A savvy group of marketers joined us for learning, networking and fun at the bi-annual Yardi Marketing Forum (YMF) in Baltimore last week. During the event, attendees explored the latest trends in digital marketing, tips and tricks to optimize outcomes, and real estate technology. As noted by Esther Bonardi, Yardi vice president of marketing, the event is “all about helping you tap into your inner marketing genius.” Here are some of the top digital marketing themes covered: Get in touch with your audience As marketers, we’ve traditionally divvied up our target audiences by demographic information. In today’s noisy digital landscape, we need to meet our customers where they’re at. Speakers Brad Downs, vice president of marketing for the Baltimore Ravens, and Brad Batesole, staff author at LinkedIn, shared strategies to better reach target audiences. Drawing from his fifteen years of experience in sports marketing, Downs stressed the importance of moving from brand first to fan first. “It’s that fan first mentality. Our fans are incredibly important to us. Fans want to feel as important as they are,” he said. By focusing on fans first, opportunities to engage and foster fandom become easier to identify. Downs demonstrated that life stage marketing goes beyond traditional demographic segmentation, resulting in better customer experiences, tailored events and increased engagement. For the Ravens, life stage segmentation resulted in targeted fan development campaigns focused around women and adolescents. This included Purple, a community building initiative to cultivate the female fan base, and RISE, a football outreach program for local children and high schoolers in emerging Ravens strongholds. Life stage segmentation helped draw 130,000 fans to Ravens marketing events,  development of an international audience, and an average attendance of 71,000 people at each home game. At Wednesday’s marketing master class, Batesole...

A host of marketing geniuses recently descended on Nashville, Tennessee for the first Yardi Marketing Forum of 2016. This bi-annual event for Yardi Marketing Solutions clients combines learning, networking, and fun for an unforgettable three-days. Take a look at some of the highlights from our time in Nashville: Google‘s Presentation We always look forward to sessions led by guest presenters, and this forum was no exception. As an official Google Partner, we were pleased to invite Ben Killmer (pictured, left)– our favorite Googler – onstage Tuesday to discuss the ever-changing world of mobile search. Ben shared actionable tips to help properties get found by apartment hunters. He also taught the audience easy ways to create a better user experience that converts prospects into residents. “There are four essential strategies that can help you win consumers during micro-moments,” said Ben. “You’ve got to be there, be useful, be quick, and connect the dots.” And here’s a fun fact he passed on to us: did you know that 15% of all Google searches are completely unique and have never been searched before? Ben will be taking us on a tour of the Googleplex office in Mountain View this June, and we’re all quite excited about it. We promise to follow up with another blog post detailing who we met and what we ate for lunch in the Google cafeteria! A Night at the Opry After a full-day of guest speakers and learning labs on Tuesday, our group bussed out the legendary Grand Ole Opry concert venue for a catered dinner, wonderful ensemble show, and private back-stage tour. We were thrilled to take photos on stage where so many stars have performed – including Dolly Parton and Randy Travis – and got to peek inside dressing rooms...

Do you know how to take the leasing lead in your market? It might be easier than you think! The results of our recent leasing strategy survey revealed that smart multifamily firms have multiple opportunities to increase performance and out-market, out-lease, and out-renew the competition. But to beat the competition, you have to know what they’re up to, right? To that end, we put together these top three takeaways from the responses to our survey of multifamily marketing and leasing professionals across the industry: 87% of property management companies surveyed don’t recognize/reward good follow up activity. Create a strong follow up tracking and recognition program to shape your company culture to instantly outperform 87% of your competitors! 64% of companies have no way to monitor resident relationship activity (interactions with residents). Track and reward resident relationships to prevent the loss of good residents. This will also help you impress new leads coming from other communities who don’t carefully manage the resident experience. 52% of responders don’t set a cost-per-lead goal, and 42% don’t have a cost per-lease-goal. Set concrete goals and measure your performance after one quarter. Is there room for improvement or are you doing better than you expected? Adjust accordingly. “Marketing budgets are limited,” notes Esther Bonardi, industry principal of Yardi Marketing Solutions. “Without standards and measures in place to ensure you are getting enough traffic for your marketing spend, you will easily end up with fewer leads than companies who use ROI reporting to make good marketing decisions.” It’s critical to identify opportunities where you can exceed competitor performance and commit to improvement in those key areas. Establishing standards and tracking results is essential to keeping your team on top of the market. Other interesting survey findings include: 46% of respondents...

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...

Are you a property management marketing professional, social media specialist or operations executive? If you answered yes, we’d like to take a minute to pick your brain! We invite you to take our 5-minute marketing genius survey and share your thoughts on online property marketing and SEO in 2015. Take the Marketing Genius Survey As part of Yardi’s continuing commitment to innovation and customer focus, we created this quick quiz to ensure we are meeting and even anticipating your marketing needs in today’s digital space. Our clients are the true experts – you know exactly what you need to maintain and grow your business. This is just one way we take advantage of opportunities to develop our products and initiatives to match your needs and the needs of the marketplace as a whole. This particular survey was designed to help us better understand what importance you place on advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), and search engine management (SEM). Questions include “Do you plan to spend more, less, or the same on ILS advertising?” and “Did you invest in paid search in 2014 (AdWords, remarketing, etc)?” as well as other easy yes or no queries. There is no call to share proprietary information, and you can skip questions at will. Your responses will be submitted to our team of masterminds as we plan updates and new features for the Yardi Marketing Suite, the only completely mobile marketing and leasing solution supporting the entire prospect and resident lifecycle. The results will be shared with you in the form of product enhancements designed to help you support your properties with increasing ease and efficiency. “As marketers, there is tremendous value in understanding consumer, industry, and peer trends,” says Esther Bonardi, industry principal of Yardi Marketing Solutions. “When...

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...

These days, marketing a multifamily community to a prospective resident is often an entirely online experience. When a prospect goes to social media to ask friends or family: Where should I live next?, savvy communities are making sure their properties are present. It’s an exciting, though potentially challenging, space in which to connect and engage. The influence of a positive resident referral or input from a trusted friend can make a big difference when it is time to select a new place. One recent industry survey found that up to 75 percent of renters had done online research, including looking at reviews, in order to select their next apartment. They valued that input even more than positive word of mouth, according to the survey results. It’s also been noted that while 63% of apartment residents say they are willing to write a positive review of their apartment community, just eight percent have been asked to do so, NAA audiences learned this week. That means there are huge opportunities for multifamily communities to grow their online presence and enhance leasing opportunities, using the right marketing tools. Not only do apartment communities need to build goodwill and cultivate positive feedback from existing residents, but they need to be engaged online and ready to reach, impress and ultimately welcome prospects as happy residents. The expanded Yardi Marketing Suite™ is a powerful tool for managers looking to do just that using the enhanced capabilities of RentCafe™. This online platform supports the entire leasing process, and is fully integrated with Yardi Voyager™. “The Yardi Marketing Suite features a full complement of mobile online leasing and resident services, and now includes tools to expand your online presence with leasing and resident referral programs tied directly to social media. This smart...