OFFICIAL RULES 2019 Yardi at Yardi Marketing Forum Sweepstakes NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. PURCHASE WILL NOT ENHANCE CHANCES OF WINNING. Sweepstakes is open only to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia and Puerto, who are 18 years of age or older (except residents of Alabama and Nebraska who must be 19 years of age or older) at the time of entry. Employees, officers and directors of Yardi Systems, Inc. (“Sponsor”), and its respective subsidiaries and affiliated companies, advertising, promotion, or production agencies (and each of their respective IRS dependents, immediate family members [children, spouse, parents, siblings, and their respective spouses, regardless of where they reside] and individuals residing in the same household of each, whether or not related) are not eligible to participate. Void where prohibited by law. By participating, entrants agree to these Official Rules and the decisions of the Sponsor, which are final and binding in all matters relating to this Sweepstakes. ENTRY PERIODS: Sweepstakes Promotional Period begins on November 19, 2019, at 8:00am EDT. Entries must be received by 12:00pm EDT on November 21, 2019. There will be four drawings in total. There will be two drawings after 12:00pm EDT on November 20, 2019, and two drawings after 12:00pm EDT on November 21, 2019. HOW TO ENTER. During the Promotional Period (i) respond to the Yardi Marketing Forum “Caption This” post on Facebook or Instagram (no purchase necessary). Limit one (1) entry per person per approved social media platform (Facebook, Instagram) during the Promotional Period. Any attempt by any person to obtain more than the stated number of entries by using multiple/different accounts on a single platform or any other methods will void all of that person’s entries and that person will be ineligible. Participant social media profiles must...
YMF Beverly Hills
3 Tips for Marketing Geniuses
The Yardi Marketing Forum happened in Beverly Hills last week, drawing a crowd of marketing geniuses from property management companies around the country. Attendees caught a show at the legendary Magic Castle, strolled Rodeo Drive and indulged in a champagne and caviar tasting at Citizen. See the photos here. Sounds fun, right? It wasn’t all swimming pools and movie stars. During the day, the forum took a deep dive into all things property marketing. Influential speakers took the stage to talk about everything from video marketing and automation to lead attribution and the future of marketing technology. By the end of two days, it was clear: property marketers need to embrace customer-centric marketing to stand out from the competition. That means putting the customer first, ahead of your properties and your brand, to ultimately win more leases. 3 Ways to Embrace Customer-Centric Marketing 1. Connect with story If you think all property marketing videos look the same, you’re not alone. You’re probably picturing a camera panning around an empty display model, focusing on the gleaming hardwood floors and stainless steel appliances, while a voiceover lists amenities and throws the word “luxurious” around. The thing is, those kinds of videos don’t make a connection with the customer. You’re not just leasing them an empty apartment, you’re renting them a home, a lifestyle, a place to tell their stories. The easiest way to make an impact? Tell a story with your video marketing. A full 70% of consumers say storytelling makes them feel more connected to a brand. Want to learn more? Watch our keynote “Emotional Impact – Marketing Lessons from a Filmmaker” with cinematographer Gavin Garrison below. 2. Be a helper, not a pusher “Buying today – especially for larger purchases – is fraught with tension,” said guest presenter Kyle Rees, senior executive advisor at CEB, now Gartner. “Customers are looking to us for help.” He suggests making it easier for customers to buy by updating the buyer’s journey to make it easier for them to learn. “Instead of mapping how to buy from us, we need to map how to buy in general,” said Rees. Consider the research, questions and roadblocks that will pop up on the path to rent an apartment and then make sure your company has tools to help them along the way. The more resources you have in place to identify decision criteria (like floor plans and neighborhood maps) and explain pros and cons (like property reviews), the more likely you are to provide a positive customer journey and win the leases that are right for your property. Wondering what happens when you don’t focus on the customer and provide a bad buyer’s journey instead? It increases purchase regret by 54%, meaning those residents will be less likely to renew their leases or recommend living at your property. 3. Track the total journey Today’s online renters don’t make a leasing decision without doing a lot of research. In fact, at least half of them visit five or more property websites before visiting a leasing office. This means that our old ways of reporting on the customer journey – using either the first or last touchpoint to attribute the marketing source – is showing only a small piece of the puzzle. To effectively market to your customer, you need to know where your customers are coming from and what they’ve seen along the way. This means it’s time to embrace multi-source lead attribution for more accurate insight into the customer buyer journey. One thing attendees at the forum learned before anyone else is that RentCafe CRM is evolving to do just that, and clients will soon have the ability to see multiple touchpoints on the prospect journey from lead to lease. Exciting News Our next Yardi Marketing Forum will take place in the Big Easy! That’s right, YMF is heading to New Orleans this November. Registration...
Holli Beckman
On Multi-Source Lead Attribution
Property marketers use lead attribution to determine where leads are coming from so they know what is working, what isn’t and where to spend their marketing dollars most effectively. But single source lead attribution models only credit the first or last source with the lease. “We know that 50% of renters visit five or more websites before they even set foot inside your leasing office. But we only give one source credit for the lease?” says Holli Beckman, vice president of marketing and leasing operations at WC Smith. “If 100% of attribution is going to the first touch, then you are indicating that none of the other sources have any value.” So how do we fix it? How do we more accurately assign value to all the touchpoints that prospects interact with on their buyer journey? The answer is multi-source lead attribution. It’s a relatively new model in multifamily, and it’s a topic Beckman is passionate about (check out her article “Why the Multifamily Industry Is Missing the Boat on Multi-Source Lead Attribution”). So is the development team at Yardi. We’re constantly evolving RentCafe CRM to accommodate new data points and provide deeper insight into prospect activities and marketing sources. That’s why we invited Beckman to join us at the Yardi Marketing Forum in Beverly Hills this week to share her insights as we preview new lead attribution tools designed to increase accuracy and ROI for property marketers. Before the forum, we had a chance to catch up with Beckman and ask her a few questions related to her session and trends she is seeing right now. What limits property marketers’ ability to deliver leads? Beckman: A true understanding of customer behavior. For so long we’ve only reported on one step of the customer...
YMF Baltimore
3 Marketing Themes for 2018
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...
User Behavior
Making Better Property Websites
If you’re at all involved with property marketing, you’ve probably been part of more than a few discussions about property marketing websites and their ability to convert prospects to leads and leads to leases. Great web conversions depend on your ability to truly understand your website visitors. How do they behave on your sites? What do they care about? How easy is it for them to get the information they need and take the next step? During this week’s Yardi Marketing Forum in Seattle, our very own Tudor Manole, development project manager for RentCafe, will lead a session that takes a deep dive into user behavior on property websites through analytics, user testing, and real-time recording. For those of us unable to be at the forum in person, here is a quick synopsis of his presentation, “Gold Star for Good Behavior,” as well as a few insights that you may be able put to work on your own sites to increase web conversions. At a glance, can you tell whether a website – in any industry – will convert or not? Yes and no. Great web conversions depend on the ability to craft a simple user experience that is intuitive, uncluttered, and can be navigated without instructions. So visibly, a straightforward site with a clear user journey is a great start. But there is other data we have to take into account to create a successful website too. What is user experience and why is it important? For a website to convert leads, it has to have a user experience that helps prospects complete the conversion process instead of abandoning the site. User experience (UX) design means observing user behavior in many different ways, and natural use of product is one that should not be...
Genius Gathering
Yardi Marketing Forum Nashville
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...
