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 New Orleans
3 Quick Takeaways
The Yardi Marketing Forum took New Orleans by storm earlier this month. This sold-out event drew top multifamily property marketers from across the country to The Big Easy for three days of fun, education and networking. View the photo album for a behind-the-scenes look. Attendees enjoyed focused attention from Yardi team members and exclusive guest speaker presentations. Google’s session on “The Age of Assistance” gave the audience three tips for winning in today’s competitive search environment: be there, be quick and be useful. Keep reading to see how you can apply these marketing takeaways from the forum to your property management business today. Be There You can’t win clicks if your customers can’t find you. Ben Waltzer from Google Fiber shared that today’s consumers are “more curious, more demanding and more impatient than ever before.” In fact, 15% of Google searches today are ones they’ve never seen before. Co-presenter Jeff Kirschenmann asserted that searchers “expect us to deliver relevant results at the right time.” Do you have a plan in place convert prospects by connecting during moments of intent? A successful marketing strategy includes being present at every stage of the customer journey. This might include SEO for long tail searches, paid ads for different demographics and nudge marketing that spurs website wafflers into action, as well as a healthy presence on review sites and social media platforms. If that sounds like a lot and you just don’t have the time or staff to handle it all, you might want to consider the advanced property marketing services of RENTCafé Reach. Be Quick Filmmaker Gavin Garrison’s talk focused on the emotional impact of storytelling – not just for video but for all forms of marketing. He spoke about using the power of relatable emotion to...
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...
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...
Meet Brad Batesole
YMF Baltimore Guest Speaker
The Yardi Marketing Forum in Baltimore begins November 13! During this sold-out event, multifamily pros from across the country will join us to learn new marketing strategies from expert speakers from both within and without the real estate industry. Brad Batesole will be one of our guest speakers in Baltimore. Brad is the top marketing instructor for Lynda.com and LinkedIn Learning, with over 10 million views on his coursework. He was featured in Entrepreneur Magazine as a young entrepreneur after launching his first successful business at the age of 15 and has helped bring upstarts like LegalZoom, Lynda.com and Warby Parker to where they are today. We recently caught up with Brad before the forum to see what’s exciting him now, both in terms of marketing and our upcoming event: How does your work with LinkedIn impact your ability to speak to different audiences? LinkedIn is home to an incredibly diverse member base — geographically, demographically and career-wise too. There’s a huge opportunity to speak to people that are in different stages of their career and even their lives. I’ve received incredible messages from all around the world and am often left speechless at what people are learning and how they’re applying it to get ahead. Marketing is such a universal topic, and LinkedIn has created the opportunity to teach to a huge audience and learn from that audience as well. Some of what I do can look very one-sided – put a course online, and let people watch it. But behind-the-scenes I’m answering emails, talking with our members and learning more about how people are putting their education into action. What new marketing technology or trends are on your radar right now? I’ll admit, I’ve been rolling my eyes at virtual reality (VR)...
Cooking for a Cause
Yardi Marketing Forum 2016
The invitation-only Yardi Marketing Forum is designed to help professionals excel in marketing multifamily real estate. Attendees participate in focused discussions, interactive training, and engaging social activities—but first, they designated time to uplift the local community in Seattle. For the second segment of this biannual event, clients representing more than 35 companies from throughout the U.S. convened in Seattle. The forum kicked off with a welcome reception at W Seattle before heading to Cooking for a Cause at Blue Ribbon Cooking School. Cooking for a Cause is a corporate team building initiative that benefits local charities. For this event, the Yardi team volunteered to support ROOTS Young Adults Shelter, a nonprofit organization that fosters dignity for its clients through access to essential services and a safe place to sleep. One of the most essential services is access to a healthy meal. Cooking for a Cause participants prepare top-notch meals for those in need. The menu for the Yardi team included shepherds’ pie, grilled lime-marinated chicken and veggies, truffle mac n’ cheese, and chocolate molten lava cake for dessert—all from scratch. The group divided into teams with a chef at each helm to ensure smooth operations and delicious results. Participants peeled, chopped, diced, grilled, and baked together. A conga lined helped pass the time as the participants waited on the ovens. Cooking for a Cause was a huge success. The group furnished hundreds meals for ROOTS Young Adults Shelter. “It was a really fun experience. The atmosphere was…warm,” laughs Geneva Ives, marketing writer on the Yardi team. “We were in there cooking up a sweat! But it was also fun, friendly, and energetic. It was a nice collaborative effort.” Of course, the novice cooks reaped the benefits of their labor. The team enjoyed a meal...
