Resident Churn In Multifamily Is Inevitable, But Marketing Automation Can Make It Easier To Manage

Resident turnover can be a major — and costly — headache for multifamily owners. Though turnover fell during the pandemic, average annual turnover of 42% of residents in a block creates a significant job for property managers.

“That’s potentially close to 100% of units every two years or so,” said Spencer Smith, vice president of marketing at technology company Evocalize. “Operators will constantly have units come up for rent, so they need to constantly search for new tenants. The question is how to find them in a cost-effective way.”

Evocalize has created a platform that automates marketing for multifamily units. The aim is to give whoever is doing the marketing, whether a property manager or a corporate team, the ability to standardize and automate marketing efforts quickly and without the need for in-house expertise.

“The problem we’re solving is that digital marketing is incredibly powerful and incredibly complex,” Smith said. “To create the right digital ad for the right audience requires many different inputs — you need to bring in corporate-level brand information and imagery, the right data for audience targeting, and information specific to a particular unit. Creating ads automatically from different data sources, including CRM or PMS data, saves time and drives better results.”

Accurate, Automated Ads

One of the key benefits to this type of marketing automation is accuracy, Smith said. If a property management team were to create a new ad for each unit to run on Facebook, there is real potential to introduce mistakes. If instead, the information is pulled from data feeds and databases into a series of standardized programs and templates, the manager can be confident the marketing is correct, uses best practices and is set up for success.

“For example, a property manager holds structured data about unit 32a – it’s a two-bedroom with a view and a gym in the complex,” Smith said. “This information can be pulled automatically to build an ad, using the right photo, the multifamily operator’s brand guidelines, and audience data for targeting the ad. It allows a property manager who isn’t a marketing expert to get the same results as a Fortune 500 company with an in-house advertising team.”

The multifamily operator can select which elements of an ad the person responsible for marketing can edit and — importantly, Smith said — what they can’t change. This is vital to ensuring that all marketing is legally compliant. Under the Fair Housing Act, units can’t be targeted at a specific segment of the population, such as people without children or people of a certain ethnicity.

“Using automation, a building owner can lock down what employees can edit in a marketing program or ask the employee to select from five pre-written descriptions,” Smith said. “This is beneficial if a non-marketing expert is creating an advertisement, as it removes the opportunity for errors.”

Save Time And Protect Your Brand

The time saved by automating digital marketing can be significant, Smith said. Evocalize helped one client, EXIT Realty, reduce the time its agents spent managing online marketing from nine hours a week to nine minutes. It isn’t only smaller multifamily operators that could benefit from automated digital marketing, he said, but large operators who need to advertise units at scale.

“You can set up rules, such as launching an ad on Facebook and Instagram every time a unit becomes available,” Smith said. “If an operator has units across geographies, you can create standardized marketing programs that are geared towards different audiences for each type of unit.”

Smith said that he believes all owners of multifamily properties could benefit from carrying out their own lead generation. The alternatives are to use a third-party agency or purchase leads, but here the operator may lose control over the process.

“For multifamily lead generation, sourcing leads through third parties can be fine, but it means a provider is dependent on that third party,” he said. “They don’t know if the third party is selling the same lead to others. Digital marketing automation can allow an operator to generate its own demand, taking control of its own destiny.”

The multifamily sector is set to continue to grow, which means that more operators will find themselves facing competition for residents. Tenants who have chosen to rent a multifamily unit through lifestyle choice will have flexibility in mind — they may move around relatively frequently. The answer, Smith said, is to be ready to market a unit within minutes of knowing it is coming available.

“You want to get in front of the right people at the right time, and you need to market as cost-effectively as possible,” he said. “By saving time on marketing and improving the results, you can use your limited time and resources elsewhere to focus on creating the best customer experience or closing prospective clients. To do that at scale, you need automation.”

This article was produced in collaboration between Evocalize and Studio B. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.

Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com.