Did you know more than 54 million adults ages 65 and older live in the United States — roughly 16.5% of the total U.S. population? And by 2050, that number is projected to rise to an estimated 85.7 million — roughly 20% of the U.S. population? As the aging population continues to grow, more will be searching for adequate housing opportunities to fit their needs — from active adult to independent to assisted living, all the way to memory care. That means senior living operators will require effective methods to attract prospects, nurture leads and retain residents as demand grows and competition heightens. Customer relationship management (CRM) software is the answer of today and tomorrow, and we created a fresh ebook to illustrate that. We’re excited to share this one! Explore the highlight below then read the ebook in full (spoiler alert, you’ll discover how RentCafe Senior CRM stands out from the crowd). New ebook explores CRM software By capturing and centralizing the data you need, an integrated CRM system accelerates sales and ensures a seamless prospect-to-resident journey. More specifically, the right solution helps operators: Simplify leasing Nurture leads effectively Boost customer service Streamline assessments Ensure compliance The ebook details each of these, sharing exactly how CRM software works to help your communities reach new heights. You’ll also see what makes RentCafe Senior CRM (Yardi’s integrated CRM solution) a differentiator. Want a preview? RentCafe Senior CRM is: Single stack Mobile-friendly HIPAA and SOX compliant Continuously evolving Guided by client feedback Also — unlike other CRM systems — RentCafe Senior CRM doesn’t require you to pay per user. You can add as many users as you’d like, from sales staff to caregivers, for one fixed cost. Same goes for our secure online portal, RentCafe Senior Living. Read the ebook in full We hope you enjoy the ebook (CRM Software: The Future of Sales & Marketing). If you’re ready for more info on RentCafe Senior CRM, our team would love to be your guide! Visit page 10 of the ebook and select “book a personalized demo” to get...
Introducing CRM IQ
Customer-Centric CRM Software
RentCafe CRM IQ is the latest innovation from Yardi in customer relationship management solutions for multifamily. It puts your customer at the center of the relationship to seamlessly manage prospects, applicants and residents for the entire leasing and resident journey. CRM IQ also provides a platform for centralized leasing offices and enhances the capabilities of other centralized property operations. Built into Yardi Voyager and the RentCafe product suite, CRM IQ has enhanced features that benefit site teams, owners, managers and their customers. Keep reading to explore what customer-centric innovation from Yardi can do for your business. What makes CRM IQ unique? Your customer is more than a renter, and your CRM system should reflect that. CRM IQ doesn’t stop prioritizing your prospects once they convert. Instead, CRM IQ manages your customer interactions through every stage of the leasing and resident journey. With robust features designed to support the full customer lifecycle, CRM IQ is built to guide your prospects into applicants, and your applicants into satisfied residents, ready to renew. The result is a better customer experience made possible by customer-centric software. What’s new with CRM IQ? With features that automate communication and improve visibility across prospects and residents, CRM IQ is a one-of-a-kind solution in the multifamily industry. Here are more details that make it even more unique: Enable centralized leasing office (CLO) processes with customer-centric views and site clustering. CRM IQ has intuitive features that aggregates properties within a central view and shares activities across regional attributes. Save staff hours by helping prioritize the most valuable tasks and utilize remote and clustered staffing offices.Prioritize higher-quality leads and automate lead nurturing with event-based AI. More leads don’t always mean more conversions — this is why CRM IQ prioritizes prospects at every stage of...
Multifamily CRM
What to Look For in 2022
Are you setting fresh, ambitious goals for your multifamily business? Quality customer relationship management (CRM) software can help you reach them. We’ve got top insights in what to look for when choosing a multifamily CRM solution. What is multifamily CRM? You’ve likely heard of CRM and even dabbled in some of its features. Such software is increasingly critical for the optimal efficiency and functionality of your multifamily business. CRM gives you a 360-degree view of your relationship with each contact, from prospect to former resident. It offers a centralized location for managing client info, tracking correspondences and compiling data on client behaviors. With such insights, you can market for more conversions, sign more leases, improve retention and revenue. A good CRM tool will also help office workloads feel lighter, resulting in more energized and focused staff with less turnover. If that sounds good to you, read on! What to look for in multifamily CRM… There are lots of CRM options on the market. To select the one that is appropriate for your business, consider the following. Scalability Different tools at different price points will offer options that are suitable for your business. Select an option that meets your current needs and can grow with you in coming years. Automation We will spend a lot of time here. Your staff will need automation to streamline workflows and reduce manual, redundant and often time-consuming tasks. Consider follow-ups: quick responses (under five minutes) are 21 times more likely to lead to a sale. This is because 88% of consumers expect a business to respond to their inquiry within 60 minutes. More than 30% expect a response in 15 minutes or fewer, per the 2020 NMHC/Kingsley Apartment Resident Preferences Report. With automated text messaging and emails, your CRM...
7 CRM Benefits
Senior Living Ebook
How can senior living providers attract new residents, nurture leads and increase resident retention? Implementing a thoughtful CRM program like RentCafe Senior CRM is key. To explore why CRM software is crucial in today’s landscape, and to guide providers through what can be a challenging process, Yardi is excited to share an upgraded resource. What are the benefits of CRM software? Which solutions make the difference? Our new and improved ebook — CRM for Senior Living — covers it all. CRM defined What is CRM, and how does it apply to senior living? CRM, or customer relationship management, is technology used to oversee interactions with prospects with the goal of improving relationships through use of data. CRM software captures both quantitative and qualitative data across various channels, storing it all in one centralized location. This aggregated data set then paints a holistic view of prospects, surfacing insights to help staff make strategic decisions. With increased visibility, senior living providers can better organize leads, streamline marketing efforts and see what’s working — and what’s not. A new guide to CRM software Packed with informative tips and tools, Yardi’s enhanced ebook explores 7 ways CRM software helps senior living operators drive their communities forward. Learn how solutions like RENTCafé Senior CRM work to: Supercharge marketingShorten lead response timeCentralize dataOptimize contact strategyStrengthen client relationshipsAutomate communicationSimplify workflows RentCafe Senior CRM RENTCafé Senior CRM provides mobile-friendly sales and marketing tools for the unique needs of senior living operators. Integrated in the Yardi Senior Living Suite, this single connected solution unlocks the ability to drive quality leads, increase resident retention, produce sales projections, boost staff performance and more. Access the insights by reading our upgraded CRM ebook. For more information about RENTCafé Senior CRM or other products within the...
3 Advanced Tips
Lead Tracking and Recovery
The cost of a lost lead varies for each organization. Kaplan Real Estate Education estimates that the average cost of a lead ranges from $50 and $60. The total cost of acquisition is at least $3,000. That’s marketing spend, time, and potential revenue wasted. The 3 tips below for capturing and recovering leads can help you make the most of your marketing dollars. Avoid lost leads with advanced CRM Advanced customer relationship management (CRM) software equips you with everything that you need to capture leads, hone your marketing strategy, and reduce lost leads. Your software should automate several tasks: the system uses call tracking numbers to identify your lead sources. Multi-point IVR phone trees can then route calls for improved customer service. Also within that first contact, the software makes it easy to log prospect data. Callers get the assistance that they need, and you can instantly create a profile for them. You can then use that accurate data to immediately follow-up or schedule future contact. Customizable automated correspondences within the software enable leasing agents to stay on prospects’ radars without less time spent on writing messages and making calls. When it is time for a live call, meeting or tour, automatic appointment reminders via email and text decrease the chances of missed opportunities. These reminders are sent to prospects and leasing agents through the CRM system. You can access reminders and other automated services on a personalized dashboard. Scheduled daily tasks, follow-ups, and other pertinent tasks are located on a single dashboard. The CRM dashboard makes its easier for you to nurture each lead. While you’re going through your due diligence, your multi-source attribution software runs in the background, analyzing your lead sources and conversions. Its analytics can help you decide where to...
Thrive Senior Living
Tracking Sales the Creative Way
How do you effectively track your sales activities? You got to make it fun, says Nicole Moberg, chief sales officer for Thrive Senior Living. Based in Atlanta, Thrive Senior Living operates more than a dozen communities across eight states and Washington D.C. Over the past decade, they’ve worked to redefine what senior living stands for, and they’ve dedicated themselves to building meaningful relationships with their residents. Nicole recently spoke about her team’s experience with Yardi Senior CRM. They’ve been using the solution to attract, nurture and convert leads in creative ways. Part of their approach includes a daily event they call “Party With Yardi.” Now, I know what you’re thinking. Drinks and dancing are the key to more move-ins? Not quite. For Thrive, Party With Yardi is just a fun, tongue-in-cheek moniker that lets the sales team know it’s time to sign in to Yardi and get down to business. It’s when sales team members prospect and follow-up with leads, which keeps the team on task and Senior CRM up to date. “We protect the hours of 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and our sales team does time blocking every day,” said Nicole. “The whole community knows during those hours, you’re in Yardi following up on prospects. We even hang something up on our doors so everyone knows that is a time of no interruption.” Thrive has also developed its own creative follow-up cadence to boost numbers. “It was built by ‘those closest to the work,’ the high-performing sales team members,” said Nicole. “The team follows this and enters their info in Yardi.” Once a sales team member has keyed in what they’ve done with a lead, they’re not finished just yet. Senior CRM won’t let them move on or close out the record...
Senior Living Leases
Make Paperwork Less Work
Does your senior living community offer electronic leases yet? Maybe you’ve heard the term, but don’t know if it’s worth the transition. Well, rest assured, there’s plenty to like. From faster sales cycles to searchable online records, electronic leases make the move-in process painless – for both your staff and your residents. At their core, electronic leases, or eleases, are a legal and secure online version of the document that you already know so well. But you’re missing the full picture if you think it’s only a digital agreement thrown on a computer screen. A full electronic lease management solution like what Yardi offers can help you generate customized leases in a few clicks, get mobile signatures from family members and store the forms in one centralized place, saving hours of labor (and who knows how many headaches). We’ve built eleasing into the entire Yardi Senior Living Suite. From creation to approval to signing, everything flows together seamlessly so your sales counselors never have to retype a thing or search for another missing document. And at the executive level, you can manage leases across communities and states, pushing real-time rates for rooms and services to teams on the ground floor. Here’s a quick look at how the process works in the Yardi senior living solutions. Generate a new lease in no time with Yardi Senior CRM Once a prospect has decided to join your community, your staff can jump into Yardi Senior CRM and quickly create a new lease specific to that resident. Senior CRM offers an automated, online workflow, which guides staff through each step of the prospective lease agreement: Select the community, enter the deposit, choose a unit and add any incentives or concessions. They can then adjust the care level and...
Senior CRM Webinar
Featuring Thrive Senior Living
Roughly 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 each day. It’s a demographic shift of seismic proportions, and it’s spurred a lot of new developments in senior living as investors anticipate future demand. Turns out, they’ve got a few more years to wait before they can recoup their costs (the average senior living resident is well into their 80s before they move in), but these brand-new communities are already having an impact. Namely, increased competition. There are too many extra units for too few interested seniors. It’s driven occupancy rates in the industry down to 87.8% – the lowest levels since 2011, reports the NIC. For senior living providers, it’s a sobering statistic. How can they differentiate themselves from the increasingly crowded pack and draw in new residents? Well, we may not have all the answers, but we’ve got a few proven ideas. Join us on Wednesday, August 28, at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT) for a live panel discussion on how a customer relationship management (CRM) solution for senior living can hone your competitive edge – and ultimately grow your community. We’ll have Richard Nix, senior sales director for Yardi, presenting during the webinar, as well as Nicole Moberg, chief sales officer at Thrive Senior Living. The event will be moderated by Steve Moran from Senior Living Foresight. Learn seven ways you can use a CRM to overcome the recent headwinds in senior living. Plus, you’ll get insights straight from someone who’s done it already. A Yardi client, Nicole has turned her sales and marketing team into a lean, lead-generating tour de force. She’ll share her experience in rolling out Yardi Senior CRM and what steps she took to perfect her team’s approach. Here’s just a few things you’ll learn: What the new senior...
Meet Melise Balastrieri
MG Properties Group
How do you get more renters to your websites? Just ask Melise Balastrieri, vice president of marketing for MG Properties Group. Using the RentCafe Suite, Melise and her team manage the marketing for more than 20,000 apartment homes across five states. First, Melise uses RentCafe to create engaging property marketing websites. Then she drives more prospects to those websites using the expert SEO services of RENTCafé Reach. Once leads become prospects or residents, she relies on RentCafe CRM to keep them engaged. Keep reading to see how Melise makes it all work together. What is MG Properties Group’s mission? Melise: Our mission is enriching lives through better communities. And we believe that we do that with every single interaction that we have, whether it’s with a team member, our residents or our investors. What is one of your business objective in your role as vice president of marketing? Melise: A business objective that’s important to me is maximizing our use of technology in a way that affects our bottom line. That includes using it to get more leads that turn into leases. Because it’s not important just to have a lot of leads; you have to have leads that convert. How do you make SEO work for you? Melise: We use RentCafe Reach services to manage our SEO. We establish our goals based on the type of community we have, and our SEO specialist optimizes to make sure we’re attracting the leads most likely to convert. After all, we don’t just want a high quantity of leads; we’re more interested in high quality leads. RentCafe Reach provides clear and consistent SEO reporting. We can see things like website sessions, views and bounce rates to determine if we want to make adjustments. It’s been working really nicely for us. After three years of strong consecutive growth, our organic sessions were up another 21% last year. How do you improve lead capture? Melise: To capture online renters that visit our property marketing websites, we use some features in RentCafe that I think are very impactful. For instance, we encourage prospects to text us and schedule their own tours. We also use nudge marketing. These tools help us get in front of leads and give them options to contact us in ways that work for them. Our most recent data shows that, overall, our leads convert at 11%. But our self-scheduled appointment leads convert at 14% and our nudge marketing leads convert at 27%. These features are proving quite effective. How do you follow up with leads? Melise: At MG Properties Group, we automate follow-ups as much as we possibly can. Leasing teams are so busy onsite that follow-ups can get forgotten. Using follow-up tools in RentCafe CRM, we know our prospects are being contacted. We’ll use automated appointment reminders and drip emails to make sure we’re staying in touch with prospects. We invite them to call, tour and ask questions. We also use automated emails to stay in touch with our residents and secure renewals. We check in throughout their lease. As the end of their lease term nears, we express appreciation for their residency and remind them that we would love it if they continued living with us. Why do you use Yardi? Melise: What I really like about having Yardi as our property management technology provider is that most of the services we need are available in one solution. So we can deal with one company. That helps us simplify things as an organization. What marketing trends are you most excited about? Melise: I’m most excited about artificial intelligence. I think it’s super exciting and am anxious to see what it’s going to do for our industry. For example, Alexa and other digital assistants, what are they going to do for us? Will they be able to host tours, collect rent and submit service requests for our renters? (Editor’s...
Sales Staff Rejoice
CRM for Senior Living
In today’s busy digital marketplace, prospective residents and families expect to be able to research your senior living community online and get the information they’re looking for at any time of the day, but does that mean you’re suddenly able to hire more staff for round-the-clock support? Of course not. Full-time customer service requires savvy tools. That’s where marketing automation comes in. It streamlines repetitive tasks, tracks prospect behavior and delivers targeted content to get customers into your pipeline. You can learn more about marketing automation for senior living with Yardi’s new eBook, which uncovers 9 marketing automation strategies to implement right now in your community. But first, let’s look at some of the high-level benefits of marketing automation technology: It Saves Time With many organizations running lean and mean, employees often wear many hats. Why not leverage tools that expedite administrative tasks? Eliminating duties like redundant data entry and emailing appointment reminders not only reduces the risk of error, it also boosts staff satisfaction and output. In fact, teams using marketing automation report a 14.5% increase in sales productivity. It Saves Money Automating marketing processes not only saves times, it saves money too. With the right tools, what once took hours now takes minutes-and since time is money, that time savings quickly adds up. Beyond carving out more time for your team, marketing automation also saves money by making your marketing dollars work harder, thanks to advanced analytics that provide visibility into which marketing channels are most effective for your community, improving overall ROI. It Improves Service By now, you know that marketing automation reduces workload for sales staff and helps scale and streamline processes, but did you know it also creates a better experience for prospects, too? With systems in place that...
Better Lead Conversion...
Yardi Senior CRM
Want to capture high quality leads and increase occupancy at your senior living property? Of course, you do! One tool from the Yardi Senior Living Suite, Senior CRM, can help you boost lead conversions in four ways. Wait, What’s CRM? CRM stands for customer relationship management. It’s software that’s used to handle interactions with prospects and mine their data. That data is then used to strengthen your understanding of the prospects so that you can better meet their needs. CRM software captures quantitative and qualitative data about your prospects’ behavior. That information can help you strategize your marketing efforts with greater precision. Robust CRM software can help you increase occupancy in four key ways. 4 Ways CRM Can Help You Increase Occupancy 1. Improve Marketing: CRM enables you to track and analyze the performance of your online marketing channel. Once you identify the most effective channels, you can tailor your marketing spend to optimize your return on investment. You’ll learn what works, what doesn’t, and where to spend your money. 2. Shorten Lead Response Times: Did you know that 64 percent of online shoppers give the first company to call them back an advantage over the competition? If you don’t respond to customers within 24 hours, they begin to question your professionalism, reports Velocify. CRM makes it easy to shorten lead response times and get an advantage over your competitors. You can automate follow-up emails and appointment reminders. Mobile-ready CRM software also enables your staff to contact leads on-the-go so that they never miss a beat. 3. Optimize Contact Strategy: With CRM, your marketing team can test and compare strategies to learn what works. Nearly 60 percent of companies use testing to optimize conversion rates. Testing is important because every company, prospect, and marketing...
The Excelsior Group
Creating great online experiences
How do you create a better online experience for prospects and residents? Just ask the dynamic marketing duo at The Excelsior Group (TEG). Meet Brenda Studt, vice president of marketing, and Shelly Steitz, marketing manager. Together with their team and tools from the RENTCafé Suite, they’re transforming the online renter experience to better match the expectations of today’s digitally savvy consumers. When Brenda and Shelly visited the Yardi studio recently to film their Real Estate Questions Answered videos, we chatted about marketing, websites and themselves. Keep reading to find out what you can do to make your sites more appealing to people who are searching for a place to call home. Q: How does marketing work at TEG? Brenda: TEG is a group of real estate related businesses operating on a unified platform. Shelly and I work for TEG’s Creative Studio. We’re an in-house, full-service creative and marketing agency offering a variety of creative solutions specifically designed for real estate related clients. We focus our marketing strategy around client goals and consider owner goals and expectations for specific assets. Our largest client is TEG’s multifamily business. Shelly manages all marketing activity for this client and works with their property management and development teams daily to develop and execute annual plans for each property across the portfolio. Q: How do you make sure your property marketing websites engage and convert prospects? Shelly: We create engaging websites through strong visual storytelling. We take a “show, don’t tell” approach and that includes 360 tours, high quality amenity photos and vibrant gallery pages. And then we give the prospect as many ways to engage with that content as possible. Brenda: Using RENTCafé has been great for our clients. We’re able to understand user patterns and user experience better...
CRM for Senior Living...
Marketing Supercharged
With more senior living options than ever, competition is fierce for would-be residents. Communities must set themselves apart to attract customers – and the most effective way to do that is through online marketing. It might come as a surprise, but Baby Boomers spend more time on the internet than Millennials, with 31% reporting they use their laptop, tablet or phone more than 15 hours per week. So how do senior living operators get the biggest bang for their buck? The answer is simple: CRM. What is CRM, exactly, and how does it help cut through a crowded marketplace to grow occupancy? First, a definition: CRM stands for customer relationship management. It is technology used to oversee interactions with potential clients with the goal of improving relationships through use of data. CRM software captures both qualitative and quantitative data across various channels and stores it in one centralized location to paint a holistic view of prospects, surfacing insights to make strategic decisions and optimize your marketing. This increased visibility boosts the effectiveness of your outreach. And because CRM allows you to track and analyze the performance of various online marketing vehicles to see where your dollars are working hardest. you can decide which campaign types are most meaningful for your business. Here are just a few of the ways CRM helps optimize marketing spend to maximize ROI. Tailor Messaging The first step of developing an effective marketing effort is identifying your audience and what types of marketing content they respond to. CRM systems like Yardi Senior CRM allow you see prospects’ interactions and identify which channels and messages are most compelling. If consumers are ignoring display ads but opening your emails, you can dial down advertising spend and invest more resources in refining your...
Building Dimensions
Visual Leasing Technology
Leasing agents often have to be part lawyer, part CPA and part tour guide when handling such details as monitoring existing tenant lease options, notifications and expiration dates, tracking prospective tenants, crafting letters of intent and arranging showings. Customer relationship management technology that manages these operations has come a long way over the past few years. A key development was stacking plans and floor plans that provide a two-dimensional visual representation of a building showing space availability, tenants on each floor, expiration dates and current rental rates. Color coding helps managers, leasing teams and others identify opportunities and expose risk. And mobile technology has taken lease execution out of the office and into the field, further shortening the leasing cycle. What’s the next step for CRM technology? The Balance Sheet asked Tom Dragmen, Yardi’s manager of global solutions, for a deeper dive into the emerging generation of stacking plan and floor plan technology. Q: What does “interactive stacking and floor plans” mean? A: This refers to a rich visual representation of lease expirations and related space details. They can overlay configurable performance measures and metrics on floor plans. They also provide a visual dimension for efficiently analyzing expirations, options, unit types and rent-per-area trends in buildings. Q: What’s the user perspective? A: Leasing agents and others get a full graphical display of vital information including lease statistics that determine rental rate trends. They can see stacking and floor plans based on expirations occurring in specific years, rents per area, encumbrances, options, proposals, unit types, and tenant performance measures such as sales per area, sales variances year over year and foot traffic. Q: How can this information be used? A: When integrated with CRM and accounting systems, the new generation of interactive stacking and floor...
Canadian Leasing
Ramp up with RentCafe
The 2017 Canadian Multi-Res Tenant Survey conducted by Informa Canada showed that 85% of renters take less than two months to find their rentals. Your marketing website and ILS listings through RentCafe are designed to help get their attention during that crucial time. But for a truly effective marketing approach that makes the maximum impact during those two months (and beyond), there are a couple more tools you can add to your toolkit. RENTCafé CRM and RentCafe Connect are two solutions that integrate with RentCafe and Yardi Voyager to better manage prospect, applicant and resident workflows. RentCafe CRM simplifies leasing and resident services by putting everything leasing staff needs in one mobile interface, making it easier to follow up with leads and provide expert service from anywhere. RentCafe Connect is a budget-friendly contact center solution that supports your team with automated call answering and on-demand live support – so prospects and residents get the service they need 24/7. Using these tools in conjunction with RentCafe helps property managers improve onsite efficiency while managing the prospect to resident lifecycle, as well as improve spend and retention. Take a closer look at the four benefits of integrating your marketing strategy using the tools in the Yardi Marketing Suite. Simplify Operations Connecting these three solutions automates the entire leasing process, increasing visibility for you and your staff. When online leads and applications come through RentCafe, your prospects’ data instantly appears in RENTCafé CRM – no duplicate manual entry required. Follow-ups are automatically scheduled based on your custom criteria, giving your staff a clear picture of what needs to happen next to convert each lead into a lease. There are follow-ups for residents too that help automate the move-in, move-out and lease renewal process, making this a true...
Optimizing Data
Maximizing Revenue Part 2
Yesterday, we laid the foundations of a strong online presence. We now continue with how to gather insights from analytics to inform marketing and retention decisions. Micro-Adjustments Lead to Success When vacancy rates inch upward, resist the urge to slash prices. “Price should be the last negotiable item, not the first,” advises Sawh. Examine your SEM data, which will show leads generated and which keywords drive conversions. Use that information to adjust pay-per-click ads, the easiest marketing factor to manipulate. In a case study, Bell needed to fill several 2-bedroom units. Data revealed that people who visited the website’s Pets page were most likely to reach goal completion. The team marketed 2-bedroom units to pet lovers to successfully fill the units. You can also make adjustments based on prospects’ objections to visits and objections to leasing. Leverage Soft Data “Business intelligence tools can give you a purview in but it doesn’t tell you the story. Customer insight is the soft data, the human touch,” says Weaver. SEO and SEM generate traffic but once traffic is translated into website and site visits, ORM and customer relationship management (CRM) capture data about visitors. Both give insights into why visitors chose to lease (or not) with your property. Use data gleaned from ORM to tweak the resident and prospect experience. If several reviews indicate that the marketing doesn’t match the product, for example, it’s time to update your gallery and re-examine your marketing message. With prospects, poor follow-through lets many conversions slip away. “It will take eight times of someone telling you no before they say yes,” explains Norbury. “Three points of contact aren’t enough.” “What we tend to forget is that we paid, maybe $20, for the phone to ring. If we don’t answer or don’t...
Follow Ups
4 Times to Touch Base
You spend your marketing dollars attracting leads, but then what? How do you know if valuable emails and calls are slipping through the cracks? Maximize your conversions by cementing a follow-up strategy at your properties to make sure you’re getting the best return for your advertising spend. “We should not lose sight of the fact that through apartment leasing, we are providing homes to our customers, and a home is very personal and dear to many. There is nothing like that personal engagement and touch with the customer,” asserts EPMS, a leading multifamily consulting agency, in an article sharing leasing tips for apartment communities. Optimize your follow-up strategy by checking in with prospects and residents at these four critical times: First Contact Don’t miss a chance to convert a lead because you didn’t follow up fast enough! After a prospect has reached out to you over the phone, through email, or even via live chat, your team should be ready to respond and move the prospect to the next step – whether that’s scheduling a tour, completing an application, or something else. Remember, if you don’t respond quickly, your competitors will. After a Tour You’ve talked, you’ve walked, and now… well you’re not going to just shake hands and say goodbye, are you? Follow up with a call or email within 24 hours after any site visit to let prospects know that they’re important to you and that you represent a property that not only cares but also takes action. Post Move-In Let your new resident know that your relationship with them doesn’t end the day they move in. You’re not just trying to get people through the door, you’re working to cultivate happy residents who will become ambassadors for your community. Check in...
Yardi Senior CRM
Sales, Marketing, Mobility
Yardi announced today the release of its new Yardi Senior CRM product, an advanced customer relationship management solution built into the Yardi Voyager® Senior Housing platform and integrated with all the Yardi Senior Living Suite™ products. “We matched the capabilities of a traditional CRM system with the workflows unique to senior living, and we did so within a complete business solution built on the latest mobile and Web-based technology available,” said Eric Kolber, vice president of senior living for Yardi “Yardi Senior CRM delivers powerful metrics to calculate return on marketing investment, enables insightful sales pipeline projections using real-time data, and facilitates accurate pricing proposals for prospective residents based on assessed healthcare recommendations,” explained Kolber. Data generated through Yardi Senior CRM flows freely throughout the Yardi Senior Living Suite. “The complete integration of our ERP, CRM, and EHR solutions streamlines workflows and improves data integrity. For example, when a prospect hits a certain point in the sales cycle, Senior CRM notifies nurses that a needs evaluation is required, and their resulting recommendations automatically flow through to subsequent pricing proposals. Information is easily shared between sales and clinical staff, and all relevant data carries forward to billing functions and accounting personnel. No interfaces are required, and no redundant data entry is needed. Staff are kept informed and alerted to actionable items in real time,” said Kolber. Yardi Senior CRM is a browser-based solution accessible from any desktop computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone. “Senior CRM gives leasing agents mobile access to all of the tools they need to easily and effectively work with prospects and convert leads into sales,” added Kolber. Yardi Senior CRM is a component of the Yardi Senior Living Suite which includes Yardi Voyager Senior Housing for managing occupancy, accounting, and property management,...
Shorten the Leasing Lifecycle...
Yardi Commercial CRM
Commercial clients attending this week’s Yardi Advanced Solutions Conference in Santa Barbara can focus on maximizing business efficiency when selecting from a comprehensive track of classes. One of many exciting new lead and lease focused applications from Yardi Systems that will be introduced is Yardi Commercial CRM™, which offers commercial real estate professionals the ability to streamline and even shorten the leasing cycle. Cutting down the time spent on property lease up is crucial for commercial property owners and leasing professionals in order to enhance revenues and minimize unit turnover time. Kim Maddox, Commercial Product Specialist for Yardi Systems, explains how you can save the carrying cost of vacant space by shortening the leasing cycle. “For example, let’s say you rent on average 2500 square feet at $37 per square foot. If you shorten the leasing cycle by three weeks for one lease, you will accelerate $5,336.54 of additional rental revenue on that lease. What factors will help reduce the cycle time? Examples include saving a leasing agent’s time, easy access to information (available space, existing leases, encumbrances, budget, prior rent and market rent), tenant communication logging, tracking activities and events, facilitating proposal generation, counter-proposals and approvals, facilitating lease drafts and approvals, facilitating floor plan generation and approval, facilitating transmission and approval of construction documents, construction budgets and facilitating tenant build-out. There is much to be gained through the use of an integrated system to accelerate this process,” Maddox said. Among the features of Yardi Commercial CRM: Prospect and customer contact information is centralized in Yardi Voyager™ and contact history is tracked throughout the leasing process, from first contact to final signing. Integration with Microsoft Outlook and Yardi CRM Mobile means you need never be out of reach of key client data. Automate the...
Mobility & CRM
Insight from Realcomm 2012
With a commitment to deliver the most relevant, up-to-date insight and technology available for the commercial real estate industry, Realcomm attendees typically seize the chance to investigate the latest tools. With over 100 vendors, searching for a product with the breadth and footprint to fit your business was a top priority for many attendees at this conference, held June 13-14 in Las Vegas. The vendor expo was alive with buzz, and hot topics included smart building technology, CRM, and mobility. Historically, a major hurdle for commercial real estate has been the brokers’ reluctance to share their contacts. After all, a positive (and often long-term) client/broker relationship has consistently proven to be a driving force behind closing deals. For brokerage firms, this has been a constant obstruction to the industry’s adoption of technology: figuring out how to secure the information available inside a CRM to a point where brokers feel their relationships can remain intact while still allowing the firm to access the decision making information they need. Fortunately, improved technology has led to convergence: being able to see the pipeline, discover possible closes, and most importantly increase revenue by lowering vacancy rates all the while maintaining a secure database of clientele that’s available on the go. Mobility is transitioning from a luxury to a necessity and as a result was an equally hot topic. In part due to increased security concerns brought about by the recent mobility and BYOD (bring your own device) trends have left commercial real estate IT executives in perpetual problem solving mode. There’s a lot to think about when it comes to incorporating the consumer driven tech fads we see today; security being at the forefront. At our recent user conference, Yardi Voyager clients learned about the syncing and wiping...