How to Find the Best Property Management Software
Optimizing the business operations and processes of your multifamily property can be key to staying ahead of competitors and offering a solid and personalized experience to your potential and current renters. In the digital era, property managers rely on software solutions to support that work, but how do you find the best multifamily property management software? Explore our guide and discover what you should look for when choosing the best software for streamlining your property management.
Your Property Management Software Should Seamlessly Integrate with Your Website
Over the years, we’ve found that many renters will stay in places they don’t love just to avoid the massive change that comes with moving. This means that any multifamily website needs to act as a top leasing agent and support a seamless renting experience.
Since much of our purchasing happens in the digital realm, consumers expect a high-end service experience when shopping online. This is no different when it comes to browsing for an apartment. A property management company’s first interaction with a new tenant will likely begin online as they’re sitting on the couch wondering what else is out there.
A property website, like a perfect leasing agent, must provide visitors with guidance and support while they’re making this big decision. That’s where an online guided shopping approach can be extremely helpful. An online shopping model helps smaller independent retailers, like commercial property management companies, create leads online. Being able to track a consumer’s journey through their enhanced online shopping experience allows a company to gain insight for their teams to nurture and create apartment rental leads.
In today’s digital world, it’s important to connect with your leasing leads online before they even have a chance to enter your apartment complex offices. Apartment websites can provide essential information and give the leasing team a unique opportunity to chat with potential leads.
If you want to increase the chances of someone signing an apartment lease, the right software is crucial to converting leads into clients. It should also help you streamline and make your lease management more efficient. One thing to remember when thinking about ways to increase leasing traffic is that you want to help rental prospects before actually selling them anything. Being able to guide potential renters allows you to create a personalized and enhanced leasing experience online, making them more apt to view your properties both in-person and online.
At PERQ, we offer multifamily property management software that effortlessly solves complex challenges faced by multifamily properties. By helping property owners create a streamlined online experience, we ensure your prospects feel nurtured within seconds of being on your site. Property management software is crucial to apartment digital marketing efforts since it uses prospect-driven data to drive better property-level decisions and convert existing web traffic into leases.
Our multifamily leasing software can also help automatically intake and nurture prospects who may not be prepared to rent yet. The data collected on rental prospects visiting your website will also help property managers make more informed and strategic marketing decisions. Learn how to best follow-up with rental prospects.
Look for Smart Automation Solutions
The best property management automation system will help solve common software challenges and deliver real results. PERQ’s software for multifamily saves time by utilizing automations, allowing prospects to schedule multiple types easily, optimizing channel performance, and more.
Engaging with prospective tenants through the multifamily management software will ensure a personalized and helpful experience and encourages them to become renters. Virtual tours, quizzes, 3D floor plans, and pre-qualified calculators all create a more engaging, lead-generating website while utilizing your apartment property management software.
PERQ’s easy-to-implement software has been beneficial for many companies that experienced quick ROI (return of investment). The software helps website visitors through automated conversations or quizzes like: “Which Floor Plan is Right for Me?” that can help inform and engage a potential renter. With this incorporation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) multifamily software, day-to-day tasks that would normally require human intelligence can be completed through a fully automated process. This allows the website to gather consumer information quickly and effectively, allowing them to feel understood and like they are being supported from the get-go.
Making the Right Choice: Tools and Solutions That Can Streamline Your Property Management Operations
Property managers most likely utilize their online presence to capture new leads through uploading photos, offering lease incentives, and making sure their ads are seen in all the right places. The next step is to make sure you engage these potential new renters.
Property managers should also understand the importance of apartment leasing software. Web engagement is a measurable property management tool that can help track where a lead is at in their search for a new home. While a prospect is still in the research phase, you may be inclined to provide them with as much information as you can. However, you want to be sure to engage them and gather their information if possible.
There are a couple of property management solutions for your website to help attract potential leads. Ensure that your multifamily marketing strategy gives them a reason to book a tour, whether virtual or in-person. This way, they can feel more at home when seeing their potential new space. Providing interactive tools is a great way to keep a possible lead on the site and provides you with more opportunities to connect with them and gather their information. When looking for the best property management software, some of the top interactive tools and features include:
- New Customer Welcome: Welcomes new visitors to your property website and guides the consumer to the specific part of the website that they are interested in.
- Expense Calculator: Gives an estimated living expense for an apartment community, and displays included amenities, additional costs, and can calculate add-ons, like parking, storage, or pet fees.
- Right Community for Me: Collects consumer apartment research and interests for activities. Yelp data is used to show activities and places unique to a city and a particular area within a city to help a renter choose the best community.
- Floor Plan Assessment: Gives consumers insight into which floor plan might be right for them at the property, while the property collects a valuable lead.
- Pre-Qualify Assessment: Allows a consumer to see if they pre-qualify before going through the application process. It asks a series of simple questions that guides either a result of “Yes, you pre-qualify” or “A leasing agent will be in touch with you to discuss your pre-qualification status.”
- Tour Scheduler: Takes apartment marketing exports into account and lets consumers—no matter their location—book a tour directly on your website. It can plug directly into leasing agents’ calendars and show only the times to consumers that they are available all via the web.
- Exit Intent: Provides a special offer to a consumer who has not yet converted to a lead before leaving the property’s website.
PERQ offers all the above features and has a variety of success stories with property management companies across the US, including the city where we are headquartered in Indianapolis.
Property Management Software
It’s never been more important for property managers and landlords to engage and gather information about the potential renters that visit their site. Using robust property management software is a significant step in nurturing and obtaining leads, thus inspiring online apartment shoppers to book tours.
Coming up with a strategy for utilizing the property management system software is a diligent process that includes reviewing your budget, competition, and available resources. The trifecta of a marketing strategy for property managers is the website, social media, and then ILS (Internet Listing Sites).
Creating a fundamental understanding of what you’re willing to spend and what’s a reasonable amount is the first step. You can then begin to decide how you want to diversify on as many platforms as possible, like social media and third-party listing sites, like ForRent.com and Apartments.com.
When optimizing your apartment leasing solutions, it’s important to keep in mind questions that focus on your property or website and not the competitors. Ask questions to ensure the community website you’re putting forward is the best portrayal of your entire property and the people who work there.
The multifamily industry often struggles to connect with customers on a deeper level, which can have serious effects on a property’s bottom line. Using creative apartment marketing ideas can help you create solid marketing strategies that will ensure your potential tenants know their options and are set up with the right info to make informed decisions. Property managers interested in increasing the number and quality of their apartment rental leads must focus on creating a memorable website worth exploring—not just browsing.
Though web engagement may seem like an intangible buzzword, it can be both measured and defined. When an apartment seeker visits a property’s website for the first time, they are still in the research phase. Though this can seem like the best time to just give the shopper every piece of information about your property, you must first engage the visitor. You can’t simply measure a visitor’s clicks and the length of time on your site; the goal is to invite them to share their information.
Furthermore, lead conversion and online engagement for potential renters can’t be improved with the content alone. Engagement is much more profound than providing renters with relevant information about an apartment or photos of the interior from every angle. Engagement means connecting with your leads on an emotional level, too. Apartment marketing trends conclude that prospects are much more inclined to make moves when they feel well-informed and supported.
We understand that finding a new home is stressful for apartment seekers, and if they don’t feel welcomed, why would they share their information? Rather than revamping a site or blindly increasing your ad spend budget, improving online engagement means a radical rethinking of what a website experience should feel like to your customers.
So, how can a property manager stop selling the property as a product and start selling a property’s lifestyle? For experts like Katrina Greene, Senior Property Manager of Sheehan Properties in Indianapolis, the answer comes in the form of smart and intuitive tools, like those created and managed by PERQ.
Renters aren’t shopping for a product, but the lifestyle that product provides.
Katrina Greene
For instance, PERQ offers an online tool that allows apartment shoppers to explore their interests in the surrounding neighborhood, satisfying their curiosity beyond the floorplan. For companies managing several different multifamily properties, like Greene’s, PERQ also develops in-depth quizzes that allow apartment hunters to learn which neighborhood and property are best for them, even from a distance.
Additionally, budgeting calculators give leads a chance to factor in the necessary costs of utilities and amenities—such as pet or add-on fees along with projected rent—to get a good idea of a potential budget. Rather than calling to make an appointment, a renter can also schedule a tour right on your website, picking the day and time that works best for them.
With PERQ-powered tools, a multifamily property website doesn’t just display a static listing; it creates a living scenario that’s rich with details and beauty. And, as Greene explains, it improves the bottom line with cold hard numbers. “With the addition of PERQ’s tools, we’ve been able to convert at much higher rates than we ever did before,” Greene says.
It’s no secret that today’s consumers are looking for more integrated, seamless digital experiences, and they’re shopping for an apartment home is no different.
It used to be enough that an apartment building even had a website, but today, even small developments must have an active and thought-out online presence. Multifamily housing can capture more of their local market via the web than they think. By utilizing an apartment marketing plan, as well as unique web engagement tools, you can easily and effectively showcase the warmth, personality, and polish your property has to offer.
Multifamily Property Management Software
A good PMS system is worth the investment. We all know what a pain it is when your PMS isn’t working for you but against you. Multifamily property management software has seen a lot of innovation in the last few years alone. From multi-option tour scheduling to virtual leasing and now to leasing AI, there is a lot of tech that is geared toward helping multifamily properties.
Multi-option tour scheduling and virtual leasing became more popular due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With social distancing and in-person activities being put on hold, multifamily properties still needed to give tours and get leases signed. Just because there was a pandemic didn’t mean that people weren’t still moving.
Multi-option tour scheduling allowed prospects to choose between different options of tours from in-person (if possible), self-guided, pre-recorded video tour, photo tour, and even a live video tour. Virtual leasing platforms provide the ability to do video tours, whether pre-recorded or live, in a way that is more cohesive and gives a better viewing experience to the prospect.
Now we are at the time where leasing AI has taken off as the next big thing in multifamily property management software. AI Leasing Assistants and AI chatbots aren’t here to replace a human leasing assistant. They are here to help support the onsite team and take care of the increase in website traffic and leads from the site. PERQ’s AI Leasing Assistant has the capability to handle lead follow-up and nurture and is smart enough to connect all marketing channels, like an ILS, through direct experience links. This way onsite teams can see the prospects’ full journey. By using your brand voice and colors, the AI Leasing Assistant’s follow-up messaging is more cohesive and feels like it is coming from your property and not just some automated messaging bot.
Do I Need an Apartment Property Management Software for My Small Business?
Property management software for small business especially multifamily small businesses can be tricky. For starters, there’s cost. Having a lot of single-point solutions can add up while at the same time newer innovations can be pricey. For smaller multifamily businesses whose portfolio isn’t as big, it can be a make or break investment. You need to know that the tech and the apartment property management software you are investing in is worth the money.
A multifamily leasing software that uses Artificial Intelligence is a great investment that is worthwhile. Consumer buying habits have changed a lot in the last decade. Consumers are looking for chatbots and AI-enabled websites but want on-demand assistance from a human person pretty quickly once the bots can’t answer their questions anymore or they actually need to make the purchase.
AI Leasing Assistants, like the one at PERQ, can help multifamily meet the needs and demands of this new generation of renters. Millennials and Gen Z have grown up with the world at their fingertips. They are no strangers to automation and tech innovation. Quite frankly, they expect it. The AI Assistant will handle all of the leads that come in through your website. It collects better data and gives real-time reporting on availability so that they can accurately tell prospects when something is open or when they can tour.
By collecting better data, the AI Leasing Assistant empowers onsite teams by giving them knowledge of the prospect’s online journey and the information from the text or email cadences with the chatbot. Leasing specialists are only given leads that are qualified and ready to talk, tour, or lease. The Assistant handles the rest, including managing leads that are further down the pipeline. With PERQ’s AI Leasing Assistant, your team will never miss a lead and will never have to waste valuable time on trash leads.
Related Links
Back to the Basics: Training Your Leasing Team
How Renters Search for Their Next Apartment
Marketing Strategies for Property Management Companies