Texting is six times more effective at scheduling tours than by email
Personal Outreach Crucial for Apartment Prospect Follow-Up
Personal outreach is crucial as a survey of 1,100 multifamily communities found six out of seven properties don’t combine call, text, and email in their prospect follow-up.
Property management companies and software technology providers continue to emphasize the importance of striking the right balance between digital and personal interactions.
What they can agree on is that responding to leads through email, voice, text, or other means is crucial in their efforts to maintain or build occupancy.
However, a recent survey of 1,100 multifamily communities by Flair, tracking each for 30 days, found that six out of seven properties don’t combine call, text, and email in their follow-up.
Some sent instant email confirmations that read, “Thanks for your interest, we’ll be in touch soon.” But when researchers stripped out autoresponders, they found that properties took an average of 36 hours to truly follow up.
Prospects reached out for specific information: Can my dog live here? What fees are included? Is my credit high enough? The survey registered this response performance based on outreach types:
- Email Only: 23%
- Email + Phone: 26%
- Email + Text: 15%
- Email + Text + Phone: 15%
- Zero response: 14%
Properties that incorporate texting for the first time outperform those that don’t by 600%, and texting is six times more effective at scheduling tours than via email, according to the lead- and resident-nurturing platform, Nurture Boss an AI-powered platform for multifamily.
Communities that used all three channels averaged 10.89 touchpoints over 30 days—using email-only netted just 5.58 attempts. The median across all properties was seven touchpoints, even when including auto-responders.
Nurture Boss data reveals that it takes an average of eight touchpoints to generate a tour and 10 or more to generate a lease application. Nonetheless, 47.6% of properties stopped all follow-up after 15 days.
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Natalina Rettew, head of asset management at Trion Properties, utilizes a “dialer-up” feature that generates a contact card and automatically initiates a phone call from the apartment community to the prospect.
“This creates significant conversion because when the contact card is created, it is usually the time when the prospect is most engaged,” Rettew told GlobeSt.com.
“It’s beneficial that the first contact the prospect has is from a live person, and they can invite them to schedule a tour.”
Trion Properties operates 6,000 units nationwide, mainly in California, Oregon, Colorado, and Florida. Its California portfolio is mostly in Sacramento and the East Bay.
“We have done lead nurturing through bots, but we felt like in those cases, the conversations took longer to occur,” she said. “It wasn’t immediate like it is with Flair.” “The immediate connection we get with prospects through Flair has been very effective for our properties.”
Rettew is seeing a 60% answer rate and an uptick in tour scheduling.
Windell Mollenido, vice president of marketing and technology for the California-based apartment management firm The REMM Group, told GlobeSt.com that “society today yearns for authenticity and they’re even willing to pay for it. “
AI is not replacing humans, he said. “It’s enhancing a person’s ability to connect with prospects. Following up on renter prospect leads is not simply about looking at numbers on a spreadsheet.”
Source: Rental Housing Journal
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