A Full Guide to AI Multifamily Lead Nurturing

Everything you need to know about how AI Multifamily Lead Nurture improves lead quality and conversions.

If you were to interview fellow multifamily marketers who’ve worked with PERQ in recent months, you’d notice a common thread: shorter sales cycles, greater lead conversions and marketing ROI, while freeing up considerable hours each week as the PERQ platform automates more than 90% of FAQs and tour bookings on behalf of leasing agents. The same is possible for your multifamily marketing program. AI multifamily lead management technology makes it possible.

Wooing tenants with instant gratification, custom support at scale

How do you sway modern renters to click, interact, book a tour, and lease a multifamily unit? As consumer expectations evolve, the prospects you’re working so hard to reach now expect the same ease, immediacy, and anytime/anywhere access they enjoy with online retailers, media platforms, and AI assistants living in their pockets, like Siri and Alexa. Fail to provide those lickety-split, made-for-me experiences at fleeting moments when you have their attention and they’ll jump ship to a competing property website that can satisfy their need for ease and speed. How do you provide one-on-one, always-on support without overwhelming your leasing team? AI multifamily lead nurture technology bridges that gap, delivering instant support across various channels, capturing prospect data, and moving leads through your sales funnel — even while your team sleeps or tends to other responsibilities.

Capturing intel and building rapport with stealth shoppers

Most renters are beginning their property search early — typically three-plus months out, and mostly online. Between work, daytime errands and other distractions, prospects often browse your property website late at night, during holidays, or when leasing staff is unavailable. Long before you know who they are, they’re researching, narrowing options, and making decisions about your properties. With that in mind, many multifamily marketers are activating AI nurture technologies to facilitate online renting journeys, and also to capture meaningful insights to maximize the chances of turning those visitors into renters. Preferred floor plans, move-in timelines, budget, desired amenities and other preferences are some of the insights you can capture long before prospects are willing to speak with a leasing agent.​

AI multifamily lead nurture solutions reduce a multifamily company’s dependency on leasing agents to follow up on every lead when it first comes in. By collecting detailed lead data on every prospect who interacts on the property website, your leasing staff can easily segment leads and focus energy on the renters ready to rent right now while the AI technology automatically nurtures those prospects who are still months away from moving. It also means leasing specialists can adjust messaging and their approach based on which phase of the renter journey a prospect indicates they’re in.

“It allows us to offer an enhanced experience for the customer and provides us with the data of those interactions to help our teams ensure a better experience,” says Jenny Richard, Director of Marketing at Gene B. Glick Company, one of the largest privately held real estate management and development firms in the U.S. “It aids our teams in moving away from collecting customer information in a ‘checklist’ approach and instead allows the team members to already have this information and utilize it in a conversational way to make a connection.”

Improving lead quality and conversions

Ideally, leasing staff should spend their days on high-impact activities like closing high-intent prospects or applying data insights to identify hidden opportunities. That’s especially true in the age of rising worker burnout and resignations, with some multifamily properties losing 70% of their workers, according to the National Apartment Association. One benefit of augmenting leasing teams with AI is taking low-impact tasks off their shoulders so they can operate more efficiently, focusing on leads that present the greatest potential for revenue. To make that possible, PERQ’s AI-driven  automations tackle 90%+ of routine inquiries and tour bookings, freeing up agents for other priorities. PERQ also customizes content and calls-to-action to each rental prospect, building rapport and warming up leads until they’re ready for leasing agents.

“By using AI, you are making sure the customer is acknowledged immediately, for one,” says Keir Schutte, owner of KP Consulting Services, which works with multifamily companies to achieve a variety of business goals. “In addition, you keep the customer engaged and they’re able to find out more information.”

The goal of AI-driven lead nurture technology is to drive prospects back to the property website to re-engage with the online tools or book a tour through an online scheduler. This ultimately results in more tours, more return website visitors, and more website engagement, which in turn increases online lead-to-lease conversions.

Unmatched data integration and visibility

Speaking of continuous learning, AI lead management can also capture far more data points than you’d typically have with conventional methods. How it works, in a nutshell: The AI platform builds a renter profile record and feeds it into your CRM. That profile is continuously updated as the AI “brain” learns more about the prospect. The platform also captures clear source attribution data and centralized reporting so you can fine-tune channels to ensure every lead has a smooth experience and keeps progressing toward conversion. By the time leasing agents follow up with a prospective renter, they can trust that (a) that’s a high-intent lead, and (b) they have deep intel into that prospect’s preferences, budget and other considerations so they can personalize their approach for a compelling interaction. Just as important, your AI leasing platform should cultivate leads months in advance, keeping them warm for upcoming vacancies, ensuring occupancy levels remain high.

Enabling better worker experiences with AI

We know AI can multiply efficiencies in ways our manual efforts or outdated technologies can’t. But more than that, a thoughtfully deployed AI solution can also create more meaningful work for leasing teams. To illustrate that, let’s consider the daily routine of a multifamily leasing agent — we’ll call him Joe. In a typical week, Joe sinks countless hours into paperwork, printing reports, updating the CRM, tweaking online property ads, stitching together data from separate systems, scheduling tours, cold-calling and responding to routine inquiries. Now and then Joe gets to close a lease with a highly-motivated prospect, or gets creative with the marketing strategy after noticing a gap in the local market. Those high-impact tasks leave him energized and are the highlight of his work, though they’re fairly infrequent in the face of daily demands. What if we could flip that around? What if Joe could focus his time on engaging high-intent prospects and using his creativity to explore new marketing opportunities, with most other tasks running on autopilot in the background? That’s what a multifamily AI leasing management platform can deliver. It’s not about replacing human connections, but freeing up humans to do what a machine can’t.

Peer feedback and real-world applications

Cecilia Smoyer, assistant property manager at Karric Place of Dublin, sought out PERQ to increase lead generation while alleviating her team’s workload. The PERQ platform nurtures prospects so that the leads that make their way to Smoyer’s team are much closer to a yes. “Those leads are more reliable since the PERQ screens them beforehand. It saves us a lot of time and speeds the process,” she shared.

Elizabeth Shew, property team lead at SkyVue, reports a similar experience: “It’s saved our team hours of work while providing high quality leads. It’s so easy to call a prospect when you already know what floor plan, timeframe and budget they’re looking at.”

For leads that have not yet engaged with a leasing agent, there’s no gap in support, notes Virginia Kull, property manager at Highview Pointe: “In a world that requires instant gratification, [AI leasing automation] allows our leads and residents to gain extensive information about our property, quickly.” It doesn’t take long for multifamily marketers to experience big wins with PERQ. After completing a recent 60-day trial, a PERQ customer reported saving $16,742 in payroll value (350+ hours each month), thanks to PERQ lead management automation.

Vetting a leasing AI multifamily lead nurture solution

Not every solution that claims AI capabilities is worth your dollars. To get the most out of leasing AI multifamily lead nurture technology, it’s wise to prioritize the following criteria:

Go with natural language (not rule-based) AI	One connected platform	Simple implementation
Unlike rule-based AI, which is limited to an inflexible script, natural language AI can carry a conversation and deliver a warm touch that, ironically, makes your organization feel more “human.” Natural language AI also learns over time, adjusting every interaction to reflect prospect preferences or information the prospect has shared before. It’s the difference between truly helpful, concierge-like assistance and getting stuck on one of those tiresome “Press 1 to repeat this menu” scripts.	If your goal is to become more efficient, the last thing you need is inconsistent data and disconnected systems. Your AI lead nurture platform should integrate with your PMS and CRM systems, plus online traffic sources like property listings, Google, social media, and more. It should also be able to communicate with prospects across multiple channels, and give you visibility into how each channel or traffic source is performing.	When adopting new technology to accelerate revenue goals, you want the learning curve to be as minimal as possible. And with the speed of change in the market, you want a platform that’s easy to adapt to your needs as they evolve. You shouldn’t have to hire a data scientist to activate, manage or upgrade AI capabilities.

PERQ: Industry’s best and most complete multifamily leasing management technology

PERQ is a next-generation, unmatched lead management technology designed to increase lead conversions and lower marketing costs. To that end, PERQ engages prospects from your website and other lead sources, and nurtures those leads with interactive website experiences, natural language chatbots, SMS/web/email communications — all personalized to each prospect’s interests and preferences. Along the way, PERQ’s AI-powered decision engine captures data about each prospect to give them exactly what they need as they make rental decisions, until they’re ready to speak with an agent. Additionally, PERQ also makes sure all prospect data is recorded in your CRM. Your results: better leads and more conversions, often at a lower cost than what you’re paying today.

PERQ integrates with your existing website and lead sources to engage, nurture and convert every lead, improving the multifamily leasing journey for everyone. Learn how it works or request a demo. 

Related Links

Apartment Marketing Blogs: Getting Started

Building Your Apartment Complex’s Brand on Instagram

Empowering Your Leasing Team: A Guide to Effective Digital Leasing

Marketing Ideas in Multifamily