Managing Multifamily Leads
How marketing automation in multifamily leads to better lead management.
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COVID-19 has made in-person situations, like working in an office or going on a tour difficult as it spreads quickly, and new variants keep popping up. Many jobs and schools went remote because of this and many of these institutions decided to move permanently remote or adopt a hybrid remote culture as time went on.
All of this had an impact on the rental market. More renters were given the ability to work/learn from anywhere and decided to relocate to a new city or town. There are also renters who are now spending considerably more time in their units and decided they want more space or a change of scenery. Study after study has shown that the rental market continues to increase in size. With different types of multifamily housing popping up around the country and rental activity at a high, multifamily teams are seeing more leads come through their property websites.
An increase in rental activity is great news for multifamily properties, however many are starting to see the reality this increase is having on their teams. More leads are being entered into multifamily customer relationship management, or CRM, systems even though a decent number of these leads are either casual shoppers or looking months in advance. PERQ data shows that nearly 40% of renters looked 3+ months out in 2021, half of those looking 6 months in advance.
CRMs are just databases. Over time, they delete old guest cards, but this influx in renter activity has shown that only a CRM to manage leads isn’t operationally efficient. High-intent, quality leads are slipping through the cracks and leasing teams are overloaded.
This has created a pain point in multifamily operations: the need for better lead management.
Improving Multifamily Lead Managemnt With AI
We rely on technology to make our days easier and more efficient. We have smart devices like Alexa and Google Home to automatically turn on and off your lights or to start the coffee pot in the morning. We have keys that remotely start cars, so they warm up before you get in — a great feature for those of us that live in colder climates. We even have algorithms that place targeted ads in front of us and provide personalized scrolling on social media.
Why not use this same kind of technology to make it easier for multifamily teams to manage their leads?
You can! Today’s modern AI technology automates many parts of the leasing journey for a prospect so that leasing teams can focus only on building relationships with quality leads that are ready to talk, tour, and lease. But use of automation doesn’t mean that a property’s communication with prospects loses that “human touch”. It simply means that property management companies can streamline their operations and many of the repetitive tasks, like answering common questions or sending out nurture messages, can be taken off the leasing team’s plate. In fact, today’s shoppers are ok with these kinds of automation because they get what they need.
Lead Generation Powered by AI
Having a lot of visitors come through from your website is great, but even if they fill out a form, they aren’t all worth the leasing teams’ time. Teams that treat every filled form like they’re an impending application quickly find themselves overwhelmed with too much to do. Without a solid lead management strategy, all of these “leads” are given equal attention, creating large backlogs of work for onsite teams and a lackluster experience for prospective renters.
For many multifamily properties, maximizing lead generation from the website makes a lot of sense. After all, converting leads from your website is usually lower cost per lead than leads from advertising sources. Setting up your property website to be engaging and interactive with tools that are powered with AI helps automate some of the processes mentioned earlier as well as:
- Natural language, cross-channel chatbot that can answer prospect questions 24/7/365
- Improve the data that is put in the CRM by making it cleaner and more complete
- Automate lead nurture with preferred communication, either text or email.
- Personalize nurture messaging with brand voice and colors
Platforms like PERQ offer all of the above as well as interactive website experiences, tour scheduling, all powered through an AI decision engine that has learned which leads are high-intent and which ones are looky-loos casually browsing the property website with no serious intent to lease.
Leasing teams are able to give high intent leads the attention they should be getting and know that PERQ’s AI software is working around the clock to nurture leads that are at different phases of the leasing journey and whose timelines are further down the pipeline.
Better AI Leads with PERQ
As businesses and markets evolve and mature, often practices previously put in place begin to show inefficiencies. Multifamily property management companies are no stranger to this. Keeping up with today’s volume of leasing activity that properties are seeing is often more than onsite teams can handle. With tech like PERQ, leasing teams can be more confident about the AI leads they are putting their time and effort into because they know that the AI engine has determined the lead is ready to talk to them. And they’ve been given all of the insightful data on the prospect and can see all of the messages between the prospect and the AI.
PERQ makes sure you make the most of every lead by extending your team’s reach using the latest in AI technology. By blending tech and human engagement, PERQ’s lead generation and automation platform enables multifamily properties to be set up for better leasing outcomes.
Unified Residential is one of many properties that have hired on PERQ, and the results speak for themselves. Keeping online rental shoppers engaged and nurturing casual website visitors over text message and email, Unified is seeing more qualified leads and tours, with less distractions. “It takes a lot of time for your leasing team to sift through what we call ‘looky-loos,’ when they could be working on more serious leads,” says Dalia Kalgreen, Director of Marketing for Unified. Across Unified’s portfolio, PERQ sends an average of 325 leads per month to Unified properties; of that, 83.84% had already scheduled a tour.
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.
