Autonomous Lifecycle Marketing for Multifamily

Autonomous Lifecycle Marketing for Multifamily

Creating an Autonomous Lifecycle Marketing (ALM)  delivers clear, consistent, and personalized content to your multifamily prospects and residents effortlessly.

ALM not only increases resident retention, reduces costs and improves the reputation of your property, it gives your agents the freedom to build more meaningful relationships with your prospects and residents.

Read the full guide to learn how to make your marketing communications autonomous.

Customer Lifecycle Marketing for Multifamily

Autonomous Lifecycle Marketing Circle
What is Autonomous Lifecycle Marketing for multifamily and why does it have it’s own pie chart? Glad you asked. Read on to find out more!

 

What is Customer Lifecycle Marketing?

Everyone knows in business the customer comes first. Customer Lifecycle Marketing is founded on this principle.

The goal of Customer Lifecycle Marketing is to send content to leads based on their stage in the customer lifecycle. What is exciting for a prospect may not matter to a dormant lead and vice versa. So why would you send them the same content?

Plus, customers who receive emails specific to their stage in the customer lifecycle have a 72% higher conversion rate.

Did we mention? Marketers who use segmented email marketing campaigns experience a 760% increase in revenue!

Let’s see what this looks like for multifamily.

Want your own poster on CLM for multifamily? Download the CLM Infographic

How Does it Work?

Every potential multifamily customer falls into one of the following zones:

So let’s take a look at the normal lifecycle for a multifamily customer.
Multifamily Customer Lifecycle

The idea is to get every lead into the Resident Zone. A.K.A.the zone where you are making money.

Obviously having full occupancy forever is a fantasy, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t form your strategy with that goal in mind.

Norman Vincent Peale said it best, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” That’s what we are doing with Autonomous Lifecycle Marketing (ALM).

 

How to Put ALM into Play

We have developed ready-made ‘plays’ to make the transition from each stage to the next as easy as possible. And maximize the number of customers in the Resident Zone!

Multifamily's Customer Lifecycle

By engaging with each customer every step of the way, you can keep them active and increase your average customer lifetime value!

Here are the 9 essential plays every property management company (PMC) should be using:

Prospect Zone

Resident Zone

Dormant Zone

 

Next Steps

While this all sounds amazing, it also sounds like a lot for your agents to juggle. Let’s look at how you can automate these plays to make them easier to implement than your current email strategy. You read that right: Better Content. Less Work.

 

Autonomous Lifecycle Marketing

What is Autonomous Lifecycle Marketing?

Autonomous Lifecycle Marketing (ALM) is a way to automate customer lifecycle marketing for multifamily.
The not so secret formula to Autonomous Lifecycle Marketing
ALM combines customer lifecycle marketing efforts from employees and the digital workforce to build stronger customer relationships.

Let’s dive deeper.

 

How Does it Work?

Using a series of plays, Autonomous Lifecycle Marketing provides targeted content to customers. The customer’s stage in the lifecycle determines the play used.

Each play is a collection of email topics to send to customers in a particular stage of the lifecycle. A play contains a mix of automated drips, triggered alerts and eBlasts.

All together, these emails work to move customers from one stage to the next. Plus, they are faster and easier than traditional email marketing campaigns!

Automation is the key to making Customer Lifecycle Marketing for multifamily work. Each of the email types used in a play involves some degree of automation. Let’s learn a little more.

 

Triggered Alert

Triggered alerts have the highest level of automation. These emails rely on ambient intelligence to sense and respond to an event. Trigger events can be a result of a property’s action or prospect’s action.

Property triggers result from property management company actions. These can vary from price changes to policy changes.

Prospect triggers are a result of actions taken by the prospect. Events like submitting an application or clicking through an email are prospect triggers.

Let’s take a look at an example of a prospect and a property triggered alert.

Here's an example of a Triggered Alert Email from Autonomous Lifecycle Marketing

Take a look at the chart below. It makes it easy to see how little agent effort is required.

Triggered Alert Task Chart

For example, a prospect may only click through emails featuring one bedroom apartments. The system uses that information to infer the prospect is looking for a one bedroom apartment. All the agent needs to do is program the system to send the response email once the prospect clicks a particular floor plan.

Bonus: With a digital workforce, you can use triggered alerts to answer FAQ for your agents. This gives agents more time to complete tasks that need a personal touch.

 

Automated Drip

An automated drip is a sequence of emails that are automatically sent in a staggered manner. Drips provide customers with relevant information without overwhelming them. All automated drip emails work together to accomplish a strategic goal using minimal agent effort.

Let’s compare how much an employee has to do for an automated drip compared to the digital workforce.

Automated Drip Task Chart

For example, a resident welcome drip makes residents feel at home by welcoming them to the community and giving them a helpful overview of the area. This is a series of five emails that should be sent to each new resident to increase resident satisfaction.

An automated drip reduces the amount of work required to send nurturing content. With a drip, you only need one person to design the emails and program the system. Then, the digital workforce sends the emails to every customer in the selected lifecycle stage.
When you use an automated drip, you know each resident is cared for without having every agent repeat the same tasks for every new resident.

Sidenote: A property management company would only send this drip to a new resident. It wouldn’t make sense to send this to other audiences because they are already familiar with the area or they don’t live in the area. See why it is important to segment your email list according to the lifecycle stage?

Here's an example of an Automated Welcome Drip

 

eBlast

eBlasts are emails that you send one time only to a large audience. Since each of these emails are unique, there is not a way to program the system to design them. Plus, there is no need to program a sending schedule since they are only sent once. These emails need the most employee effort.

As you can see in the chart, the digital workforce and the human workforce tasks are evenly distributed. The lack of repetition in creation of an eBlast makes it difficult to program.

eBlast Task Chart

For example, an event invite is a one-time event with a large target audience. The human workforce understands the need to invite the guests and designs an appropriate email. Once the human workforce has scheduled the email, the digital workforce sends it at the right time and tracks the analytics.

Did you notice? This is the only type of email type where the digital workforce doesn’t sense and respond. The digital workforce responds to a repeated event. An eBlast is not repeated so there is nothing to the system to sense. With nothing to sense, it can’t respond.

Most companies are still using eBlasts for all customer communications. By using digital workforce driven emails, your email campaign becomes more efficient. Plus, your human workforce has more time to spend on developing more strategies and campaigns!

Here's an example of an eBlast Email

 

Now what?

Autonomous Lifecycle Marketing provides a variety of automation levels. It makes it easy to keep track of a CLM campaign for multifamily!

Now, you need to pick where to start automating your customer lifecycle marketing. Let’s look into these lifecycles a little more.

Want a refresher on all of the plays? Here’s the Guide to Autonomous Lifecycle Marketing

   

Prospect Lifecycle Marketing

Prospect Follow-up for Multifamily

The Prospect Zone Playbook

Hyly.AI surveyed 50+ properties in Spring 2018 to evaluate the state of multifamily automation for new prospect follow-up.

According to our survey, 90.6% of the big REITs send nurturing prospect follow-up. Pretty impressive.

Yet, a measly 2.5% of 3rd Party Managers did the same. Ouch.

Before you start judging 3rd Party Managers too harshly, you need to consider the facts. Most 3rd Party managers’ operations are not structured to scale and they are severely resource constrained.

Without a digital workforce, it is just about impossible for a 3rd Party Manager to keep up with prospects, residents and on-site maintenance.

We believe this is a big problem and want to help multifamily nurture new prospects autonomously!

Want to learn more about the multifamily scaling problem? Read the full article here.

 

What is the Prospect Zone

The Prospect Zone covers customers from the moment they fill out a contact card until they sign a lease or become inactive.

The purpose of the Prospect Zone Plays is to excite and inform prospects about your property. Thereby, making them more likely to sign a lease.

 

Why Should I Program It?

New apartment search platforms like Apartments.com, Trulia and even Google’s Apartment Knowledge Graph give your prospects more options than ever. In turn, it is harder for your property to stand out or remain top-of-mind. It’s easy for your property to end up loved and lost in the shuffle.

That is why your prospect follow-up processes need to be automated.

Autonomous Lifecycle Marketing (ALM) sends the right content at the right pace to the right people. The best part is your agents only need to program the system and the digital workforce takes care of the rest!

Want to learn more about Hyly.AI’s Digital Workforce? Read the full article here.

Let’s take a look at the benefits of automating the Prospect Zone.

 

Benefits

By using automated drips and triggered alerts, you provide prospects with consistent and informative follow-up.

As a result, your company will be in the top 12.5% 3rd Party Managers!

Plus, by reaching out to them several times, you stay fresh in the prospect’s mind.

By programming the Prospect Zone, you get more prospects in the door without agent involvement.

Also, it gives your prospects more opportunities to qualify themselves as ‘interested’ by clicking through an email.

Let’s take a closer look!

Prospect Zone Playbook

Prospect Pre-Tour Play

Start State: New
End State: Toured
Goal: Get a new prospect to take a tour
Prospect Pre-Tour Play

Once a prospect fills out a guest card, they should be added to the Prospect Pre-Tour Play to educate them about the property. This play showcases the property’s amenities, features, and the neighborhood to spark prospect interest.

Prospect Pre-Tour Play Emails

Want to learn more about the Prospect Pre-Tour Play?

 

Prospect Post-Tour Play

Start State: Toured
End State: Nurtured
Goal: Educate prospects who have toured your property about the next steps to sign a lease.
Prospect Post-Tour Play

After a prospect tours your property, give them everything they need to sign a lease with the ‘Prospect Post-Tour Play.’ Show them your floor plan availability, notify them about any price-drops and invite them to community events.

Prospect Post-Tour Play Emails

Want to learn more about the Prospect Post-Tour Play?

 

Prospect Closing Play

Start State: Nurtured
End Date: Leased
Goal: Get nurtured prospects to sign a lease
Prospect Closing Play

Once the prospect has scheduled a tour, they are moved into the ‘Prospect Closing Play’ where they receive an extra nudge to sign a lease. This play provides a variety of timed offers like a waived amenity fee alert, a waived security deposit alert and half-off your first month’s rent.

Prospect Closing Play Emails

Want to learn more about the Prospect Closing Play?

Conclusion

Autonomous Prospect Lifecycle Marketing gets more leases signed with fewer employee hours. This gives your agents more time to focus on bonding with residents and property maintenance.

Next, let’s learn about what Autonomous Lifecycle Marketing can do for residents!

Resident Lifecycle Marketing

What is the Resident Zone

The Resident Zone Playbook
The Resident Zone encompasses customers from the time they sign a lease until they move out. If you have looked through our Playbook, you probably noticed the Resident Zone has more plays than the other two zones combined.

There are three reasons why this zone has the most plays:

  1. It’s the only zone where the PMC’s make money (so we want to keep customers there!)
  2. It has the longest time frame. A customer can be a resident for years. So, it is important to keep them engaged throughout their residency.
  3. Plays are created to move customers from one lifecycle stage to the next. The Resident Zone has the most lifecycle stages; therefore, it has the most plays.

 

Why Should You Program?

Resident satisfaction is the key to maintaining a high occupancy rate.

But, keeping residents happy isn’t always easy… Did you know, 53% of leases are NOT renewed?

This is a big deal considering a property management company averages a loss of $2,811 every time a resident doesn’t renew.

Clearly, resident retention should be a priority for every property management company, so why is resident turnover so high?

Most PMC’s are not using automation tools, or at least not to their potential. Without automation, PMC’s don’t have enough time or resources to engage with residents, sell to prospects and handle maintenance around the property.

Let’s explore how automated resident plays can help!

Learn more about why multifamily needs automation to scale.

 

Benefits of Automating Resident CLM Emails

The goal of the Resident Zone is to keep residents satisfied and eager to renew their leases.

Let’s take a look at what resident zone can do!

By providing helpful information to new residents, you can ease the moving process for new residents. Also, it shows your residents that your property management team is caring and helpful. Knowing this will make residents happier and more likely to recommend your property— and everyone knows happier residents are more likely to renew their leases.

You have to spend time and resources educating each new prospect before they will lease. If a resident renews, you can fill units immediately and for free.

Plus, automation makes it easy to engage residents. This gives agents more time to tour, interact with residents or anything you can think of to better your business!

By automating your resident follow-up, you decrease costs and increase resident satisfaction. Result: Increase your ROI!

 

Resident Zone Playbook

Resident Pre-Move Play

Start State: Leased
End State: Moved-In
Goal: Ease transition into residency for new residents
Resident Pre-Move

As soon as a prospect signs a lease, they should move to the ‘Pre-Move Play.’ In this play, they get all information they need to make their move as easy as possible. This play includes an ‘application approved’ congratulations, a move-in checklist, and a reference guide to insurance and utility companies recommended for your property.

Resident Pre-Move Emails

Want to learn more about the Resident Pre-Move Play?

 

Resident Welcome Play

Start State: Moved-In
End State: Stable
Goal: Keep residents happy
Resident Welcome Play

When a resident moves in, they should start the ‘Resident Welcome Play.’ It gives an overview of information new residents want to know.

Typically, the play kicks off with a welcome email and is followed with an email that prompts residents to stay in touch. Next, you can move into some helpful tips for navigating the area, like where to find the various amenities, local entertainment venues, and where they should eat dinner. Round out your Welcome Play with a personal touch, like a triggered birthday email.

Resident Welcome Play Emails

Want to learn more about the Resident Welcome Play?

 

Resident Satisfaction Play

Start State: Stable Resident
End State: Renewable
Goal: Check in with current residents to make sure they are pleased with the property
Resident Satisfaction Play

After a resident has been at your property for six months, they should receive the ‘Resident Satisfaction Play.’ As the name suggests, this play evaluates how happy your residents are and gives you a chance to make amends with any residents who are unhappy. The Satisfaction Play usually includes an anniversary email, a resident survey and a prompt to refer a friend. To go the extra mile, you can send a follow-up email to address any concerns mentioned in the resident survey.

Resident Satisfaction Play Emails

Want to learn more about the Resident Satisfaction Play?

 

Resident Renewal Play

Start State: Renewable
End State: Renewed
Goal: Make residents want to renew their leases
Resident Renewal Play

Two months prior to a resident’s lease ending, use a ‘Resident Renewal Play’ to encourage your residents to renew their lease. Gentle reminders and special offers are an easy way to encourage residents to stay.

Resident Renewal Play Emails

Want to learn more about the Resident Renewal Play?

 

Resident Exit Play

Start State: Renewable
End State: Moved-Out
Goal: Maintain a positive impression by provide a smooth move-out process for residents who did not renew
Resident Exit Play

Inevitably, some residents do not renew their lease. However, that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be willing to recommend your property to their friends. Make sure you leave them with a good impression by using the ‘Resident Exit Play’ to make their move easy.

Send them a move-out checklist to keep them organized. Also, you can ask them to take an exit survey so you can gain helpful insights into why your residents aren’t renewing. These survey results can inform your new resident retention strategy.

Resident Exit Play Emails

Want to learn more about the Resident Exit Play?

 

Conclusion

Using a combination of Resident Plays creates a sense of community, introduces residents to the area, and makes sure residents are still pleased with the property throughout their residency.

Programming the Resident Zone gives your residents everything they need to make your property their home. They won’t want to leave, because everyone knows there’s no place like home!

We have covered how the digital angels can assist agents with prospects and residents at every stage in the lifecycle. So, what’s left? Dormant leads. Next, we are looking at how the digital angels can revitalize dormant leads!

Dormant Lifecycle Marketing

Lead Win-back for Multifamily

The Dormant Zone Playbook

Most CRM’s for multifamily delete cold leads after a few months. The idea is that these leads have decided to rent elsewhere and aren’t viable prospects anymore.

However, what these systems are ignoring is the high resident turnover rate for multifamily. 53% of do not renew their leases. Which mean 53% of the leads you deleted are going to be actively searching for a new apartment within the next nine months.

Call us old fashioned, but we don’t see why anyone would throw away perfectly good leads.

Think about wine for a second.

There are two approaches to drinking wine:

  1. There are the Barefoot wines that are ready-to-go. This is a popular choice for novice wine drinkers. Similar to how an basic marketing plan is only concerned with prospects who lease with you the first time around.
  2. Then there are true wine connoisseurs. They tend to be more experienced and patient individuals. They understand the value of waiting for a desired outcome. This reflects how a mature marketing plan is willing to invest in revitalizing cold leads.

Before you get the wrong impression, we aren’t wine snobs. We see merit in both options. Which is why we designed our Autonomous Lifecycle Marketing program (ALM) to manage both warm and cold leads. This approach gives you more opportunities to turn leads into leases. Plus, the increase in ROI gives you more money to buy more wine. 🙂

 

What is the Dormant Zone?

The Dormant Zone is dedicated to reactivating cold leads.

A prospect enters the Dormant Zone after being inactive for 60 days. The Dormant Zone play starts nine months after a lead goes cold. This is roughly the time their current lease is ending.

The beauty of the Dormant Zone is that it revives cold leads without using human resources. In fact, it is designed to operate without any agent effort until the lead becomes active again.

Human workers only need to design the emails and set the cadence. The digital angels do the hard work of sensing when an email should be sent, delivering said email, and tracking all of the email analytics.

Want to learn more about what the digital angels can do? Read the full article here.

Why not reach out to cold leads with an automated Dormant Zone?

Let’s take a look at the benefits.

 

Benefits

By reaching out to more leads, you should get more leases. Plus, you just need to give them a refresher since they already know about your property! This increase in signed leases means you have a higher occupancy rate. The extra revenue from new leases combined with the lower lead generation costs gives you a better ROI. With a higher ROI, you can give owners a higher profit margin— making owners happier and more likely to give you more properties to manage!

 

Dormant Zone Playbook

Win-Back Play

Start State: Dormant
End State: Leased
Goal: Get dormant leads to sign a lease
Win-back Play

If a lead goes cold or a resident moves out, use the ‘Lead Win-back Play’ to change their minds. 53% of leases are not renewed, so there is a good chance they are open to being wooed by your property. Like all great rom-coms have made abundantly clear, people like it when you are honest about your feelings. Tell them that you missed them and want them back. Then, show them what they have been missing with special offers, floor plan alerts and property highlights.

Win-back Play Emails

Want to learn more about the Win-Back Play?

 

Conclusion

Just because a prospect or resident chose not to sign or renew a lease doesn’t mean you should forget about them!

With automation, reaching out to dormant leads is easy. And can have a big pay-off!

You can get more leases signed and attract more owners’ interest with a few simple emails and the help of the digital angels!

Why not try to win-back those renters who got away with the Win-Back Play?

Next, let’s explore how you can customize your Autonomous Lifecycle Marketing for your property!

   

Customize Your Plays

B-Y-O-P: Build Your Own Play

Nike is always at the forefront of of marketing innovation. For years, Nike has allowed everyday customers to customize their new kicks.

NikeID

This idea of mass customization has transcended into almost every industry.

Think about your last trip to Moe’s. Did you go with the standard ‘Earmuff Bowl’…or did you Build-Your-Own (B-Y-O)?

If you’re like us, you went down the line and cherry-picked the ingredients you like the most.

The best part, you still pay a comparable price… assuming you did go too crazy with the queso.

Here at Hyly.AI, we follow a similar process. We have created standard plays that are ready-to-go and encompass the most popular content:

  • Prospect Pre-Tour Play
  • Prospect Post-Tour Play
  • Prospect Closing Play
  • Resident Pre-Move Play
  • Resident Welcome Play
  • Resident Satisfaction Play
  • Resident Renewal Play
  • Resident Exit Play
  • Win-back Play

But, one size doesn’t fit all… no matter what the tag says. Just like Moe’s and Nike, we understand the importance of customization.

We provide the templates, cadence and email platform to make your content shine.

 

Play Customization

Let’s imagine a property management company has two properties in the Boston area:

Property A has an amazing location in the heart of Boston, however, it doesn’t have room for a lot of standard amenities like a pool, gym or clubhouse.

On the flipside, Property B has luxury amenities, but is located about 25 minutes outside of the city.

The standard Pre-Tour Play emails (showcase amenities, features, and neighborhood) doesn’t work well for either of these properties.

Standard Pre-Tour Play Email Sample

That’s why we made it easy to customize your play to highlight your property’s strengths.

For Property A, you may want to forgo the ‘Showcase Amenity’ email and replace it with an ‘Area and Community’ email to show off more of the awesome advantages of the property’s location.

Pre-Tour Play for Good Location Email Sample

While Property B might focus on the amenities, features and community events on the property to accentuate the benefits of a luxurious building.

Pre-Tour Play for Good Amenities Email Sample

Take a look at how both of these properties can use Autonomous Lifecycle Marketing (ALM) to easily communicate a unique value proposition. All while using the same template and cadence.

 

Email Customization

ALM uses the hyMail platform to create and execute each play. hyMail allows you to customize our templates to fit the look and feel of your brand. You can add or remove slices, change the color and layout of the emails to accentuate your property and set yourself apart from the competition!

hyMail Email Customization

 

Conclusion

You call the shots when it comes to content, since you are the pro!

That’s why Autonomous Lifecycle Marketing works. You can easily mix and match our topics with yours! Ultimately, delivering the best content to your leads!

Just like that, you have your own custom ALM plan ready to start converting more leads into leases!

 

Conclusion

Conclusion

Autonomous Lifecycle Marketing: Better results. Less work.

Autonomous Lifecycle Marketing (ALM) gives you A-Z coverage for every prospect, resident and dormant lead. Automation allows you to push the digital envelope of marketing. Plus, ALM’s customization options let you get creative.

From the moment a prospect submits a contact card, the digital angels follow-up and engage them appropriately. Each play works to move customers to the next stage in the lifecycle — and improve the customer experience every step of the way!

The digital angels give you more hands on deck to make sure you never miss a lead or lease renewal and help you reactivate cold leads. These angels enhance the work environment and give your agents the freedom to pursue more fulfilling aspects of their jobs.

Not to mention, your prospects and residents will thank you. With the digital angels following up with them regularly, they are going to feel more appreciated and cared for. Just the type of qualities people are looking for in a long-term home. By using ALM, you can expect more leads, increased renewal rates and lower lead generation costs!