Curb appeal. It’s a real estate term that almost everyone is familiar with. It refers to how attractive your property looks to potential renters or tenants. Is the landscaping lush? Are the windows clean? Does it look like a nice place to live or work? Good curb appeal encourages prospects who are driving by to come in and talk to someone or even fill out an application. But what if prospects aren’t driving by? The rental process begins online now. That means people are checking you out from the comfort of their own home. They’re making decisions about whether to visit your property or call your office based on what they see around the web. So your properties need to have digital curb appeal too. “Today we are truly a visual society. We retain more of what we see than what we read,” says Esther Bonardi, senior director of strategic marketing at Yardi. “Because of this, it’s more important than ever to ensure that your online presence – your digital curb appeal – gets prospects interested in your community.” With RentCafe, our complete property marketing solution, you can customize your corporate and individual property marketing websites to ensure that you’re attracting prospects online long before they visit in person. Since we have a little (ok, a lot of) experience building property marketing websites, we thought we’d share some of our digital curb appeal best practices with you. Put these in place at your business to be sure you are driving online leads to your properties. 5 Tips for Creating Digital Curb Appeal Make your website mobile-friendly. First things first, you can’t expect people to rent from you if they can’t even find you. According to Google’s marketing data division, 70% of weekend apartment searches happen on mobile. Your website needs to be mobile-friendly to appear in search results on tablets and smartphones. Use high-quality photos. Show off your actual curb appeal with images that make people want to move in. Make sure to highlight the external and shared spaces as well as the actual units that are available for rent. Include a combination of property photos and lifestyle photos so prospects can visually see themselves living in your community. Include amenity details. Don’t tell prospects what you have to offer, show them! A strategically designed amenities page with photos and bulleted details will keep apartment searchers on your website. For example, our data shows that the Valley Stream amenities page was viewed for an average of more than five minutes per visitor over a three-month period. Leverage social media. If you have an active social media presence, you should be linking your social channels to your website and vice versa. You can even use social media to crowdsource photos and reviews and add user-generated content to your website. Check out how this apartment community incorporates Instagram photos on their site. Make relevant information easy to find. People want to know what’s available, how much it costs, and how to take the next step – whether that step is calling, emailing, or filling out an application. Be sure your site is easy to navigate and the important stuff is easy to see (and not buried in a wall of irrelevant copy). Refresh your website using these five strategies to ensure that your online presence is working for you, rather than against you. Need help? The amazing team behind RentCafe makes it easy for our clients to do all of this and more. If you don’t have RentCafe yet, but have questions about it, please don’t hesitate to contact us. For more tips on how to improve your curb appeal in real life, don’t miss Heather Blume’s presentation on Wednesday, February 24. Yardi is a proud sponsor of Webinar Wednesdays, a series of bi-monthly, multifamily webinars brought to you by Apartment All Stars, NAA, and Multifamily Insiders. Click here to see the list of upcoming topics...
30 Day Challenge
Jumpstart your Social Media
In our last Open Café webinar, we introduced the 30 Day Social Media Marketing challenge. This challenge encourages RentCafe users to post consistently, engage with followers, and attract prospects. Now, you can participate as well! Though you can begin on any day, it may be a good idea to kick start your new social media campaign with other Yardi clients on February 1st. Commit to create at least one post each day. The 30 Day Social Media Marketing Challenge graphic below offers guidelines for getting started. These tips will help beginners create a well-rounded and effective social media marketing campaign. You will be able to: show who you are; present what you have to offer; showcase the awesome influences that inspire you; help you to interact with your target audience; and, of course, build a strong following on social media. Want more insights into what your renters want to see and know? Visit the RentCafe...
Net Promoter Scores
Deliver Amazing Customer Service
Let’s start with an easy concept that can be hard to swallow: The customer’s perception is YOUR reality. You might think that your customer service and amenities are great, but it doesn’t really matter unless your residents think so too. If, on the other hand, they think your properties are not so great or even awful, that’s what everyone else—friends, family, social media circles, review site audiences—will think too. Yikes! So how can you know what your residents are thinking? You’re not a mind reader, after all! Relax, we have a solution. Enter Net Promoter Score® (NPS) resident surveys the quick and easy way to keep your finger on the pulse of customer sentiment. You can absolutely send these surveys out to residents yourself every time you want to take the temperature of a community. But to save you and your staff time, NPS surveys are integrated with (and can be automated by) RentCafe® as part of a total property marketing solution for multifamily operators. What are NPS surveys? NPS is an industry-wide standard that scores responses to a single question to identify promoters, passives, and detractors at each property. Your residents just have to answer one easy question for you to get valuable feedback. Extensive research has shown that your NPS acts as a leading indicator of growth. If your organization’s NPS is higher than those of your competitors, you will likely outperform the market. How do they work? Using RentCafe, surveys are automatically emailed to your residents based on a completed event, like a move in or move out. The email contains a single question with the option to select 0 – 10 based on how satisfied the recipient is with their experience. Who sees the results? The results can be viewed in RentCafe Site Manager and are not public. You can view individual responses from your residents and compare results across properties. What do you do next? The companies who use NPS well use it as part of a full marketing and operational strategy. Every NPS you receive becomes an action item. Each response should trigger a follow up email or other action. As a company, you might choose to: Send a thank you Ask “how can we do better?” Request a written review Why is this important? Being proactive by surveying your residents and letting them know they’ve been heard—that their feedback isn’t just falling on deaf ears—plays a big role in building advocacy at your properties. By providing better customer service, you are actually creating additional marketing opportunities at both the community and corporate levels. By responding directly to your user generated content, you create brand ambassadors to promote your property! For more details on NPS, log into Site Manager and look for Surveys under Company Settings. If you don’t have RentCafe yet, but have questions about it, you can also contact us. For more tips on how to improve your customer service level and keep your residents happy, don’t miss Jackie Ramstedt’s presentation on Wednesday, January 27. Yardi is a proud sponsor of Webinar Wednesdays, a series of bi-monthly, multifamily webinars brought to you by Apartment All Stars, NAA, and Multifamily Insiders. Click here to see the list of upcoming topics and register today. Do you periodically survey your residents? What works or doesn’t work at your...
Concierge Service
3 Benefits for Multifamily
Concierge service isn’t just for five-star hotels anymore. An increasing number of property management companies are making their communities appeal to high-end renters by providing a range of expanded resident services. Offering premier resident services can make your communities feel like luxury resorts, helping with both retention and your online reputation. It doesn’t have to be difficult to provide this level of service. Today’s technology makes it possible to give residents access to live, 24/7 services via their mobile devices. Take a look at three key benefits of adopting concierge service solutions for both apartment residents and onsite staff: Allows residents to prompt, track, and pay for services online Help your residents help you by automating processes for service requests, amenity reservations, and fee payments. Tools like Yardi Concierge let your residents authorize guests, set notification preferences, reserve amenities, track deliveries, and more with the click of a button. No phone calls, no paperwork, no hassle! Streamlines concierge functions of front desk staff When you use technology to automate resident services, your onsite team is able to manage and track everything digitally. If your solution integrates with your resident portals, so much the better. Then your team can see everything related to your residents—from parking pass requests to electronic parcel signatures—all in one place. Front desk staff members can also quickly send email alerts to notify residents as needed, eliminating time spent on the phone and creating a trackable communications record. Increases resident retention by providing desirable services A recent report by J Turner Research revealed that 75% of Millennials surveyed consider a 24-hour service request guarantee one of the three most important apartment amenities. But it’s not just the younger generations that expect this level of accessibility. The study also showed that 68%...
Adding AdWords
Using Pay-Per-Click Campaigns
By now we’re sure you’ve heard of Google AdWords, those pay-per-click (PPC) ads that pop up in search results on the largest search engine in the world. Whether you do a Google search from your desktop or mobile device, you’ll see them—serving up the most relevant results to get you to click through to the advertisers’ websites. If you’re interested in learning how to use Google AdWords for search engine marketing (SEM), this blog post will help you get started. First, we’re going to teach you the basic terminology and functions. Then we’ll share three best practices that will help you get results. And finally we’ll introduce you to a service that will help power your AdWords campaigns and deliver measurable results. Ready to learn more about Google AdWords for property marketing? Ok, here we go! Getting Started Get your ad on Google, the search engine that processes over 3.5 billion searches per day. Google AdWords helps you advertise your business or community directly to potential leads at the very moment that they’re searching for the things you offer. Creating Ads Creating an AdWords ad is a three-step process. First you write the ad, including a headline that identifies your product or service, a link to the landing page you want people to go to, and some text with a call to action. Then you choose the search terms that will prompt your ad to appear in Google search results. And finally, you set your daily budget. Ad Groups Ad groups are groups of ads with slight copy, url, or delivery (desktop vs. mobile) differences that target the same set of search terms. Campaigns A campaign is a set of ad groups that have the same budget, location targeting, and more. You might have...
5 Resolutions
Social Media Edition
Forbes offers insights on the behavior of Millennial consumers. One thing that stands out is Millennials’ desire for genuine human interaction on social media. They don’t want your best advertising techniques. They don’t care how much you spend on marketing. They want to know you and why you feel that your product is worthy of their attention. Make these five New Year’s resolutions to tap into what Millennials truly want in their social media marketing. Never leave a check-in unacknowledged. When someone takes the time to check in at your location or event, it’s a big deal! Something that you’re doing has already impressed them. They even want their friends to know where they are and how happy they are to be there. Solidify the relationship by taking a moment to respond. Like the post. Thank them personally for their attendance. Your response will make app users feel appreciated and acknowledged, which goes a long way in social media marketing. 62 percent of Millennials say that if a brand engages with them on social networks, they are more likely to become a loyal customer. Use your voice. You don’t need to be particularly funny or clever. The fact that you are a regular human being means that Millennials already like you more than a carefully crafted message by a team of distant professionals. Only 1 percent of Millennials surveyed say that a compelling advertisement would make them trust a brand more. Millennial consumers know when they’re being advertised at. Skip it. Just be yourself. Keep track of your engagements to form a better marketing plan. Analytics are helpful tools to let you know what you’re doing well. Pay special attention to your engagements (clicks, likes, comments). This data provides details about the events, promotions, and topics that resonate with your renters. If you’re not making use of this data, you’re wasting boundless potential. Always post with an image or video. A text post is an invisible post. Give app users something appealing to look at. A stock image is better than nothing at all, but watch your engagement soar when you step outside of that box. Thoughtful images of your staff behind the scenes, onsite, and interacting with clients will make a lasting impression with social media users. For examples, 43 percent of Millennials value authenticity over content. Make your blog work for you. 33 percent of Millennials rely mostly on blogs before they make a purchase, compared to fewer than 3 percent for traditional marketing. Now that you know they will be looking to your blog for insights, keep your RentCafe blog active and engaging. The New Year is an amazing opportunity to reconnect with renters and form relationships with prospects. Put social media to work for...
Meet The Staff
Connect With Prospects, Residents
No, we’re not talking about meeting our staff. (Although you can see a few lovely Yardi employee profiles here.) Today we’re talking about introducing your staff to your residents: how and why you should do it! Celebrating the employees that make your property a great place to live just makes sense. For one thing, it’s a good team building exercise. For another, it brings life and personality to your communities. Your property is more than just a collection of buildings. It’s a nice place to live, staffed by a group of people who really care. When you create that personal connection with both residents and prospects, you drive leases and increase retention. There are many ways you can share staff member stories with your audience. You might include a staff spotlight in your newsletter, showcase team photos on your Facebook page, or write an “employee of the month” post on your blog. Or you can create an infographic like the one we made below using Canva (it was easy, we promise) and share it everywhere—from your social media channels to your move-in email. If you use RentCafe as your property marketing platform, you can use the easy social media posting tools and email manager to get your infographic or message out in a snap. However you choose to showcase your team, here are a few tips to increase engagement: Focus on staff members that prospects and residents interact with, like leasing agents, property managers, and maintenance workers Include a photo – having smiling, happy faces associated with your property never hurts Add a fun tidbit that speaks to the unique personality of your team member Encourage residents to help you recognize exceptional employees via email and social media While we’re on the topic,...
Holiday Marketing
Property Management Strategy
‘Tis the season for… leasing? Sure! Any time of year can be a good time to ramp up your leasing and renewal efforts when you take a seasonal approach that builds relationships and excitement around your business. Make sure your occupancy rates don’t cool down this season with five holiday marketing strategies for residential properties: 1. Create a Holiday Ad Campaign Use resident reviews and testimonials to develop a “Call <Your Property Name> Home for the Holidays” print and online ad campaign. Testimonials help to humanize your community and advertise it in non-corporate language. Alternately (or in addition), you can run a social media contest that offers residents prizes for sharing what they love about living at your property. Encourage participants to use a dedicated hashtag. These posts will reach not only their friends and family but can be shared with your followers as well. And, if your property marketing website features Instagram integration, you can easily post these photos online. “Instagram really shows those lifestyle photos. The Instagram galleries on our property marketing websites let prospective residents know what it’s like to live in our communities,” says Mia Wentworth, director of marketing at Monarch Investment and Management Group. “Our residents help us post fresh content to our sites, without us having to send a special team to take photos.” 2. Treat Your Residents Advertise holiday movie viewings in the clubhouse from Thanksgiving through the end of the year on your website, via email, and as Facebook events. Provide snacks, drinks, and free company swag if you have some. Invite residents to bring friends, instantly opening your community up to new prospects. If you’re worried that an event won’t get much traction at your property, try delivering inexpensive pop-by gifts and thank you notes...
Becoming a Big Fish
Multifamily Marketing in D.C.
When it comes to the Washington, D.C. rental market, VP of Marketing Karen Kossow finds herself in a big pond with plenty of fish. As the one-woman marketing team at Community Realty Company (CRC), she is determined to grow with limited resources. She is overcoming her small fish status by working smarter, not harder. Step one, Kossow made sure that CRC offered what renters want most. “The funny piece is, other than the rent, the Millennials and the Boomers are looking for the same things,” Kossow observes. “They want the good locations, the walkable locations, the amenities, and the social aspect.” Community Realty Company properties are already in coveted locations such as Pennsylvania Avenue and Foggy Bottom. The next natural step was to begin the process of renovating the properties to reflect modern expectations. Properties are being renovated on turn, with upgrades like improved space allocation; granite, stainless and other upgraded finishes; and wi-fi accessibility throughout the building. The latter was no small feat since some structures were erected in the 1960s. Kossow then gave the renovated properties professional glamor shots. These images are accompanied by resident testimonial videos. Combined, the media efforts give prospects a taste of what CRC has to offer—but there was still more work to be done. Step three for the growing business: getting the right tools in place. “I’m excited to get all of the software rolled out so we can go out and start pitching more business, showing everybody that we’re not the little teeny tiny company and that we can compete with the big boys in some areas,” says Kossow. To help level the playing field, Kossow uses Yardi RentCafe. “I am a one-woman marketing show who has also overseen much of the software roll out. Being able to tackle...
RentCafe Senior Living...
New Yardi product
Yardi recently released RentCafe® Senior Living™, the latest addition to the Yardi Senior Living Suite™. This much anticipated tool makes it easier than ever for senior care providers to promote transparency and engagement with seniors and their responsible parties. Imagine one fully integrated site that allows your clients to monitor the care experience and communicate with care providers. Now imagine that the same portal allows residents to make payments and track maintenance requests. With these features combined, you’ve only brushed the tip of iceberg. RentCafe Senior Living is capable of so much more. RentCafe Senior Living fuels customer satisfaction by combining access and convenience. From a desktop or mobile device, residents and their loved ones can take an active role in the care experience. Lengthy wait times on the phone and restricted office hours no long impeded access. With RentCafe Senior Living, users have resources at their fingertips. At any time, authorized users have access to resident health records, prescriptions, activities calendars and participation logs. Residents’ loved ones can rest assured that their senior is cared for and enjoying the amenities that the community has to offer. One of the most popular features of RentCafe Senior Living is the convenient online bill pay tool. Authorized users can access current and past statements. They then have the choice to make a single or reoccurring payment. Withdrawal options include ACH, credit card and debit card accounts. If there is ever a question, users can contact the care provider directly. Problems are reported and tracked in real time. Both users and care providers stay up-to-date on the most recent developments. Another popular feature is the maintenance request option. Web savvy residents or visitors can report problems and track follow-up efforts from their smartphones. Service requests initiated through...
The Prospect Experience...
Engaging interested renters
Recently, our RentCafe client services team held a webinar focused on “The Prospect Experience.” The intent was to dive deep into creating the perfect interaction with a potential renter. Strategies for quickly grabbing their attention, capturing contact information, and gently urging continued engagement were all part of the outline. To recap or if you weren’t able to join the session, here are a few of the highlights, conveniently summarized in infographic form. For more information about Yardi’s Marketing Suite products, visit our...
Karen Kossow
Genius at Work
Community Realty Company is a leader in property management, leasing, and asset management for income producing properties in the Washington D.C. area and beyond, enhancing values for owner-investors and known for providing an exceptional tenant experience. We recently enjoyed an interview with Karen Kossow, Community Realty Company’s Vice President of Marketing. She talked about industry trends that are changing the way multifamily does business and shared her advice for other apartment marketers. Whether you’re an experienced pro or just getting your feet wet, we’re sure you’re going to learn something from Karen, that’s why we recently selected her to be our newest RentCafe Marketing Genius. How long have you worked in multifamily? Kossow: This is my 25th year in the industry. I started out as an activities director immediately after college and just kind of fell in love with multifamily. It gets under your skin. As the VP of Marketing, where do you find that you spend the majority of your time? Kossow: We are small. We don’t have an internal IT group. RentCafe has become such an important piece of our marketing; I spend time getting our teams trained and to buy into it. Beyond that, a lot of my week is spent analyzing results. What’s working on our websites and what’s working in the industry in general. What do you see happening in the industry right now? Kossow: We’ve heard all about the Millennials for the past five years. But to me, one of the biggest trends is really having to touch more demographics at one time than we ever have before. The Boomers are also coming in, and they’re looking for a lot of the same things the Millennials are… and they have the money to pay for it. Although the Boomers and Millennials want similar amenities, they search for apartments differently, using media in different ways. So we have to use more marketing channels today than we did in the past. And we have to make sure we’re using them appropriately to reach all the different kinds of renters. So you’re seeing a different mix of renters today than when you first started? Kossow: Yes, at one of our lease up properties 39% of our renters to date have sold a home to move in with us. What are your thoughts on online ratings and reviews? Good, bad, or necessary evil? Kossow: Definitely good for converting prospects. We put our reviews right on our websites for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it keeps visitors on your site, instead of sending them to find reviews on outside sites. For another, building changing content into the site is good for SEO. How do you solicit reviews from your residents? Kossow: We use the email tool within RentCafe to solicit reviews that we add to our sites. Then we take it a step further and make video testimonials that we embed into our landing pages. When you hit one of our property sites, within seconds you’re hearing residents talk about their experience (see it in action here). Prospects are automatically hearing something positive as soon as they find us. We’ve had people come to the property and specifically mention the impact of the videos. It’s definitely impacting our results. Why RentCafe? Why Yardi? Kossow: Having everything on one platform allows us to be more aggressive. Yardi really cares about our industry and our needs. Working with the team has been a hugely collaborative process. Sometimes it seems like anything we think of, voila it’s done! RentCafe’s capabilities evolve to match our requests. It’s always getting better, which is great. So is your day-to-day all marketing, all the time? Kossow: At work, yes, but outside of work you will find me tackling more physical challenges, including a recent surf camp I attended in North Carolina where I got my first nosebleed ever! Minutes after wrapping up our...
Nudge Marketing
Give Prospects an Extra Push
Have you heard of nudge marketing? If you haven’t yet, you will soon! This type of marketing is making waves as a more effective way to convert prospects. Learn what it is, why you should use it, and how to apply it to property marketing. What is nudge marketing? Nudge marketing is a kind of marketing psychology that leverages behavioral data to personalize marketing messages to an individual target and ‘nudge’ that target into action. By incorporating the anticipated buyer journey into the marketing cycle, it can yield a much higher success rate than traditional marketing alone. Chances are that you have already experienced nudge marketing on a retail website or social media platform. Have you ever looked at a shirt at a major chain store only to see it appear in the sidebar of your Facebook page later in the day? That kind of retargeting is one type of nudge marketing. It’s a subtle nudge tailored to your interests that’s designed to convert you from prospect to sale. Instead of sending an identical blanket message to a large audience at the same time and hoping it resonates with at least a few recipients, nudge marketing means sending a targeted message to an individual at a specific, relevant moment in the sales funnel. “Today’s audience has so many things distracting their attention. The more opportunities you take to put an action item in front of the right customer at the right time, the more likely you are to close that deal.” — Karen Kossow, Vice President of Marketing at Community Realty Company 3 nudge marketing strategies Nudge marketing can help website visitors overcome indecisiveness or passivity. If someone is stuck on one web page or has visited the same page multiple times in the last week, it can indicate that they have a question and don’t know what to do next. A “contact us” or “call us now” pop up window might be just the push they need to take the next step! You can also use it to guide a prospect to an item or result they want, without forcing them to make a purchase. For example, when you add a set of plates to your online shopping cart and the website suggests “items you might also like,” including the matching cups and bowls, that’s nudge marketing. Additionally, you can compel customers to behave in the manner you want by suggesting it to them in small ways throughout the user experience. This article details how supermarkets have been using a range of inexpensive techniques—from arrows to mirrors—to dramatically boost produce sales. Nudge marketing comes to RENTCafé® “The future of marketing is quickly moving to a gentle nudge approach that aligns with the customer’s behavior and actions,” said Esther Bonardi, industry principal of Yardi Marketing Solutions. “With this in mind, we are excited to introduce nudge marketing options within RentCafe, our all-in-one property marketing platform.” With our new nudge marketing update, you can now display strategic messages to visitors on your property marketing sites prompting them to take action based on their behaviors. RentCafe’s new nudge marketing tool will help you: Capture leads more easily Choose pages to display a simple contact form pop up after the visitor has been on the page for a specified amount of time. Tailor your message Create a distinct message for the visitor that’s based on the particular page being viewed. Target interested visitors Display customized messages to prospects who have visited multiple pages of your site. Unlike a traditional advertising campaign that needs to be constantly managed, deployed, and monitored, nudge marketing is a time-saving efficiency tool for property marketers. It works around the clock in tandem with your other marketing activities. Want to learn more about RentCafe’s innovative solutions for property marketing? Get in touch! Email [email protected] or call anytime: 800-866-1144. What are your thoughts on nudge marketing? Convenient, too subtle,...
Optimizing ROI
Google Analytics for Properties
Savvy marketers know the importance of having good data to draw on when making marketing decisions. Google Analytics is the most widely known, free analytics platform available. Last month, the digital marketing experts at RentCafe hosted a call to dig in to the importance of using analytics data to understand your online audience, traffic, and conversions. One of the biggest complaints we hear about Google Analytics is that the information provided is overwhelming, making it difficult to know which reports are most important for property managers. In fact, a large percentage of people on our call said that they find it too confusing to use regularly (see below). We think that’s a shame! There are bits and pieces within each reporting segment that are relevant to all marketers. With the right questions in mind, you can use the data to make informed decisions about your marketing strategy. Who are you marketing to? The Audience tab provides in-depth reporting into who your current website audience is. It offers a broad overview of your audience profile, including how much time they spend on your site, where they’re located, and information about the devices they use. You can also learn a great deal about the demographics of your online audience. To put this information to use, start by taking a look at how well your online demographic information matches what you see on the property itself. Ask yourself if you’re actually reaching the people you want to target. If you’re trying to shift the demographics within your community, have you positioned your website to appeal to the new prospects you want to attract? Geo-location information will help you see if the audience visiting your site is coming from the cities you’d expect. Which channels are you relying...
Promoting Conversions
Analytics Reporting Unveiled
Whether you’ve tapped into your inner Marketing Genius with RentCafe or you’re piecing together a plan on your own, your site analytics can help you capitalize on your areas of opportunity. Understanding how to interpret the metrics on your analytics reports can influence changes in your marketing techniques that increase leads and conversions. At first, simply pulling up reports may seem intimidating. Familiarizing yourself with common concepts will take the guess work and the trepidation out of analytics. Use these ground rules as a foundation before wading through the key metrics: You’re in sales and marketing, not IT, but when you’re dealing with data you’ve got to learn to speak data lingo. Understanding these terms will make interpreting and communicating about your reports easier. You’ll also know which data sets will help you answer questions that arise while you’re planning your strategy. It’s also important to remember that trends take time to emerge. Mark your calendar and give yourself several weeks before making changes, and at least three months before a major overhaul. When it is time to try something new, make small, incremental alterations rather than several changes at once. Otherwise, you won’t know which changes made the impact that you see on future reports. Lastly, you may want to define your desired end result and then work backwards. This may mean that not all features on a report are important to you. Adjust your filters for what you need and put other features on the back burner (for now). If you aren’t sure what you need, our recommendations are below. Key Metrics Traffic source There are three traffic source types: direct, referral, and search engine. Direct traffic means that renters typed your site address into the address bar. Referral traffic means that renters found you through a link on another site. When Google, Bing, and similar search engines send renters your way, that’s grouped under search engine traffic. Concentrate your resources on the top two traffic sources, especially if they bear a high click-through rate. Click-through rate When a renter sees your ad, clicks it, and lands on your site, that is a click-through. The click-through rate is often measured as a percentage. Click-throughs are just one way of measuring the success of an ad. Conversion rate is another, more popular measurement for success. Conversions This is where many people find it easiest to see the benefits of their time, efforts and creativity. Conversions, or Goals, mark when a renter sees your ad and follows through with the call to action. (The call to action could be filling out an application, making a call, subscribing to a mailing list, etc.) High conversion rates mean that you’re catching the attention of the right people using the right tactics. Low conversion rates may mean that you should re-evaluate your approach. Maybe your keywords aren’t specific enough. Maybe you’re focusing on a social media platform that doesn’t appeal to your demographic. There are plenty of variables. Pick one or two, run A/B tests, and check out the analytics again in a few weeks. Bounce rate In addition to conversion rates, high bounce rates could mean that you’re fishing in the wrong pond. The bounce rate measures the percentage of renters that make it to one page on your site and then leave. They don’t visit other pages and they certainly don’t follow through with the call to action while they’re on the site. Your property (or the way that the property has been presented) did not meet their needs. When your bounce rates are high, it’s a good indicator that you may want to trace back to the beginning of your marketing strategy to make sure that your site presentation, property presentation, and keywords are working together to fulfill your desired goals. Of course, RentCafe clients can always contact their Yardi representatives for more tips and...
Leasing Quiz
Leasing Strategy Geniuses Needed
We’re looking for some geniuses in leasing and marketing strategy to share their thoughts with us in our newest survey. If you have just 5 minutes to spare, we’d love to pick your brain! Take Our Leasing Strategy Genius Quiz This quiz is ideal for multifamily marketers and management executives—the ones who create the standards and set the bar for high performance. Sample questions include “Do you incentivize renewals?” and “How many lead follow-ups do you require?” To show our appreciation for your time, all surveys completed before Friday, May 29th, will receive a brief summary of the survey findings. You will also be automatically entered into a drawing to win a $250 gift card. A complete list of rules and regulations can be found here. We designed this survey to gain insight into your company’s leasing habits and standards in 2015. Your answers will help us better understand your needs, so we can provide educational resources while prioritizing product updates to add significant value to the marketplace. After all, you are the true expert when it comes to the real-world application of leasing technology and strategy. All answers are completely confidential and will be used only to aggregate survey results. “Marketing and leasing are inextricably bound together and form the foundation for your success,” says Esther Bonardi, industry principal of Yardi Marketing Solutions. “Your responses to our questions about lead follow up, resident retention, and marketing ROI will be used in a benchmark report that will help you analyze your approach, while guiding the team at Yardi as we explore new features to support your efforts.” The Yardi Marketing Suite is the only completely mobile solution supporting the entire prospect and resident lifecycle, from a desktop or out in the community. As always,...
Tricon American Home
Selects Yardi platform
As part of a plan to scale its operations, Tricon American Homes wanted to replace several business systems with a single, integrated source of data whose automation and efficiency would let it grow its portfolio without adding overhead costs. The single-family rental home owner and management company executed this plan by implementing a single solution stack anchored by the Yardi Voyager® Residential property management and accounting platform and supplemented by the Yardi Marketing Suite™ and the Yardi Multifamily Suite™. Tricon’s competitive strategy takes hold the moment a prospective resident discovers a Tricon property through RentCafe™, Yardi’s full online leasing and resident services solution. He or she can see the property’s marketing website, view floor plans and complete the application online, including screening. RentCafe and the Yardi Marketing Suite reduce the application process to mere minutes, rather than the hours or days it takes when disconnected systems are involved, and prospect information is automatically entered into Yardi Voyager. Tricon also improved resident service by allowing online activities such as maintenance requests and payments through RentCafe’s resident portal. Additional Yardi Multifamily Suite products streamline other key business operations for Tricon. For example, Yardi Fixed Assets™ enables physical and financial monitoring of the company’s major property assets through their complete lifecycle, from purchase order to final disposition. Yardi Inspection™ lets the company schedule and perform unit and property inspections. Implementing Yardi Voyager and the full business suite of products has allowed Tricon to keep its business “clean,” meaning there’s a clear audit trail and the marketing and application process is user-friendly. Inefficient interfaces among systems have also been eliminated, electronic payments have been enabled, the procurement process has been centralized and maintenance schedules across the company have been streamlined. “We are pleased that Tricon has selected Yardi...
3 Best Practices
Answering Prospect Calls
When it comes to customer service, 70% of US adults will use the phone as their first method to contact a company, according to a study by Five9. However, if they receive bad (or no) support, 85% of these consumers say they will take action. In fact, 45% of these customers and potential customers say they will stop doing business with a company completely. And younger clients are likely to complain publicly on social media. That’s a lot of sour grapes over some missed connections. Enter the smarter answering service. Your call center should be a seamless – and invisible – extension of your leasing management office. But not every call center is made to tackle the unique needs of the multifamily marketplace. To offer the most efficient service, a call center dedicated to property management needs to be able to: Provide a customizable digital answering service Offer expert live support if/when you need it Create guest cards and qualified appointments This infographic takes a look at our call center solution by the numbers. Click on the graphic to view a large version. Don’t place your leases and renewals on hold. Take a peek at the budget-friendly benefits of RentCafe Connect today and see how you could better serve prospects, residents and property staff. Because no one likes to be left...
RentCafe TextPay
Pay Rent Via Text
Yardi’s RENTCafé TextPayTM feature is the most recent addition to the software’s mobile payment functionalities, reducing delinquencies by giving users another convenient option to make rent payments on schedule. Residents opt into the service through the property’s resident portal, then set up the account from which payments will be deducted. Whenever they’d like to make a payment, residents can text “pay now” to a short code and then verify the payment. A confirmation marks the completed transaction. The TextPay service is free for residents and property managers as part of the RENTCafé resident services package. The mobile feature helps to decrease delinquencies by giving residents yet another option to conveniently make a payment: those who enjoy face-to-face interactions can still pay in person; those with steady fund availability can schedule a reoccurring payment online; and now those who desire the greatest degree of flexibility can pay through the app or via text. Robert Sang, Technical Project Leader, Programming with Yardi, believes that it’s the convenience of text-to-pay that makes the tool so effective. “The capability of making a payment from your mobile device at any time is appealing,” says Sang. “These features offer the residents a new comfort level when making payments by eliminating the need for a computer or check.” By offering a variety of payment options, property managers can help residents work around the barriers that hindered on-time payments. Limited leasing office hours, a lack of checks, no stamps, federal holidays—those delays are a thing of the past. Online portals and mobile payments make settling balances simple and convenient. Everyone stands to benefit. “Does it decrease delinquency? Absolutely,” confirms Sang. “I will tell you that we see greater through traffic in our resident services application between the 25th – 5th of the month....
Melissa D. White
GFI Management Services
Melissa D. White is a Millennial specializing in multifamily marketing, which means she is perfectly poised to understand what renters of her generation want and need from their apartment leasing experience. And thanks to fast-paced technological innovation in the realm of real estate and the willingness of her employer, GFI Management Services, to try new things, she’s also able to deliver the desired experience. That’s not just a win-win, but a win-win-win, with prospects, apartment front office employees, and Melissa all reaping the benefits. “It’s given me the power of time. You’ve given me my time back to go out and manage my team,” said White, who has been working in the multifamily industry for a decade. She quickly climbed the corporate ladder to become GFI’s Director of Marketing and Training, a position that puts her right in the vortex of multifamily tech advancement. “I never expected that this much technology could be possible in multifamily – I think of it as a Leasing Virtual Assistant,” said White, whose teams use Yardi products for their day-to-day sales operations and marketing tasks, including managing ILS listings, lead tracking, and social media content distribution. Like most Millennials, White sees the myriad benefits of technology-aided workflows. Training, distributing listings, following-up on prospect interest, advertising specials and promotions, measuring ROI in content and media, and even the act of leasing have all become more streamlined, systematic and automated in the last year, she noted. “We look at Yardi as our partner. You’re not just a vendor, and we’re not just a client. You’re our partner in offering sustainable onsite solutions and valuable services to our residents,” said White. While GFI has adopted numerous Yardi products, among her favorites is RentCafe, a comprehensive marketing solution which allows for automated...
Crafting Cooler Content...
For multifamily marketing
On April 8, I was a panelist on a multifamily webinar sponsored by Apartments.com and Yardi Systems. Those who dialed in to the event were treated to an hour of insight on the best practices for multifamily content marketing. My section of the presentation focused on content marketing, specifically for multifamily communities. Here are a few of the thoughts I shared: It’s no secret that local newspapers are dying, and that means that people are seeking new sources of information about what’s going on in the community around them – things to do on the weekend, places to eat, and more. That creates a great opportunity for multifamily communities to become providers of that kind of content, and it ends up having two benefits: enhancing your marketing while also adding value for those living at your community. If you can help keep residents’ lives fresh and interesting, you’ll have a loyal customer for a long time. The most common error that I see on multifamily blogs is offering content that isn’t local or community relevant. A post about spring cleaning might seem like a great idea for this time of year, but that has nothing to do with what’s going on around you in your neighborhood. Make it local – that’s the most important thing I can emphasize. What makes good content? Here some ways to find out: Listen to the questions that your residents and prospects ask you. If you live in the community or near the neighborhood, ask yourself what YOU would like to know? Think about the things you notice on the drive or commute to the community. Is there a new business down the street? How about that new pizza place the leasing team tried for lunch that week? Daily...
Walkability Rocks
Josh Herst to Speak at AIM
Prospects love apartments in walkable neighborhoods. And more likely than not, they are checking out what neighborhood attractions they could get to on foot before they even decide to come check out a potential new apartment community. Location-based technology has made assessing such neighborhood info as easy as can be. With a simple search on a service like Walk Score, potential residents know before they schedule a viewing appointment how far the community is from their favorite coffee shop, restaurant, or gym. And they are more likely to get excited about a new home that offers easy, convenient access to their favorite things. “One-third (of apartment renters) are willing to pay more to easily walk to their work, to entertainment and to restaurants,” said Josh Herst, CEO of Walk Score, at Inman Connects. Herst will be a featured speaker at the 2013 Apartment Internet Marketing conference, coming up from April 29 to May 1 in Huntington Beach. He’s slated to speak with 30Lines CEO Mike Whaling on “the uncharted digital marketing opportunity of maps, mapping, and location-based services.” Multifamily managers that want to harness the power of Walk Score can take advantage of the site’s walkable grading service with its built-in functionality on RentCafe marketing websites. See how it works in the image below. Clicking on the “Neighborhood” button brings up the Walk Score information for the community’s neighborhood, including what restaurants, grocery stores, parks, shopping and more can be found nearby. Prospects can drill down to get more detail on how the Walk Score is computed, search for other businesses they may be interested in having close by, and access easy lists in each location category that include distances, so they’ll know exactly how far the nearest bank, library or convenience store would be. “The score is primarily based on proximity to nearby amenities—grocery stores, restaurants, schools, parks, entertainment—the things that people want to be able to access regularly as part of their regular routine and errand running and such. As you may know, an increasing number of consumers are saying that access to these things is one of the most important criteria in deciding where to live, whether that’s buying a house or renting an apartment,” Herst told Multi-Housing News. “Location based technology like Walkscore also benefits communities that aren’t highly walkable,” says Esther Bonardi, Industry Principal of Yardi Marketing Solutions. “Apartment shoppers use these tools to understand how close goods and services are to the community, even if they don’t plan to walk there.” Indeed, incorporating neighborhood information in multifamily marketing strategy is a best practice for most communities, not just those in dense urban areas. RentCafe marketing websites also offer interactive Google maps that feature bird’s eye and street level views, providing consumers with a comprehensive overview of the neighborhood in a format they’re already accustomed to. Prospects will be impressed with the convenience and easy access to such vital neighborhood information – and they’ll be excited to rent an apartment near more than a few of their favorite...
Rocking Renting
RentCafe Insight
There’s no arguing that the way renters search for a new apartment has undergone a dramatic, tech-influenced shift, one that is still evolving for multifamily. No matter what your property size, producing results via apartment search, mobile marketing and online leasing is crucial. When it comes to optimizing the online presence of an apartment community, Yardi’s RentCafe platform – which offers an Internet Listing Service (ILS) as well as customized property marketing web sites and secure portals– is on the rise and making great strides. We spoke with Patrick Lawler, Product Manager for RentCafe, who shared insight about the offerings of this dynamic product slate. RentCafe is fully integrated with Yardi Voyager. A single-entry system allows managers to upload property information to a RentCafe Admin site and then have those same details listed on the ILS. “Clients will love the integration with the Yardi PopCard and Yardi Call Center, and the price is super competitive at half the price of other major pay-for-performance ILS sites. It also gives clients an easier way to manage not only their ILS listing, but also their Property Website and Portal as well as their Call Center administration; it all happens in one central site. Another thing that I love is the online lease execution, allowing prospects to act and apply to rent while we have their captive attention,” said Lawler, who has worked for the company since 2000 in the areas of technical support, analysis, Billing, Cash and as the Director of Residential Programming. “Clients are dedicating more of their resource toward an online presence. They are increasingly accepting of online functionality, for application and renewal processing such as electronic signatures, payments, and screening. There is a growing demand for integration with social media sites and other networking...
