Summary
Scout24 is one of the leading digital companies in Germany. With ImmoScout24, an online platform for residential and commercial real estate, it successfully brings together owners, realtors, tenants, and buyers to simplify complex decisions. In business for more than 20 years and with over 20 million users per month on its online marketplace and app, ImmoScout24 is the market leader for digital real estate marketing and search.
The company is headquartered in Munich, with offices in Berlin, Cologne and Vienna. As of March 2022 they have more than 850 employees.
Challenge
Operating one of the leading digital real estate platforms in the DACH region, Scout24 faced a challenge common to many large online businesses. How to achieve compliance with increasingly complex data privacy requirements, while at the same time ensuring the collection of user data that powers their platforms?
But Scout24 was not only looking for a consent management platform (CMP) that could help them meet GDPR requirements. They were also on the lookout for a solution that was sensitive to German-specific data privacy requirements, as Germany (and DACH more broadly) is their main market.
The CMP that Scout24 was looking for also had to have unrivaled technical capabilities, e.g. provide well-integrated extensions to their Tag Manager, require less custom code, have fast Core Web Vitals (CWV) performance, and have easy-to-read API communication and console commands.
Goals
Compliance with complex regulatory requirements
Scout24 needed a whole solution that would enable them to achieve compliance with all relevant data privacy requirements, from the GDPR to the IAB’s Transparency and Consent Framework 2.0 (TCF 2.0) to specific German requirements.
Build user trust
As the leading real estate platform in Germany, Scout24 knows that user trust and respect for data privacy is vital for online business success in the internet economy. The team at Scout24 had this as a top goal.
Responsive support
Scout24 was looking for and found a partnership with Usercentrics, where support was fast and always available, with reliable recommendations and client-oriented feature requests.
Tealium Extension
The Tealium Extension was a big priority for the team at Scout24. Scout24’s integration was fast, easy, and enabled them to tailor the CMP to their needs.
Making It Work Together
Lars Brenncke, Lead Business Analyst at Scout24, spoke to us about his experience of working with Usercentrics.
Way less manual effort
“We were happy to find that there was way less manual effort maintaining the tag setup to be GDPR-compliant.”
Huge improvement in CWV KPIs
“We saw huge improvements in CWV KPIs, especially for mobile and tablet.” Scout24 uses the Usercentrics consent management platform (CMP) on 16 websites and two apps (with two more apps currently in migration).
Favorite CMP features
Brenncke told us that the team at Scout24 were particularly happy about how their Core Web Vitals had improved since the in-depth and tailored approach between Usercentrics and Tealium.
Besides the Tealium Extension, the features Scout24 found most useful included the Advanced Analytics reporting, the built-in A/B Testing feature and the updated Vendor Database.
Protecting Brand Reputation
“Protecting brand reputation while seeing improved consent rates,” is one of the clear business values that Brenncke reported to us. With very little manual effort to maintain the CMP, Scout24 enjoys peace of mind, particularly when it comes to the minimized risks of GDPR violations on account of the CMP’s automated setup.
Summary
immowelt GmbH is one of the largest real estate platforms in Germany and Austria, with more than 500 employees. They operate several websites and apps that bring together owners, real estate professionals and interested buyers.
Challenge
immowelt has a focus on digitizing all steps of the real estate transaction, which they do through their websites and apps. With data-supported services, immowelt is involved in the entire home buying or renting process, from search to marketing to personalized financing and additional services.
The challenge for immowelt was to both be compliant with the European Union’s GDPR, which protects the data privacy of EU residents, while at the same time ensuring the flow of data from their users, the necessary input for immowelt to function well as a leading digital real estate platform.
When asked why cookie consent compliance is important for the immowelt team, “user trust” and “GDPR compliance” were the top answers. In this time of increasing consumer awareness about data privacy, immowelt knows the importance of handling their users’ data with care and respecting the legal landscape in their commercial region, while ensuring that their business model, which relies on data, keeps running smoothly.
Goals
All-around consent solution for an all-around platform
immowelt was looking for an all-in-one consent solution for websites and apps, with cross-domain flexibility and a great admin interface so the team could manage the consent management platform (CMP) by themselves.
Personal Customer Success Team
It was very important for immowelt to find a solution that had a personal contact person from the Customer Success Team to make the onboarding and maintenance easy.
Comprehensive GDPR compliance with TCF 2.0
Immowelt highlights the benefits of an automatic GDPR compliance system, which requires minimal manual work and comes with fast technical and legal updates, e.g. compliance with the IAB Transparency and Consent Framework 2.2 (TCF 2.2).
Highly customizable
The highly customizable consent banners made it easy for the immowelt team to build an interface that exactly fit their websites and apps. The CMP accommodated their needs for individual banner texts for TCF 2.2 compliance, a special solution for ITPV2-Solution (Safari Bug Fix) and customized CSS settings.
Making It Work Together
Roman Igl, Senior Project Leader of immowelt GmbH, spoke to us about the immowelt team’s experience working with Usercentrics.
Personalized consent banner
“We learned a lot by using a separate Settings ID for trying out the feature. With the A/B Testing Tool we got a good feeling — which setup was good or bad for our consent rate.”
Performance and optimization
When asked what CMP features the immowelt team found most useful or beneficial, Roman Igl told us that it’s the “Tealium Extension – with the Tealium Extension the onboarding was easy and fast!”
Improved consent rates
Building up user trust with clients and consumers is vital in the changing internet economy, and immowelt found that working with Usercentrics helped them balance data privacy compliance with their data-supported digital services. Improved consent rates were the biggest business value for immowelt in working with Usercentrics.
Future updates
The team at immowelt say they are looking forward to seeing more from Usercentrics in the future, especially new features and updates that include “the option to remove Editable Languages, option to set the IAB banner text and set text links” among others.