Emails can be valuable tools that convert prospects and build loyalty with existing residents. Below are seven emails that every leasing agent should send. Emails for prospects Prospects want to feel courted. They also expect information that anticipates their questions and interests. These three emails hit the spot, helping to forge the relationship between leasing agents and prospects. Automated (Yet Personalized) Introduction Email This important communication serves three purposes. It satisfies prospects’ expectation to receive prompt responses. Secondly, it lets prospects know that you received their inquiry or that you recall your encounter with them. Lastly, it gives them a way to contact you simply by responding to an email. Availability Updates Let your newly available units shine with a showcase email. Be sure to include high quality images and descriptions with plenty of personality. End each listing with a call to action such as “Schedule a Tour” or an option to see similar units. Just Leased Updates Remind your prospects that your property is a desirable place to live and that units are going fast! Consider including the number of days the unit was on the market, particularly if it’s less than three. This is a great incentive for prospects who are on the fence. Emails for residents Renewing a lease costs less than turning a unit, so use emails to build resident loyalty! These three emails reinforce the residents’ bond and promote higher occupancy. Property Newsletter Inform your residents of exciting value-add events for families and perks for pet owners. Such events keep your residents engaged in the community, which increases perceived value. The newsletter is also a fantastic way to notify residents of upcoming maintenance and upgrades to the property. Show your residents that you’re proactively invested in the quality of...

Want to get in touch with your residents? SatisFacts 2017 Online Renter study reveals that 88 percent of respondents prefer to be contacted via email; 73 percent ask to be contacted by cell phone, and 50 percent request text communication.   Each method of communication has its own best practices. Dive into these nine tips for effective responsiveness. EMAIL Email is old news but effective email techniques constantly change. You must find a way to make your emails stand out in inboxes that are flooded with spam and competitors. These tips may keep your emails from the trash folder: 1. HubSpot reports that 33 percent of email recipients decide whether or not to open an email based on the subject alone. Subject lines matter! Since 40 percent of emails are read via mobile device, keep your subject 30-50 characters max. Make the subject interactive by leading with a verb. “Party with us tomorrow night!” is more enticing than, “There is a party tomorrow night!” If you have an incentive, notify the reader in the subject line, such as “Get 10% off rent next month.” Add emojis at your own risk. Research tells us that readers dread all caps and excessive punctuation. More than 85 percent of respondents prefer an all-lowercase subject line to one in all caps. But emojis are a relatively new terrain. When used sparingly, they can make a good headline stand out. Downside: they might not translate well across devices and carriers. Also, certain demographics (and not others) appreciate emoji use. Lastly, integrate numbers when you can. Numbers stand out among text and they provide context. “2 weeks until your lease renewal” will have a higher click-through rate than “renew your lease soon.” 2. Timing matters. Consider the subject of your email...

Take a minute to think about your email inbox. Visualize it. Did your heart rate go up? A recent study conducted by the University of California, Irvine attached heart rate monitors to two test groups of workers – one with access to email and the other without – and found that those with email access had steady “high alert” heart rates. The group without email access reported feeling less stressed and better able to focus on the tasks at hand. Yikes! But we need our email, right? If you’re in real estate or property management, the answer is yes. From clients wanting to set up appointments to property notifications to contract updates, a ton of useful information lands in your inbox each and every day. So how can you shrink both your inbox and your stress levels? We’ve got three tips and three tools that will help you manage the constant influx of emails generated by today’s 24/7 real estate industry. 3 Steps to Optimize Your Inbox 1.    Priorities, schmiorities Having a strategy that allows you to sort your email quickly is key. Start by deleting the obviously unnecessary emails in your inbox. Are there emails you’d like to read later that don’t require a response, like newsletters or special offers? Create a folder with a title like “Read Later” and move these emails out of your inbox. Next, go down the list and tackle any email you can reply to in two minutes or less, no matter the level of urgency. Better to deal with minor concerns and get emails out of the way than to leave them lurking in your inbox until later. Finally, use your sorting filter to flip your inbox so the oldest emails appear at the top. Working backwards...

SaneBox has itself a catchy name. More importantly it has an effective solution to the burgeoning problem of inbox overload: automatic management, effortless prioritizing, and a robust schedule of tools to improve convenience and functionality. If you have a high-volume inbox or multiple email accounts and not enough hours in the day to tend to them, this could be the answer. So… are emails driving you nuts? How it works appears very simple, but some heavy-duty A.I. processing take place under the hood. SaneBox is a cloud application and compatible with any IMAP-based email service. To get started all you have to do is enter your email address and click the permission button: SaneBox squirrels into your inbox and begins organizing the ambient chaos into a more efficient arrangement. Several algorithms are used, with sender-recipient volume and subject line content the most heavily-weighted. Is this just a fancy tool to sort spam? Not by a long shot. The first thing you’ll notice is that SaneBox outputs your email into prioritized folders. Your main box receives the most important emails, less important ones are shunted into a SaneLater folder, older items go into SaneArchive. You can juggle items from one folder to another to help the application learn what goes where. Here’s a video showing SaneBox in action: SaneBox delivers a very robust service, so effective in fact that it takes a little getting used to. It learns exceptionally quickly, particularly if you take a moment to correct the (very few) mistakes it makes in the first 48 hours. You can help steepen the learning curve: link SaneBox to your social media accounts and it does its job faster, more accurately, and objectively better. SaneBox also offers several other features that expand its utility. The...