It’s time for multifamily to catch up to evolving consumer expectations.
For years, other industries have invested in marketing automations and personalization to deliver compelling “made-for-me” buying experiences. By and large, that investment was rewarded with sharp increases in conversions, consumer spend and retention.
Consumers, in turn, have grown used to the “Amazon” experience, characterized by speed, ease, and hyper-personalization, expecting those components in every digital transaction, whether that’s buying furniture, streaming music, ordering food, or…researching rental properties.
The trouble is that multifamily has lagged behind, making it difficult for renters to get the answers they need without having to take extra steps like calling a leasing office during office hours, or dropping by for an on-site visit — often having to re-explain their interests, preferences or quandaries with every interaction.
That’s changing, and it’s a massive opportunity for PMCs and multifamily marketers to stand out and outperform competitors.
Modernizing the Renter’s Journey
What that in mind, PERQ has launched a platform that’s custom-built for multifamily, but with all the personalization and automation capabilities that have enabled other industries to provide that “magical” Amazon or Netflix experience.
As such, PERQ is multifamily’s first and only standalone marketing automation platform designed to personalize every step of the renter’s journey. To that end, PERQ has expanded its functionality across various inbound marketing channels, so marketers can personalize individual renter experiences at scale.
PERQ is a standalone platform in the sense that it has all components multifamily marketers need to deploy personalized experiences on demand and at scale, working leads outside of your CRM so onsite teams have a clean CRM that’s not gummed up with leads that aren’t yet ready for agent contact. At the same time, PERQ also “plays well” with others, integrating with a variety of other proptech platforms and ILSs.
New and unmatched capabilities to supercharge multifamily conversions
A few highlights of the PERQ marketing automation platform:
Natural Language Processing (NLP) conversational AI allows visitors to have “natural” (read: non-robotic) conversations with AI leasing assistants on various inbound channels such as the property website, SMS, email, and more.
Conversational AI support for Google, enabling mobile visitors to get instant answers when visiting a community’s Google Business Profile and Google Maps.
Call-to-text technology converts inbound leasing calls to text chats, easing the workload of onsite teams and helping PMCs avoid costly call centers.
Website Conversion Maximizer tailors interactive online experiences to each visitor, capturing prospect data so it can enhance personalizations with every new interaction.
Nurture Science for Multifamily continues to personalize nurture communications to keep prospects engaged long after their first visit, through every stage of the renter’s journey.
One intelligent platform with centralized data means prospects are recognized across devices, creating connected and coherent experiences across channels.
Rich prospect data is automatically captured and made available in your connected CRM when the prospect is agent-ready.
Accurate lead attribution and real-time trends so you can see how each lead source is performing, hidden opportunities or tripping points.
“Multifamily has long been an inbound lead business that wasn’t equipped with the tools to maximize their success with inbound marketing,” said Scott Hill, CEO of PERQ. “The new PERQ AI marketing automation platform is multifamily’s first standalone platform that automates and personalizes prospect engagement at scale across all inbound channels,” he added.
Early adopters report substantial gains
Multifamily marketers using the PERQ platform report sharp increases in website engagements, conversions to tour and lease, and cost savings.
“The PERQ AI marketing automation platform has helped Mission Rock evolve our inbound marketing strategy. As a result, we get more leads and leases from our website and more automated engagement with prospects,” explained Meagan Struve, Marketing Analyst at Mission Rock Residential. “We’ve reduced the work of our onsite team since PERQ takes on all the early nurture, and keeps our onsite teams focused on closing leases and providing excellent customer service,” she shared.
In our work with multifamily marketers, we’ve noticed four common traits among high performers.
For one, they focus on sustainable gains over short-lived stunts or “fixes” that can’t drive marketing performance long-term.
Second, they keep a watchful eye over changing market dynamics and adapt quickly to match consumer behaviors and staffing needs.
Third, they magnify onsite teams with technology automation so teams aren’t bogged down by low-impact tasks that drain their time and attention.
Lastly, they measure everything, letting data reveal opportunities and steer marketing investments.
Three such leaders are Stacy Valentine (Vice President of Innovation and Technology), Stephanie Sellstrom (Director of Innovation and Technology), and Anna Shea (Senior Director of Marketing) at the Laramar Group, which manages a portfolio of nearly 150 properties.
Stacy, Stephanie, and Anna came to PERQ to solve challenges their onsite teams were having with lead management, running a three-month pilot to gauge results before adopting solutions across their full portfolio.
Below is an abbreviated recap. (You can read the full case study here.)
The Challenge
With limited staff and lots of leads, Laramar onsite teams were struggling to keep up, and to translate that lead volume into occupancy.
When onsite teams begin struggling with occupancy, one of the first things Anna reviews is their lead queue. “We look at dismissed leads, and that’s usually full of valid leads, which is a sure sign that we need to give them support to manage leads and help them focus on other things,” Anna explained.
The Process & Solution
Laramar initially turned to a CRM product with a built-in chatbot to answer repetitive leasing questions on property websites, removing that burden off the onsite team. The attempt wasn’t successful, and Laramar leaders began exploring other options.
While initially focused on website chat capabilities, a PERQ demo got Laramar leaders thinking about what else was possible, intrigued by the combinations of capabilities PERQ provided.
Beyond automating support for FAQs, PERQ automation could also free agents from having to follow up on low-quality leads, Stacy reasoned.
Laramar leaders decided to test their hypothesis, conducting a 90-day pilot of the PERQ platform with four of its properties. The Laramar and PERQ teams scheduled check-ins to study the pilot’s progress at 30, 60, and 90 days. Improvements were immediate.
The Results
At the conclusion of the three-month PERQ pilot, the Laramar team reported the following improvements:
2,858 fewer hours spent managing leads, equating to a $57,160 in payroll value
90.4% of tours were scheduled via PERQ, requiring zero human interaction
182% increase in lead-to-tour conversions
113% increase in website traffic to lead conversion
$43,116 in savings or cost avoidance in lead generation (more leads generated from web traffic, plus more tours from nurtured leads)
“Our conversion rates went up and we saw an immediate impact on the team,” said Anna. “We began getting positive feedback from site teams that they no longer have to spend time to figure out which are the hottest leads because now they’re getting qualified tours from PERQ.”
Stephanie agreed, adding that leads are pre-qualified when they come in the door. As a result of PERQ’s personalized nurture and automation, Laramar has been able to drop underperforming lead sources while enjoying increased conversions. “We’ve been running under budget on marketing by a couple thousand dollars a month,” Anna shared.
While humans cannot be replaced by automation, the technology does enable multifamily teams to be more thoughtful about where and when to apply their attention and resources.
Multifamily conferences are a vital aspect in the industry whether you’re multifamily leadership looking for a solution to automate and personalize your renter’s journey or if you’re part of an onsite leasing team looking for support in nurturing prospects through a lengthening rental process.
You can always catch PERQ participating at a variety of multifamily conferences because we love educating the multifamily industry on what PERQ is capable of and fostering connections with multifamily teams.
Here is our recommendation of the top 5 multifamily conferences that multifamily teams should attend in 2023 — and you’ll see PERQ — multifamily’s only standalone marketing automation platform there too!
1. Multifamily Social Media Summit
March 22-24, 2023 – The Meritage Hotel & Spa – Napa, CA
The Multifamily Social Media Summitis a three-day multifamily conference designed for property management firms that are using social media and content marketing to retain and attract new residents. This summit is geared towards senior and mid-level executives and managers in PMCs that include owners, developers, multifamily executives & managers, regional management executives & managers, and marketing professionals.
Attendees can expect business and technical topic sessions surrounding social media measurement, ROI, implementation, and more. Exhibitors and sponsors will be there for attendees to visit with and learn more about their company and products & service.
PERQ will serve as an exhibitor and attendees can:
Expect to learn about PERQ’s mission and core values
Learn how we’re automating and personalizing the renter’s journey
Take a look at the fun PERQ swag we’ll have
Schedule private time to get to know us better
2. TAA
April 19-21, 2023 – Ft. Worth Convention Center – Ft. Worth, TX
The TAA One Conference & Expo is a three-day multifamily conference that is intended for cost-effective professional development. Attendees that either recommends, influence, or are final decision makers, such as leasing professionals, owners, VPs, operations, and property/regional managers are best suited for this.
This conference offers informational seminars, a trade show, and exceptional networking opportunities. Exhibitors and sponsors will be in attendance to establish new customers and introduce new products & services.
By visiting PERQ’s booth at TAA:
You’ll be introduced to PERQ, multifamily’s only standalone marketing automation platform
Receive a product demo to see how using PERQ results in increased conversions, reduced cost per lead and lease, and time saved over other automated tools
Schedule some 1:1 time with us
Leave our booth with some PERQ goodies!
3. AIM
May 7-10, 2023 – Hyatt Regency Resort – Huntington Beach, CA
AIM – also known as the Apartment Innovation & Marketing Conference is a 4-day multifamily conference targeted toward executives who own and operates multifamily communities and the conference’s sponsors.
Guests can expect discussions that focus on marketing technology, automation, and AI, leasing technology, future tech, and ethics of personalized data-gathering, and marketing, to name a few. Besides an agenda packed with educational discussions, there will also be sponsors in attendance. Decision makers will be able to meet with sponsors, who typically specialize in marketing, software, technology, online services, etc.
When multifamily decision makers meet with representatives from PERQ, they can expect:
A deeper look into PERQ’s mission and how it works hand in hand with improving the multifamily rental process for prospects and PMCs
See how our platform uses AI to automate interactive website experiences, applies natural language chat, and personalizes nurture touches to give renters what they want through their renter’s journey
Schedule 1:1 time with one of our multifamily experts
Score some of our fun PERQ swag
4. NAA Apartmentalize
June 7-9, 2023 – Georgia World Congress Center – Atlanta, GA
NAA also known as Apartmentalize is a three-day multifamily conference for the leaders and innovators of multifamily to come together to collaborate on ideas and solutions. This is best suited for decision makers and industry leaders mostly at a manager level or higher.
The offerings here are unique from peer-to-peer learning sessions, express meetings, seminars from speakers with an outside perspective, wellness sessions, and more. There will also be interactive networking experiences and an exhibit hall for guests to visit leading multifamily professionals and partners and network with them.
PERQ will be making an appearance as an exhibitor, and we will look forward to:
Catching up with you on what you’re currently doing with your renter’s journey
Showing you all that PERQ can do to automate and personalize your renter’s journey and turn leads to leases
Sending you on your way with some PERQ gifts
5. Optech
*Dates and location are yet to be announced.
Optech is a three-day Conference & Exposition for multifamily leadership to gather and discover what’s new when it comes to technology, operations, marketing, sustainability, and telecommunications. You can also uncover tech solutions that will provide better performance, integrations, and sustainability. This conference is best for multifamily leadership decision makers, such as CEOs, COOs, CTOs, CIOs, and VPs.
Attendees can expect to sit in on thoughtful presentations surrounding important topics, such as business intelligence, innovation, marketing, technology, and more. The Expo will also be available to attendees at certain hours to visit the tech solutions at their booths and learn about their company and receive demos of products & services.
PERQ will be one of those tech solutions — come visit us to discover:
More about PERQ, multifamily’s only standalone marketing automation platform
If our solutions can solve the pains you are experiencing and advance your renter’s journey
A few fun things at our booth, like a giveaway to enter and pick up some PERQ swag
PERQ will also be hosting a variety of virtual webinars and social hours to continue to foster relationships with the multifamily community and create data-driven conversations surrounding relevant multifamily marketing topics with seasoned multifamily marketing professionals.
These are just a few of the influential conferences that take place in the industry. These are exceptional multifamily conferences to attend to network with other industry professionals, continue to grow your multifamily educational toolkit, and learn about the leading multifamily technology solutions and ideas in marketing and multifamily. Don’t forget to mark your calendars so you can attend these must-see conferences and visit PERQ while you’re there.
What multifamily conferences did we miss? What are your favorites to attend? Let us know by emailing me at cflores@perq.com and I’ll be sure to include it!
PERQ integrated with your existing website and lead sources to engage, nurture, and convert leads, improving the multifamily leasing journey for everyone. Learn how it works or request a demo.
A guest post by Funnel Leasing on why a commitment to meaningful integrations to drive excellent experience for operators, teams, and renters is essential to the future of multifamily.
Gone are the days of walled garden multifamily tech. They weren’t great (for anyone) while they lasted, so we are admittedly zero percent sad to see them go.
Keep reading to learn three reasons open platform architecture is better for operators, renters, and the multifamily industry.
Why open platforms are better for property management companies
We’ll say it: An elbows-out approach toward partnership, and integrations, stifles innovation for the multifamily industry. Renters and property management companies paid the cost.
Renters experienced stressful apartment shopping experiences because they had no choice in the matter. Property management companies (at no fault of their own), were forced to run their business how their tech constrained them to, instead of how they actually wanted to. Lose-lose.
Each property management company, its portfolio, and its markets have different needs and end goals. To be clear, as a tech company, we know our lane: we aren’t here to tell leasing teams how to do their job, teach you the latest TikTok trend and how it’ll change your marketing forever. We do know there is no silver bullet for property management companies. They are large, complex businesses that should be free to choose the right combination of tech partners that they think will allow them to reach their goals best.
Integrations, and a commitment to open platform architecture, ensures that tech companies shared property management company clients continue to have the best of both worlds and select the tech vendors that work best for them across their variety of needs.
Why open platforms are better for renters
Repeat after us:
Nothing is more important than the renter.
Nothing is more important than the renter.
Nothing is more important than the renter.
NOTHING. IS. MORE. IMPORTANT. THAN. THE. RENTER.
We feel passionate about this and for this reason, at Funnel, we architected our entire software around a single record of truth called a guest card. Meaning, that for each renter across the entire portfolio, there is one guest card. Not single guest cards at each property. Not daisy-chained together guest cards. Single guest card. Full stop.
While being customer-centric, or as well call it renter-centric, is in vogue NOW, for years it wasn’t. We know because the proof lingers in the renter’s apartment shopping journey: for decades, renters were stuck navigating a frustrating customer journey that didn’t align with modern buying patterns,
When tech vendors weren’t fully committed to working together for their shared clients, the customer journey was often clunky and disconnected. Instead of tech systems working in tandem to create the best customer experience possible for renters. They created separate systems that either didn’t work well together or didn’t work at ALL together. Key pieces of data were either duplicated, siloed, or lost altogether.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
When companies build integrations and value open platform architecture, shared clients and renters win. Renters have a seamless apartment shopping experience, not only do their questions not fall through the cracks, but their data doesn’t either. From inquiry through renewals, tech can create a seamless connected experience for the renter. AI and automation are leveraged to follow-up, answer questions, and hand off high-intent conversations to leasing teams to take to the next level. All renter preferences are parsed from communication and recorded within the renter’s guest card. In other words: tech works alongside onsite teams to create an excellent experience for renters.
Why open platforms are better for the multifamily industry
We believe a rising tide raises all ships.
If tech vendors commit to building open platforms, and integrations, then not only will tech development continue to push forward quickly. But by extension, the multifamily industry will too.
Multifamily is a small close-knit industry. At Funnel, being anything other than good partners who believe in the power of technology to drive an excellent experience — for property management companies, their teams, their renters — is off-brand.
Team up to show up for shared clients
Funnel’s Renter Management Software streamlines leasing for renters, leading property owners, and managers, this integration with PERQ is an extension of that mission.
Every quarter, PERQ analyzes tens of thousands of multifamily website sessions and prospect interactions to identify industry benchmarks and trends. Until now, multifamily marketing performance metrics have been incredibly hard to pinpoint, and PERQ’s Multifamily Quarterly Report (MQ for short) is designed to fill that gap. The quarterly cadence is also important if we are to keep up with changing consumer behaviors.
Our goal is to equip you with evidence to make confident marketing decisions, validate your recommendations to your leaders and clients, and magnify your return on spend.
Unveiling Q2/2022 data insights
This September, we’re releasing the second installment of the MQ Report, revealing findings of our Q2/2022 data study. The report, titled Prospect Engagement Across a Lengthening Renter’s Journey, reveals common patterns in a typical renter’s journey and the impact of various marketing tactics on lead capture, engagement, and conversions.
To kick things off, Maribeth Ross, PERQ’s EVP of Marketing, presented a few highlights of that analysis in a webinar. We’ve captured a few takeaways in this post – just a sampling of what you’ll find in the report, linked below.
The renter’s journey is getting longer
Today’s renter’s journey is quite long, more expedition than excursion. Those prospects we used to call “Lookie Lous” are now your standard rental prospect: slow-moving, thoughtful, inquisitive.
From the time a rental prospect becomes known to the PMC to the time they sign a lease, we’re looking at an average of 46 days, with the longest journey in our data set stretching to 194 days. About seven in ten rental prospects in our study indicated their planned move-in window was a month or more in the future. A third said their move was three or more months away, and a quarter were ready now or in the near future.
Longer journeys entail more touchpoints and opportunities to engage (or lose) prospects
Along their journey, prospects have plenty of ways to get to their destination. “There are also tons of places where the renter can fall out of the journey,” Maribeth notes.
During their search, 43% of prospects visited a property website multiple times, and engaged visitors converted to known contacts at a rate of about 20% by interacting with the website in a way that compelled them to offer their contact information.
Visitors to multifamily property websites are largely mobile: 64% of first-time visitors accessed websites via their smartphone and nearly all remaining visits happened on desktop. Interestingly, lead-to-tour conversions rose by more than 74% when visitors accessed the website multiple times using multiple devices.
“Prospects are taking more time to be thoughtful and seek out information at their own pace. Your property website and marketing touches need to be built to keep these people engaged and active over an extended period of time and on different devices,” Maribeth notes.
Turning visitors into renters
Allow us to stress the impact of your website on the renter’s journey: Our data made it clear that website leads outpaced the conversion of paid leads by more than double. That’s a staggering difference in lead quality.
So how do you get visitors to return, again and again, and progress toward conversion?
>> Delivering interactive experiences
For starters, interactive experiences beat static content, nearly tripling engagement. “When we say interactive experiences, we mean things like an interactive floor plan match widget, a virtual tour, some kind of community explorer or chatbot,” Maribeth shares.
Nurture emails and texts with personalized calls to action that tied back to interactive experiences on the website also played a key role in conversions. “Of all the tours that were scheduled over Q2 in this data set, 40% of them were people who engaged with personalized nurture outreach,” says Maribeth, stressing the content they received was customized to each recipient. “It wasn’t like an email blast. It was personalized,” she adds.
>> Building rapport and driving interest with personalization
Personalization is huge — not just according to PERQ’s MQ analysis, but also to mounting data from leading research firms like Gartner, McKinsey, and more. Put simply, consumer expectations for online brand experiences have escalated sharply since the onset of the pandemic.
“McKinsey’s research shows 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and they get frustrated when that doesn’t happen. If consumers don’t like the experience they receive, it’s easier than every to just go somewhere else,” Maribeth explains. McKinsey also reports that high-growth companies attribute 40% or more of their revenue to personalization efforts.
“If you know a prospect’s preferred amenities or floor plans, for example, there’s a lot you can tailor to those interests in your communications, whether it’s an email outreach, SME nurture, and even face-to-face conversation,” says Maribeth.
Message timing is another opportunity to reflect prospect preferences. People who’ve self-reported a longer move-in time frame might need messages that are spaced out further over time than someone who’s looking to move more quickly. Channel preferences — email over SMS, for example — also offer opportunities to cater to individual prospects.
>> Satisfying the itch for instant gratification
As consumers, we’ve come to expect instant answers, often calling on Siri, Alexa or Google to navigate our daily lives and satisfy impulse questions. Multifamily property websites can provide the same satisfaction.
“The ability to converse with prospects in the middle of their journey had a lot of impact on our conversion data,” notes Maribeth. “Prospects that engaged in chat conversations or asked questions of a property website via automated chat interactions (whether on website, email or SMS) converted to a tour at a 36% rate, compared to a 16% rate without those automated conversations.
“What really stood out to me is that prospects weren’t necessarily engaging with the chatbot on their first website visit, but they were also conversing with it in other channels well into their journey, prompted by a marketing nurture touch,” Maribeth explains.
One key takeaway, she adds, is that personalized nurture plus the ability to chat across channels is a powerful combination.
Mythbusting: How many touches does it take to convert a prospect?
Old industry lore says if prospects don’t respond to three touches, don’t bother trying any further. We beg to differ: Our data shows 32% of booked tours came from prospects who had three or more nurture touches, and more than 8% of tours were scheduled after six or more personalized touches.
“The data proves that personalized nurture outreach drives substantially better leasing outcomes and needs to be sustained longer than a couple of touches. It needs to be dynamic and adjust to today’s apartment shoppers. Failure to properly nurture these leads for the length of their renter’s journey is leaving proverbial money on the table,” Maribeth advises.
A deeper look into personalization
As we looked at multifamily communities in our Q2 data set, we saw they collected quite a bit of information for each prospect: 12 data points on average. They used information to personalize their renter’s journey. Personalized data fell across these broad categories:
Basic contact info (e.g., name, email, phone number)
Detailed first-party data (self-reported preferences like move-in window, preferred bedroom or bathroom cuts, desired amenities, budget, etc.)
Metadata (data captured and stored in your technology systems like website visits, traffic sources, devices used, duration of session, etc.)
Below are examples of simple personalization:
First Name: Use their name in nurture outreach
Move-in window: Use to create urgency in copy of nurture outreach
Pet preference: Use to send them info about how your community supports pets
Preferred floor plan: Use to send them a reminder about a floor plan they loved
Website activity: Use to determine the next best step for them to take on your website to move along the renter’s journey
Granted, before you can personalize communications, you must be able to collect and deploy it with ease. To benefit prospects and marketers alike, your prospect data needs to be easily queried so you can send the right message to the right people at the right time.
Diving deeper into actionable insights
We’ve covered a lot of ground so far, and there’s plenty more to explore. We invite you to catch the full webinar presentation and download your copy of the MQ report to deepen your understanding of elements that can supercharge your marketing outcomes.
We’re big advocates of tech integrations, automations, and open platforms to meet the demands of today’s renters and multifamily marketing teams. With that in mind, we’re committed to building a platform that “plays well with others” — a must-have capability for operating efficiently in today’s environment.
As it happens, the folks at Funnel Leasing feel the same. Talk about a match made in multifamily heaven: Funnel Leasing, the industry’s only Renter Management Software platform, and PERQ, the Multifamily Automation Platform with personalization.
PERQ’s AI solution integrates with Funnel to provide AI-powered, personalized lead nurture at scale, building rapport with rental prospects and nudging them closer to a “yes” through every step of their leasing journey. Together, the PERQ-Funnel integration automates top-of-funnel activities, converting leads in a more cost-effective manner and elegantly hands them off to the onsite team when they’re agent-ready, simplifying lead management using a single guest card system.
The resulting flexibility opens the door to more compelling experiences, both for rental prospects and for on-site teams.
“Integrations like this not only make finding a new apartment easier for renters, they also demonstrate PropTech companies giving property management companies the freedom to run their business with the right solutions for their portfolio, their team, and in general how they want,” said Lianna O’Brien, Lead Product Manager at Funnel. “Funnel’s renter-centric (single guest card) architecture and PERQ’s personalized lead nurturing work hand in hand to ensure leads are followed up in a meaningful way that makes renters feel ‘at home’ from the first click or text.”
Scott Hill, CEO and co-founder of PERQ, agrees: “We’re proud to partner with Funnel to bring the multifamily market a solution that provides on-site teams with the renter management software they need, while also providing automated and personalized nurture experiences that drive higher lead conversion and a better renting experience for consumers.”
It’s time for multifamily to catch up to evolving consumer expectations.
What that in mind, PERQ has launched a platform that’s custom-built for multifamily, but with all the personalization and automation capabilities that have enabled other industries to provide that “magical” Amazon or Netflix experience.
Multifamily conferences are a vital aspect in the industry whether you’re multifamily leadership looking for a solution to automate and personalize your renter’s journey or if you’re part of an onsite leasing team looking for support in nurturing prospects through a lengthening rental process.
Every quarter, PERQ analyzes tens of thousands of multifamily website sessions and prospect interactions to identify industry benchmarks and trends. Until now, multifamily marketing performance metrics have been incredibly hard to pinpoint, and PERQ’s Multifamily Quarterly Report (MQ for short) is designed to fill that gap. The quarterly cadence is also important if we are to keep up with changing consumer behaviors.