the CPA requirement.
Two Strategies That Worked Together
To overcome investor volume expectations, a market getting more expensive every year, and the risk of scaling Display into untargeted traffic, we implemented two strategies designed to reinforce each other.
- First, we focused on testing campaigns. Finding Display campaigns that convert inside a strict CPA is a numbers game, so we played it deliberately: more than 400 Display campaigns tested, 198 kept active at the target.
- Second, we ran bid tests inside those campaigns. Finding the right combination of bid strategy and campaign count took real work, and it is what made the target achievable at volume.
- The lower the CPA goal, the more campaigns we activate. That relationship, learned through testing, is now the operating principle of the account: tighter targets are met by adding qualified campaigns rather than raising bids.
- We treated the funnel as part of the media buy, working continuously on site efficiency so the same traffic produced more memberships, which is why the bounce rate sits at 34%.
Key Success Factors
| Metric | Result | What It Means |
|---|---|---|
| New users | 16,216,069 | Over 16 million people brought to the website |
| Sessions | 19,774,448 | Nearly 20 million website sessions generated |
| Bounce rate | 34.46% | Extremely low, thanks to constant website optimization |
| Pages per session | 5.24 | Strong engagement from the traffic we bought |
| Average session duration | 2:29 | Two and a half minutes on site per visit |
| Membership conversion rate | 1.11% | Sustained across millions of sessions |
| Memberships sold | 219,009 | More than double the five-year goal, all recurring revenue |
A $150 Million Company
The company increased its value to $150,000,000 over the course of the engagement, built on the recurring revenue base the campaigns produced.
120 New Employees
As a direct result of the growth, US Realty Records added 120 people to their workforce, turning marketing performance into real jobs.
A Repeatable Playbook
The company applied the same three-phase model to Estated, their B2B product, developing its client base through the exact sequence proven here.
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