Email Marketing for Multifamily: Smarter Follow-Ups + So Much More

by May 26, 2022Apartment Marketing, Email

At 30 Lines, it’s no secret that email is one of our favorite digital channels – and for good reason. Email consistently delivers an unbeatable ROI for our customers.

In multifamily, we know email can increase your leasing team’s closing rate by 25% or more.

When done well, email marketing can become one of the most powerful tools in your apartment marketing toolbox. Today’s email marketing campaigns are successful because they take work off the plates of your marketing and on-site teams while delivering relevant, personalized messaging to your prospects at every step of the leasing cycle. 

What does that process look like and how does it work? Let’s take a quick look at each stage of your customer’s journey.

 

Look

When your customers begin their search, they want options. Many prospects don’t have a specific property in mind yet, or they’re considering multiple different places. This is a great opportunity to show them options that fit their criteria, while also giving you a perfect outlet to promote your floor plans and properties that need the most attention. Deliver the best deals from all of your local properties or highlight featured floor plans at your community with emails focused on showing customers what’s out there that fits their needs.

Learn

When your customer begins to signal interest in your property or brand, this is a key opportunity for you to build trust. Most marketers and salespeople go straight for the kill – they immediately push to schedule a tour or get the prospect to start an application, even though many customers are just trying to get a question or two answered first. (Chatbots can be helpful here, too.)

Once a prospect has contacted you, keep telling your story. Use email to stay in front of that customer, nurture the relationship, reinforce your brand’s top selling points, share why others love living in your community, and nudge them toward the next step in the process when they’re ready. Of course, you still want to make it easy for them to schedule that tour or start that application … and they’ll be all the more ready to do so when they’ve seen the powerful stories you’ve shared.

Lease

Make it easy to keep your customer engaged in the leasing process by facilitating the tour with appointment confirmations, tour reminders, tour follow-ups, links to FAQs, and other helpful items. Keep in mind, the way you engage and follow up with a prospect should adapt based on how they want to do business with you. Pre- and post-tour messaging will look different for self-guided or video tours compared to a guided tour with a leasing professional. 

Once your new resident signs their lease, send a welcome sequence that delivers all the information they need to know leading up to their move-in date. If they choose not to lease with you, move them into a follow-up sequence to reach out to them again in 9 months.

 

Love

Stay connected to your residents and continue building the relationship by sending emails whenever you share a new blog post or with updates about what’s going on in your community. Share details about your resident referral program or amenity upsells they can book through your resident app. As residents move closer to renewal, reinforce your brand and everything you have to offer. 

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s talk about how all of this applies to your apartment marketing strategy.

 

Start where you can help your people the most.

Your on-site teams are already busy. Really busy. Half the leads they’re working to convert come in outside of office hours, creating a built-in backlog to work through before the next day even gets started. Automation, at bare minimum, allows your team to instantly respond to those after-hours leads with personalized messages based specifically on information your leads have already shared. And they won’t have to lift a finger to it. By automating that first response, you’ll eliminate the backlog and create an initial connection with your lead – right when they’re looking. 

To put it simply, automated email journeys allow your teams to work smarter and more efficiently, freeing them up from the time-consuming work of manually sending an email each time a lead comes through.

Automation enables marketers to provide personalized, timely, and relevant messages to their prospects from the moment they signal interest. As your customer moves through the leasing funnel, automation allows you to meet them where they are with adaptive communications that can help guide their choices, build trust, expand their brand awareness, and form a connection.

Today’s prospects and residents don’t need static or canned messaging designed with a one size fits all approach. They want highly personalized experiences, and to feel seen, heard and connected to the brands they choose. Automation lets you attune to your prospects’ needs and deliver them the specific stories and guidance they’re looking for.

In a sense, automation is the superpowered brain of your follow-up process, receiving signals and responding accordingly. But it doesn’t act alone to deliver results. If automation is the brains of the operation, then personalization is at its heart.

Get connected with the power of personalization.

The more connected we become through technology, the more we have to ensure our technology creates real connection with our customers. This means using the tools you have to establish lasting relationships based on trust. With a successful lead nurturing campaign, you can leverage the data you have to foster engagement with the prospects you want to reach. If you know the number of bedrooms a prospect wants, only show floor plans that match. Have a move-in date? Let them know what your availability is around that exact date.

By listening to what your customer wants, you have all the information you need to help give them exactly that. When your customers are happy and connected to the experiences you provide to them, you cultivate loyalty and a true pathway to customer retention. Keep telling your story.

The majority of automation systems out there are designed to be transactional. They’re built to send messages that focus on pushing the customer to schedule a tour or fill out an application. These systems are incredibly efficient (we partner with many of them!), but we also see that customers want more.

Our Smart Email Follow-Ups were designed to give you the capability to keep telling your brand’s story, so that you can build your customer’s trust and foster a sense of true connection through your messaging.  We can take your key selling points and testimonials and break them out into individual messages designed to inspireyour customer into action. 

Through the power of personalized, automated emails built for the way your customers act, you’ll continue the follow-up process with your lead, sharing more information about your community beyond what’s available on the property website. And the kicker? You’ll save your leasing staff precious time along the way.

Nudge your prospect into action with buttons and CTAs that inspire.

With every smart email campaign, you want to nudge your customer into action. By using CTAs and buttons like “See Our Pet-Friendly Apartments,” “View 1 Bedrooms Available,” or “Book My Tour,” you can engage your customer right where they are in their leasing journey, driving them further into the leasing funnel as they click.

Meet your customer where they are…and take them to where they want to be.

For many future residents, the onsite tour will still be the choice for how they experience your community. (Here’s exactly how to follow up with those prospects you meet in person.) But for other residents, before they get to the onsite tour, they want a visually stimulating and immersive virtual tour. Deliver a high quality experience for your prospects before they even step foot on your property when you include the virtual tour in your email campaigns. It’s an easy way to meet your customer where they are, while driving engagement, getting their click and drawing out their excitement about your community.

No matter where your customer is in the process, you can implement smart email marketing strategies that help to connect the journey, save your team’s time, and reinforce your overall marketing message. Ready to learn more? Schedule a consultation with our multifamily experts today.

Learn more about how to start implementing email marketing trends that deliver into your apartment marketing strategy

Schedule a consultation with our multifamily experts today.