Elevate Your Multifamily CRM With Property Management AI: A Comprehensive Guide

In recent years, multifamily technology has advanced significantly. While not a new concept in the realm of digital marketing or inception of marketing automation, customer relationship management (CRM) software is still relatively new to the multifamily industry. CRM tools serve as databases storing your prospect and lead information so that leasing specialists can easily access them. With the information in hand, a leasing specialist should have all they need to talk to a prospective tenant or give a tour.

Sounds simple, right?

The truth is, just like with most things, if you put bad in you’ll get bad out. CRM software wasn’t designed to be a comprehensive funnel solution. It can’t sort through leads that come in and only hang on to the quality leads or ones that PERQ calls “high-intent”. With only a CRM, leasing specialists are forced to sift through all the leads in there and figure out which ones are the ones worth talking to and which ones need more time or are just not good enough.

This manual process is not only time-consuming but also diminishes the productivity of leasing agents. Not to mention, high-intent leads may be overlooked, while low-intent leads might unintentionally become the focus of follow-up efforts. Furthermore, traditional CRMs lack automation, resulting in a missed opportunity to nurture leads further down the pipeline.

Elevating multifamily CRMs with property management artificial intelligence (AI) tools transforms this scenario. By integrating the right multifamily marketing automation solution, a human leasing office supported by property management AI can actively engage with prospects, gather insightful data, nurture leads effectively, and seamlessly transfer only those high-intent leads that are ready for direct engagement with leasing specialists to your CRM. This approach not only streamlines the lead management process but also ensures that leasing teams can focus their efforts on the most promising leads, optimizing efficiency and maximizing the potential for successful conversions in the competitive multifamily market.

The Imperative Role of AI in Taking Multifamily CRMs to the Next Level

How did we get to the point of creating marketing automation to go along with CRM for property management companies? Well, as a database, CRM software can only do so much. In the multifamily world, where roughly 20% of leads go unfollowed, and the cost of a lead is on average $17 to $24, it becomes evident that a CRM tool alone is insufficient to address the challenges at hand.

This isn’t the first time in marketing the need for automation came about. In the late 1990s, an investment banking researcher at Bain Capital named Mark Organ conducted a study to find out what made salespeople more successful. He found that companies that had figured out how to give them only the good leads were the ones with the most successful salespeople.

Sound familiar?

This revelation laid the groundwork for the inception of a startup named Eloqua. Originally conceived as a platform for sellers to engage with prospects on a company’s website and for marketers to send bulk emails, Eloqua marked the commencement of contemporary marketing automation. Interestingly, Eloqua’s team discovered that the chat product designed for sellers was underutilized by them.

Instead, sales teams opted to selectively engage with leads that had interacted with marketing emails through Eloqua — a scenario remarkably reminiscent of the challenges currently faced by the multifamily industry. These challenges include the failure to follow up on leads, time constraints hindering engagement with low-intent leads, and the inefficient allocation of marketing budget. Multifamily doesn’t need more leads in the CRM, but better quality leads in their database.

While CRMs remain indispensable, the incorporation of AI is crucial to empower them in discerning and receiving only the most valuable leads. The synergy between AI and CRMs emerges as the solution to optimize lead management, enhance efficiency, and make more informed decisions in the multifamily landscape.

Multifamily CRMs with Property Management AI Support

As we’ve talked about above, the conventional approach of CRMs is to treat every lead like it’s equal regardless of intent and where a prospect is in their leasing process. This practice introduces clutter into the CRM making it necessary for onsite teams to manually dig through a myriad of leads. PERQ recognizes the inherent flaw in this methodology and advocates for a more refined approach.

A clean CRM software should be reserved for only the most high quality leads — individuals ready to tour properties and engage with the leasing team. While acknowledging that those with low intent may not qualify as sales leads in the traditional sense, we emphasize that their information remains valuable and deserves attention.

This perspective aligns with the thinking at Eloqua, where a transformative shift occurred when they realized that leads were being selectively chosen by sales teams. Eloqua moved away from using CRMs as catchalls and instead focused on sophistication in lead strategy for valuable prospects not yet prepared for direct sales engagement. Their strategy included:

• Handing off leads only when they were ready to engage with a salesperson.
• Entering lead records into the CRM when they were prepared for sales activity.
• Marketing taking charge of early customer engagement to prepare them for sales, with all interactions tracked in the marketing automation system.

This strategic evolution significantly freed up time for the sales team, enabling them to concentrate solely on leads ready for conversion. Leads displaying lower intent were retained as marketing contacts in the Eloqua system, becoming the responsibility of the marketing team for further nurturing.

In property management, AI solutions are mirroring this evolution in marketing automation. Platforms like PERQ leverage AI to automate lead capture and nurture in the multifamily sector. By adopting AI-driven property management tools, multifamily CRMs can refine their lead management processes, enhance efficiency, and ensure that valuable leads are appropriately nurtured before reaching the point of direct onsite team engagement.

Bring Automation to Your Property Management Efforts

In the world of B2B, Eloqua created marketing automation, while PERQ has brought forth cutting-edge marketing automation tailored specifically for multifamily property management companies. By incorporating property management AI solutions, like PERQ, into your marketing & sales strategy, you can access to a comprehensive AI tool designed to efficiently channel only high-intent, quality leads to your CRM, effectively managing the remainder of your pipeline.

This transformative approach has yielded remarkable results, freeing onsite teams from over 160 hours of manual work and significantly boosting website conversion rates. Unified Residential, a firm incorporating PERQ’s platform across various properties in their portfolio, has witnessed an amazing threefold increase in website conversion and a surge in lead-to-tour rates from 50% to an impressive 83%.

Part of PERQ’s platform includes a natural language chatbot, engaging with prospects around the clock, answering questions, and alleviating the workload for the leasing team. Leveraging leasing AI, PERQ collects insightful data, provides real-time reporting and continues to nurture leads further down the pipeline, alleviating the burden on your leasing team. By ensuring that only leads ready for active engagement are present in your CRM, PERQ streamlines and optimizes efficiency of your lead management process. Moreover, the platform allows you to personalize automated follow-ups in your brand colors and voice, enabling your communications to stand out in prospect inboxes. Embrace property management AI to elevate your CRM and witness a transformation in lead management efficiency and overall leasing success.

Related Links

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