Case study · Real Estate · USA

Real Estate Case Study USA: +150% Leads

Name: Marketing & Lead Expert
Address: IN
Price range: $$

How an agency with 4 sales agents in Tampa grew appraisal requests 150% and cut cost per lead 48% in 6 months with GEO and Email Marketing.

Illustrative case study: the business is anonymised and the figures are modelled on typical results for this market.

Real Estate · USA

Realty

An agency with 4 sales agents in Tampa, selling and leasing homes across the wider Tampa area. Most seller leads came from Zillow and Realtor.com and referrals, so the agency was competing with every other agent for the same vendors. The goal was to win more vendor appraisals directly, cut dependence on portal lead products and turn more appraisals into signed listings.

Results After 6 Months

Appraisal requests

+150%

Cost per lead

-48%

Marketing-sourced revenue

+180%

Return on marketing spend

12.9x

The challenge

Where the business was stuck

Portal leads are shared with every agency in the area, and portal fees keep rising.
Seller and landlord leads are worth far more than buyer inquiries, but most marketing attracts buyers.
Agents spend hours on inquiries that were never going to list, buy or rent.
Peak season (listings typically peak in spring and early summer; buyer research starts in late winter) was not being planned for, so budget ran out when demand was highest.

The approach

Two services, one goal

We focused on GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and Email Marketing, the two channels with the best cost per listing for real estate agencies in Tampa. Every call, form and chat was tracked to a booked outcome from week one, so every decision was based on revenue, not clicks.

See our real estate marketing service in the USA

What we did

The technical work behind the numbers, service by service.

Service 1

GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation)

Created a consistent entity profile: the same business facts across the website, Google Business Profile, directories, LinkedIn and review sites.
Published 47 citation-ready answers on costs, timelines, regulations and brands, written in the formats ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity quote.
Earned mentions on 17 trusted third-party sites (industry bodies, local news, comparison articles) that AI models draw from.
Tracked 60 buyer prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews every month to measure citations and share of voice.

Related service

Service 2

Email Marketing

Set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC on the sending domain and warmed it up, taking inbox placement from 68% to 94%.
Segmented 6,600 past customers and quote recipients by job type, area and last service date.
Built 5 automated flows: welcome, quote nurture, post-job review request, annual service reminder and win-back.
Sent a monthly campaign with seasonal offers for seller leads and home valuation requests and related work, A/B testing subject lines and send times.

Related service

The numbers

Before and after

Metric	Before	Month 6	Change
Appraisal requests per month	26	65	+150%
Cost per lead	$205	$108	-48%
Cost per listing	$1,890	$884	-53%
Appraisal-to-listing rate	11%	12%	+1 pts
Website conversion rate	2.8%	4.1%	+46%
Marketing-sourced revenue / month	$43k	$120k	+180%
Share of leads from portals	62%	20%	-42 pts
AI answer citations (tracked prompts)	3 of 60	19 of 60	+16
Email open rate	21%	49%	+28 pts

Lead growth

Appraisal requests per month

Marketing-sourced revenue went from $43k to $120k a month, measured from booked listings won in the CRM.

Optimisations That Moved The Numbers

01
The business is now cited in 19 of 60 tracked AI prompts, up from 3.
02
AI assistants started sending referral visits within 8 weeks, and those visitors convert 25% better than average.
03
Email flows now bring in $71k of repeat and referral work a month from customers who were already on the books.
04
Segmented campaigns reach a 49% open rate and 4.8% click rate, compared with 21% for the old one-size newsletter.

The 6-month timeline

From tracking to scale.

Weeks 1 to 2
Audit, tracking and baseline
Call tracking, conversion tracking, CRM connection and a full audit covering GEO and Email Marketing.
Weeks 3 to 6
Build and launch
GEO and Email Marketing live for vendor appraisals.
Months 2 to 4
Optimise
Weekly search term, call and landing page reviews. Budget and effort moved to the jobs that close.
Months 5 to 6
Scale
Expansion into Charlotte and nearby areas, plus new services with proven demand.

Illustrative case study: the business is anonymised and the figures are modelled on typical results for this market. Your results depend on your market, budget, capacity and follow-up. We share realistic forecasts in your free audit.