275 Optimizing Home Builder Email Marketing - Brian Barrett Jul 2 2025

Greg Bray: [00:00:00] Hello everybody, and welcome to today's episode of The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine. 

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Wetzel with OutHouse.

Greg Bray: And we are excited to have joining us today, Brian Barrett. Brian is the managing director at Oak Creek Trail. Welcome, Brian. Thanks for joining us today.

Brian Barrett: Hi, Greg and Kevin. 

Greg Bray: Brian, just help us get to know you a little bit, give us that quick background and overview about yourself.
 
Brian Barrett: Sure. I've been in new home construction marketing for about 20 years. Started my career working for a home builder at Shea Homes on their Trilogy brand, which was a great [00:01:00] entrance into the market. Then around 2011, went out on my own, did some consulting work for home builders and master planned communities. And then, started Oak Creek Trail, which is a digital marketing agency. Been doing that ever since, and have branched out from new home construction to include multifamily and senior living, which all are complementary together.

Kevin Weitzel: Before we jump in all that, Brian, we need an interesting factoid about yourself that has nothing to do with the home building industry, family, or your actual job.

Brian Barrett: Well, I have to do a home building one even though it's kind of funny. Back in 2006 or seven, Facebook was just a social networking platform, and they had just started offering advertising. And I was sitting in my cube one day and went to my boss and said, Hey, let's try some Facebook advertising. We put $5 down, and we got some clicks. And then the next day we did $10, $15, a hundred dollars. So, it was just pretty cool being on the forefront of advertising on Facebook. 

Greg Bray: Today, [00:02:00] what would those cost?

Brian Barrett: A lot more, a lot more. Heavier investment for sure. 

Greg Bray: Tell us a little more about what got you into the home building industry and attracted you in that direction. 

Brian Barrett: Yeah, it was actually not the plan. After graduate school, my wife and I were both finishing up. We planned to move out of Arizona, but she got a job. I got a job with Shea Holmes doing a leadership development rotational program. I thought I'd give it a go. And we went through, you know, customer service, sales, construction, even worked in an HOA, and then I landed in the corporate office doing marketing, and it was just a good fit. That's where I stayed ever since. 

Greg Bray: So, tell us a little bit more about Oak Creek Trail. What kinds of services do you offer, and how do you work with builders? 

Brian Barrett: Yeah, so we started off doing more full-service digital marketing, including digital advertising, website development, email marketing, social media marketing. Then along the way we got more [00:03:00] into. technology consulting and implementation. For example, helping home builders implement Salesforce or implementing an email marketing platform, and also suggesting them and setting them up. So, we went more into the technology route, although we still offer our traditional digital marketing services.

More recently, we've gotten out of doing any creative and brand work or organic social media management. We focus mostly on performance marketing, which is most easily measured by way of digital advertising, Google, Facebook. And also, we spend a lot of time on email marketing, just because we spend all that time generating high-quality leads, and see there's a gap in a lot of builders taking care of those expensive leads, getting them to tour or become a buyer. 

Greg Bray: So, when you sit there and say a lot of opportunities, what are some of the, we'll call them mistakes, [00:04:00] that you see builders making with these leads that they work so hard to generate and pay a lot of money to generate?

Brian Barrett: Some of the simple things, like the basic email marketing, I don't know if you want to call it 101, but we know so much more about our leads than we take advantage of from an email marketing perspective. We know what community they're interested in, what plan, what price point, so on and so forth. And then we take a one-size-fits-all fits all and just slam some promotional information on them or generic community information on them, versus very easily connecting the dots between what we know about their behavior and what sort of information would resonate best with them. 

So, the biggest opportunity is to invest. I see a lack of investment in human resources and financial resources in email marketing. It always seems to be kind of a last-minute endeavor to get something out to the database. I think there needs to be an increased investment in human resources. All the technology [00:05:00] exists, but there doesn't seem to be many that are leveraging the technology.

Kevin Weitzel: Let me ask you this, Brian. Is it that they're not leveraging, or is it they're leveraging it in a very inefficient manner, or putting too much dependence on a simple email campaign doing magic versus actually having to manage it? 

Brian Barrett: I think there is comfort in saying I sent an email to a hundred thousand people. That feels good. I communicated with them. Ten percent opened, and we got so many clicks, et cetera, et cetera. I think that feels good. So, builders check that box or marketing managers, whomever is managing that, they check that box. The majority of email platforms now have, whether it's a MailChimp all the way up to Salesforce, they have significant sophistication if there's someone on the teams that can leverage it. I mean, simple things like basic nurturing campaigns, some sort of integration with the sales teams and the online sales counselors workflow, just setting up triggers and stuff. The technology is there, and it's [00:06:00] very easy to use. So, I think there's a knowledge gap. And then also just that comfort in knowing, Hey, I sent something out to a hundred thousand people, so our job is done. Check the box. 

Greg Bray: So, Brian, I don't know if you've heard this, but somebody told me email's dead, it's not a thing anymore. What do you think?
 
Brian Barrett: Well, I think you're getting the picture. We don't think it is. I guess there's two ways of looking at it. One, we all know, let's just say roughly 3% of people who come to the website convert. So, that's where the opportunity lies is the 97% of people who don't convert. But those 3% that do convert, they're certainly very interested in the product, and what other way are we going to communicate with them? Certainly, we can send them directly to OSCs, and they can do their nurturing and their workflow, so on and so forth. But even when you look at the statistics about the number of touches that OSCs and sales reps have on leads, it's very few touches. So, those touch points with customers need to be supplemented with something like [00:07:00] technology can provide, which is email marketing. So, absent human beings, interacting with those leads, you have to use technologies. There's really no other way other than email marketing and texts to do that.

Greg Bray: So, then, just kind of stay on the email focus here for a minute. The idea that somebody wants your newsletter, I think that's a little bit of an outdated approach, right? So, when you're talking about sending an email to a hundred thousand people, what is it that should be sent in that type of scenario?

Brian Barrett: Yeah. Unless it's a global promotion, something like rates have changed, we have a buydown of some sort, that's a fairly wide-reaching message. Beyond that, if a customer is interested in a specific community, in a specific suburb of Phoenix, I'll use Phoenix as an example because that's where I am; you don't need to send them something about all of Phoenix. We know enough in most metro areas. Different parts of Phoenix cater to different buyer types. [00:08:00] More outskirts are first-time home buyers because the price is more affordable. So, why send that person information about all of Phoenix? I mean, that's just scratching the surface, but we know enough about what those customers signed up for, the community of interest. Just send them information about the community. 

Now, it certainly can get more sophisticated. Of course, we know where they signed up, what specific plan they spent the most time on. So, the next level down would be taking that intelligence about where they signed up and where they spent the most time, and then sending them even plan-level information. The problem with that is connecting email marketing to website engagement. And that connection of the data, I haven't seen it made. And then you also run into a scale issue where you can't create so many emails at a one-to-one level. There is technology that exists, but there's an investment and a technology integration barrier there. 

Greg Bray: But what I'm you say though is the ideal is [00:09:00] not one message to all, but one message to one and a different message to the next one, and then figuring out how to scale that so that you don't have to write each message individually to each person. 

Brian Barrett: That's exactly right. Anymore, I mean, and this is true, and you know this of any website or email, it's mostly on mobile, still on desktop some, but no one scrolls very far down. So, it's not a heavy lift from a creative perspective. The customer expectations for high design for email marketing that's old. There's very limited human resources required to get a simple message out that a potential buyer will consume in a quick manner. So, the operational resources they're not required anymore. But yeah, one-to-one is certainly available, and there are some automation techniques to make that happen. 

Greg Bray: Let's talk a little more about the challenge that these small marketing departments have, just getting the email out. Oh gosh, I'd love to do that, but I don't have time. I don't have the resources to make that happen. [00:10:00] When should you be planning this email you're trying to send out? How long does this process take? I mean, it's like, oh gosh, it's Wednesday and we're supposed to send an email on Friday for the whatever event, we better slap something together. That's not going to get you your best quality work, I'm pretty sure. What does a good plan and process kind of look like for you, Brian? 

Brian Barrett: That's a great question. I guess my first advice and most successful is don't overcomplicate it. There's a tendency to create a big month-long, quarter-long, yearly long content calendar and make it email connect with website updates and social media, and all these different things. It's okay to plan a month and make it just about email. You create a simple workflow, and everyone has a different organizational structure. But in the most small marketing departments, it's likely that the person who's pressing send is also maybe creating the email and designing the email, so that that person knows it takes an hour or [00:11:00] whatever. 

Even if they don't have some sort of project management software, which many do, there's required to have a little bit of planning and then a little bit of rigor to stick to the plan. And then you hit it earlier, there needs to be some sort of organizational buy-in that email is important. It sounds like we've all been in the same boat where lots of emails go out Friday afternoon. That is a consequence of email not being important within the scope of a marketing organization. 

Greg Bray: Kevin, do you check your email Friday afternoon? 

Kevin Weitzel: I check my email every day, multiple times a day. I'm one of those weird crack heads that doesn't want anything pending in my inbox. 

Brian Barrett: You should check my email, then. 

Kevin Weitzel: Oh, devastating or impressive?

Brian Barrett: Impressive, and not this kind of way that you're impressive.

Greg Bray: So, Brian, that small department that wants to make this happen, where's the right place for partners in all of that? Is it in the design, is it in the planning, in the actual execution of the send, all of the above? [00:12:00] What are your thoughts there? 

Brian Barrett: I think it's all. This isn't plugging Oak Creek Trail at all. Actually, I would prefer it live as a core competency of the organization of the marketing department. If you can't meet a deadline, you need help, and the quickest way and the least expensive way to get help is to contact some form of digital marketing agency to help you with that. I know we're talking a lot about email marketing, and it's not certainly the only important thing, but it has to be part of the mix. If you can't get it done by Wednesday and you've planned it out the best you can, then you need some help. Emails are not expensive to outsource relative to the value they bring, and you just got to ask for help. 

Greg Bray: So, Brian, what are some ways then that we grow the list? You talked about this, only 3% on the website convert. By converting you're meaning, they're saying, Hey, I want to know more. It doesn't mean they bought a house yet. So, those are the people that are going on the list. And so, there's a lot of website visitors that we don't get on the list so that we can reach out to them. What are some ways that we can grow [00:13:00] that list by capturing more of that web traffic? 

Brian Barrett: Yeah, so let's just talk about the 3%, then we can talk about the 97%. Many builders now, and technology providers, are getting really good at having virtual tours and interactive floor plans, and floor plan planners and all those sorts of things. I consider that suite of tools. That's just the cost of doing business anymore. Everyone needs to have it. 

Kevin Weitzel: Could you say that one more time? That one word just kind of escapes me. 

Brian Barrett: Cost of doing business. 

Kevin Weitzel: Did you say everyone needs to have it?

Brian Barrett: Yes.

Kevin Weitizel: I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Please proceed, Brian. 

Brian Barrett: Are you on my side or not? 

Kevin Weitel: I'm hundred percent. I supply digital assets to builders, so. 

Brian Barrett: I mean, okay, so here's the thing. Customers are looking at price and location. Let's just start there. Let's just say they go to Zillow. You load into Zillow, you can load virtual tours, and all the things. If I'm a buyer and I'm looking at Zillow or a home builder's website, and you have a virtual tour compared to someone who doesn't. It's logical, right? You're more interested and more likely to visit the one that [00:14:00] has a pretty virtual tour. So, yeah, it's a cost of doing business if you want to sell houses in this market. 

Greg Bray: How do we then use those tools to pull them back into that, lead capture, and grow in the list there?

Brian Barrett: Yeah. The biggest issue I see with a lot of the implementation of that technology is the connection. It's connected with the CRM, of course. So, someone signs up on a virtual tour, you know, there's an easy-to-use form, and they get into that. But the problem is the data beyond first name, last name, email address isn't getting passed also. So, if that in information isn't getting passed also, then we don't stand a chance of doing some form of segmentation or one-to-one email marketing. In my opinion, the technology provider, it's incumbent on them to talk to marketing or IT whomever they need to talk to, to add some fields to the database and pipe over as much information about that person as we know because then we can market to 'em differently and also it really helps sales, so on and so forth. 

Greg Bray: Now, Kevin, as someone who knows just [00:15:00] a little bit about some of these digital tools, what are some examples of the data that you learn about somebody when they engage with these tools that you could potentially capture into the CRM? 

Kevin Weitzel: There's several, both from an anonymous standpoint, from anonymous standpoint, you can see every touch point that they've made, literally down to the infinitesimal, which piece of furniture they picked or did they drop a coffee table onto their plan. On top of that, you can get into more of the non-anonymous information. So, once they've selected a plan or saved the plan and saved their options, you can see how they configured that plan. If you've got real-time pricing, they can see the pricing that was there. So, now your sales team knows that they are aware that the house is 779,342 bucks. On top of that, you can see the name, the email, the phone number of the potential buyer that's there. Once they've entered that information, obviously in your CRM, you can take that anonymous and then convert it into a full-fledged lead.

Greg Bray: I think, Brian, that's what you're talking about, right? Is how do we get that kind of information and not just have it sit there, but then do something with it? 

Brian Barrett: [00:16:00] I mean, Kevin, you summarized it great. We know a lot of unanonymous information. I guess my caution is, and I see this a lot from a technology consulting perspective, you have to be careful. Most pitches from any email service provider or CRM they promise the world, and you can do all these things, and you can segment and learn about this and learn about that and do all these things. My caution is start with more than what you have today. You've got email, you've got address, add in community of interest, add in plan, add in price. Add in some additional information that you can actually use that doesn't overwhelm you. I personally, like Kevin said, would love to pass all of the information, like coffee table and all these sorts of things, but at a minimum, pass more than first name, last name. At least get more about the plan, more about the price, what they're interested in at a high level, where they spent some time.

Kevin Weitzel: How long were they on it? How many times did they come back to it? How many different plans did they [00:17:00] visit? Yes. No, that's exactly correct. 

Brian Barrett: Right. Because what happens is it gets overwhelming, and then nothing happens. Most folks we talk to, it's their marketing manager doing a hundred things. They're just like, oh my gosh, you know, this is too much information. How am I going to use it? And they've heard this story before. Just get enough in there that you can use it sometime, reasonably use sometime down the line.
 
Greg Bray: What are some metrics you use, Brian, to measure success of these kinds of campaigns?

Brian Barrett: Are we talking lead gen, email marketing, or just everything?
 
Greg Bray: Everything. Let's go for everything and see what we get. 

Brian Barrett: Alright. Yeah, so I think this is a good time to maybe talk a little bit about the 97%, and let me start with this. So, I've been involved in a few studies over the years that looked about brand awareness and market share. So, I'll just use again, Phoenix as an example. We would see that brand awareness, let's just say, of a big builder is 18% in the market. And then we'd also see that the percentage of sales in the whole market were also 18% [00:18:00] plus or minus, like 0.25%. So, there was a very good relationship between brand awareness and actual sales. Kind of makes sense. 

But if you dig deeper, what led was sales, followed by brand. So, those who had more sales, the brand awareness would follow behind it. My perspective on awareness and funnels and success rates and all these sort of things is shaped by that. Where I'm currently at is, and this is a broad brush, all the homes, new homes on the market, and inventory homes will get sold. They will get sold. So, what I'm trying to do is get homes of a particular builder sold faster. They can get the cash, they can move on, so on and so forth. 

So, it's not about getting a sale, it's not about cost per sale or cost per lead, it's about speed. All the houses are going to sell anyway. So, my objective is the speed. I don't like using speed to lead, but speed to lead and getting that customer through the pipeline more quickly. [00:19:00] That 3% hasn't changed in two decades. It hasn't changed. And the cost per lead honestly hasn't really changed very much either. Obviously, the cost of clicks and advertising have gone up, but it's stayed very flat. No matter how much optimization and how many fancy things you do, and landing pages and all these sorts of things, the cost per lead has stayed very close to flat. And also, the marketing cost per sale has stayed relatively flat. So, the metric that I'm trying to influence is speed. And in order to measure speed, you have to have marketing connected with sales, and the data has to be there in a way that marketing can look at it. 

Greg Bray: So, when you talk about that speed and helping the buyer move faster, I think that layers right into what you were talking about with that more personalized message. Because if I get this generic, more broad message, it doesn't really grab me, get me to take a next step or anything like that, right? When I get that more personal thing, that's about what I'm interested and looking for, the opportunities [00:20:00] to move forward in that buying journey seem to be much, much higher and much more personal and relevant.

Brian Barrett: Totally. I use two things. One is energy efficiency. A builder that has more energy-efficient options versus less, and let's just say, proximity to schools. Those are typically, I'll call them feature sets, things that brands like to advertise on the green side, and then, you know, proximity to schools is kind of like, oh, it's one of those things we put at the bottom of the page. It's like you're three miles from a school and the hospital's nearby and, you know, shopping's nearby and all that sort of thing. 

But what we found, and this is on the anonymous side, is from browsing data is, you know what people are interested in. We talked about on the interactive tools, but you also know on the website what people are interested in, you know their behavior, and it's very easy with anonymous data to see that people who are interested in the $500,000 house, not the $700,000 house, are more interested in schools. [00:21:00] And the $700,000 house is more interested in green. So, right there, it's not an afterthought of talking about those things. You actually know, a significant driver of what they're going to make a decision on.

Of course, price and location, but then what's the next thing to talk about? Promotion. Okay, sure. Everyone's got a promotion, and they're all the same-ish. So, what are those other value propositions you can put forward? As soon as you start talking about, okay, we've got green things, and that resonates with you because you spend a lot of time looking at our green features. You're really starting to talk to that person at a personal level. 

Greg Bray: Well, Brian, we appreciate the time you spent with us. Just a couple more questions. As you are looking ahead, especially with some of the opportunities that AI has to help with some of this personalization, what are some of the trends or things that you're kind of keeping an eye on, or things you think are coming quickly?

Brian Barrett: Yeah. The easy one is using AI, and this is a broad brush within an organization. I'll call that, that's pretty easy. Every organization needs to [00:22:00] start learning it, at least playing with it. Using whatever technology you have already has some AI built in. Just start playing with it. So, organizationally, start using it. It helps you fact find, it helps you build processes, calendars, all those sorts of things. I don't recommend replacing creativity with process improvement. Creativity it can certainly get you a thought started, but human beings, I think, needs to be above that.

On a personal level or a customer level, you take ChatGPT, Claude, and all the other ones, it's about 0.25% of search market share that AI is consuming right now. And with Google's growth rate and ChatGPT's crazy growth rate, it'll take about eight years for the search volume on a ChatGPT to even get to half as much as Google. So, from a builder's perspective, there's always this conversation about how do we show up? How do we show up? [00:23:00] I personally don't worry about that. What I do look at is it's a treasure trove of information that marketers can use to understand their customer. It really shines a light on, Hey, it's really time to start investing in SEO, like tried and true technical SEO first, then get into content development, so on and so forth. It really shines a light on that and that's very underfunded. 

So, those are the two things. Organizationally, play with it. From a consumer perspective, it's really great for understanding what people are searching for and what's interesting to them, but you've really gotta start focusing on SEO. And then, a whole separate thing is, you know, there are numerous new, I call them micro SaaS, smaller applications to help, like what I said, automate, understanding anonymous people and their behavior, and connecting with Google ads and building audiences. There is lots of technology to automate a lot of these processes, even the email one-to-one. So, I would [00:24:00] be in the market looking for small, lightweight, AI-driven tools to automate some of that stuff. You do probably need a partner to figure all that out and connect the data and sift through all the bazillion offerings in micro SaaS, but know that anything you think can be automated probably can.

Greg Bray: Well, Brian, for somebody who wants to reach out and connect with you, what's the best way for them to get in touch? 
Brian Barrett: Yeah, I mean, just go to oakcreektrail.com or better yet, look me up on LinkedIn and communicate with me that way. That'd probably be the quickest, fastest. Just look for Brian Barrett, Phoenix, Arizona, and I will show up. 

Greg Bray: Well, thank you, Brian, and thank you, everybody, for listening today to The Home Builder Digital Marketing podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine. 

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel OutHouse. Thank you. [00:25:00]