When managing residential real estate, keeping your residents happy is key in building a thriving community that helps boost occupancy and success. We now live and work in a digital environment and being able to find, apply and rent a property should be an easy experience, but more often than not we still have to fight through manual processes.
Technology provides you with the tools you need to enhance your applicant’s journey, save time and improve automation for your teams. Solutions such as Yardi’s Residential Suite, including Yardi RentCafe, allow you to do everything within one platform from property marketing and leasing to customer relationship management and online resident services.
Cloud-based platforms provide up-to-date technology that help enhance your resident’s satisfaction and drive portfolio success. They also offer an array of business and operational functionality such as core property accounting, streamlined procurement, facilities management, asset management, investment management and much more.
Generate more leads with marketing automation
With a single connected solution, such as RentCafe, you can build a dynamic website that attracts prospects and includes easy-to-use features. As your target prospect is searching for properties online, you need to start by updating your SEO so you can reach a wider audience through search engines, such as Google.
Once you’ve attracted prospects to your site, entice them with call-to-action prompts aka nudge marketing. These can be used to push special offers, book tours or enquire about rentals. If you’re not sure which webpages to have these on, use your website analytics to find out where you have the highest traffic so you can make sure you push them in front of the right audience.
When you’ve captured leads through your website, use automated marketing to nurture them – this helps save time and improves the customer journey as you can send personalised content to engage your prospects. Furthermore, it allows you to distinguish between qualified and unqualified leads so you can focus on nurturing your leads.
Digitalise the applicant & resident journey
Often, the biggest challenge operators face is data capture and online payments (including setting up direct debits). By digitalising the applicant journey, you can manage each stage of the application process, gain more control and have an overview of the whole process with updates in real-time.
You can start by capturing your prospect’s data through an online application portal. These enable faster data gathering and quicker turnarounds and lets your prospects apply in their own time. You can keep track of their progress through one platform that’s easily customised through the cloud-based solution.
Next, you can create a branded resident app to make renting more convenient. Your residents can easily submit maintenance requests, receive notifications and manage their payment options in one location.
Simplify resident payments
Setting up direct debits can be a time-consuming process, but by digitalising and putting the tools in your prospect’s hands, the process becomes automated. When your prospects have been approved and need to pay move-in charges, they can opt for a one-time payment debit or credit card or set up their bank account for direct debits. This is verified with a payment gateway and is automatically set up within your system for ongoing payments. Your tenant can manage the direct debit themselves through the resident portal or via the mobile app, which simplifies the process and creates a faster lead-to-lease journey.
Streamline processes
Daily tasks can become repetitive and time-consuming, but with a single connected solution, your operational teams can access dashboards that clearly showcase everything from online enquiries and application pipelines to move-in workflows and resident activity. This includes easier management of maintenance requests, property and unit-level inspections and SLAs.
By utilising a connected platform, you can transform the resident’s journey by empowering them to take control of their application process, payments and more. It frees up manual processing, helps reduce risk and provides one source of truth so you have access to the right data.
With Yardi RentCafe, you can fulfil your marketing, leasing and resident services needs with a single connected solution. It’s a powerful marketing and leasing platform that has been created for residential real estate to help streamline the renter’s digital journey.