Persuasive technology: systems and machines designed to influence human belief and behaviors, usually with the intent to bring about positive change.

Wow, when I first read that I thought I was reading the intro to an Aldous Huxley novel. Turns out, persuasive technologies are already all around us —from mobile phone apps to Facebook tags. So, if you think there’s a persuasive technology application to apartment marketing you’d be right on, and if you figured by now those applications would be featured at AIM 2012 you’d be right on again.

AIM conference producers are proud to welcome Stanford University professor and persuasive technology guru BJ Fogg as the AIM 2012 keynote speaker. As the director of research and design at Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Lab, Fogg’s message of how to bring people into the mobile and online experience is sure to resonate with apartment marketers (see, for instance, the video on how Facebook uses persuasive technologies above). More importantly, Fogg’s focus and analysis on “looking at what works and expanding upon it” couldn’t be a better example of the AIM 2012 Customer First theme.

“Convenience and easy access to information on every device are what shoppers care about.  AIM 2012 will deliver best practices in making great online (and offline) renting experiences a reality,” says AIM producer Steve Lefkovits. “BJ Fogg is at the bleeding edge of how we create systems to change human behavior, and his AIM 2012 keynote on mobile persuasion technology couldn’t be better timed for multifamily marketers.”

During the 3 days at the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown hotel, AIM 2012 attendees will navigate strategies within the online user experience and across topics including mobile marketing, social media — even ethnography. Challenge yourself to think Customer First at AIM 2012 and register today to access the best Internet marketing education value for multifamily executives.

Register today for AIM 2012 — $595 until February 17, $695 thereafter.

Save the date to learn about Customer First online marketing strategies across the apartment resident experience lifecycle.

Is your organization customer-centric?  Are you reaping the benefits of a “Customer First” strategy?  AIM 2012 features innovative and actionable information to deliver an unforgettable online experience for your prospects and residents. Forget about save the date: register today and start bridging the connection between customer experience and profitable rental revenue.

AIM Conference 2012

April 25–27, 2012

Phoenix, Arizona

Advance Registration

$595 until February 17, $695 after

Register at www.aimconf.com today!

Another big round of thanks to RealPage for their support of the post-conference video distribution from the 2010 AIM Conference. 

Next up is a video and presentation from Donald Davidoff from Archstone and Jane Griffith from Pinnacle.  Their task was to wrap up the AIM Conference 2010 and provide a simple framework for organizing all of the different exciting possibilities and create a workable, sustainable plan for any size of multifamily organization.  Please click on the photo or the link below for the video and presentation.

Cutting Through the Clutter: Creating a Simple Marketing Plan

Our editing is done and we're going to be rolling out the AIM 2010 videos fast and furious over the next few weeks so buckle up.  We appreciate the support of our video sponsor RealPage.  They are making it possible to help spread the expert knowledge delivered at AIM 2010.

We have two session videos relating to planning marketing.  The first up is a complete recap of the panel presentation featuring Julie Smith, President of Bozzuto Management; Doug Tulumaris, Vice President of Champion Window; and Deanna Kawasaki, Vice President of CallSource.  This panel discussed scenarios in which they used data to measure and respond to situations that weren't intuitive or necessarily solveable without marketing data.  They discuss how to use unexpected data findings in a series of scenarios:

Creating a Data-Driven Marketing Plan for a Hyper-Competitive Environment

Tandi manages the Marketing for 54 properties and over 14,000 units in the Eastern Division at BPA. Her responsibilities at Berkshire include Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, Management, Retention, Development and Motivational Training. Tandi oversees Media/Advertising/Image/Brand positioning and development, Marketing Collateral, Internet Advertising, Marketing, Sales, Operations and Customer Service Promotions and so much more!

We’ve heard several different versions of this question in the last 12 months – an interesting question on our LinkedIn group’s discussion page from  Tandi Tucker Toni, Director of Marketing–Eastern Division at Berkshire Property Advisors:

“Our communities have been using a posting tool–www.gogopin.com to create ads to post on Craigslist. Recently these ads have been flagged/removed as soon as we post. Any ideas why this is happening?”

Tandi is the Marketing, Sales, Training and Motivational Guru at Berkshire with over 17 years of Property Management Experience.

Tandi manages the Marketing for 54 properties and over 14,000 units in the Eastern Division at BPA. Her responsibilities at Berkshire include Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, Management, Retention, Development and Motivational Training. Tandi oversees Media/Advertising/Image/Brand positioning and development, Marketing Collateral, Internet Advertising, Marketing, Sales, Operations and Customer Service Promotions and so much more!

Please respond here, or on our LinkedIn discussion group page.

Is revenue management just a “black box?”  Have the technical challenges been solved in creating a software that can optimize the rent yield in apartment communities?  What’s the math behind revenue management?  A new technical white paper answers these questions and many more.

In a recently published white paper, “The Implementation of an Apartment Dynamic Pricing System,” Dr. Jian Wang, vice president of research and development for The Rainmaker Group, describes in great detail the implementation of an apartment dynamic pricing system with particular emphasis on setting optimal rental rates for new leases. The system he describes “has been helping several leading apartment operators offer prospective tenants a menu of rent options for the last six years. It sets the optimal rents everyday, which are presented in the form of unit type, move-in week and lease term.

Click here for entire white paper

Apartment operators struggle with a myriad of issues, one of the most important is setting rental rates for new and renewal leases. Traditionally, rents are typically set with the goal of achieving market share, maintaining occupancy and remaining profitable. Rents are determined by various factors including market condition, competition, condition of property, and vacancy rates. Management experience also plays a role in determining rental rates.

Revenue Management (RM) has emerged as another way to determine lease rates for apartment operators. This methodology uses data-driven pricing to find the optimal price for individual apartments based on current and forecasted market conditions.  Apartment Revenue Management Systems (RMS) is a rapidly growing trend for setting rental rates in the apartment industry. Once limited to the airline and hotel industries, RMS has seen significant growth in the apartment industry since multifamily-specific software hit the market several years ago.

The article includes a study of the characteristics of apartment rental firms compared to hotels from a revenue management perspective. The characteristics that apartments and hotels share:

• Both are perishable products (they are worthless until they are occupied again)
• Both have constrained supply (there’s only so much to go around)
• Both are effected by advance consumption decisions (customers reserve product before using)
• Both have censored demand observations due to product availability and/or pricing constraints

However, the apartment industry does distinguish itself with the following characteristics:

• Longer lengths of stay
• Fewer transactions
• No repeat customers
• More renewals
• Riskier decisions
• No group booking
• No walk-ins
• Concessions

Dr. Wang outlines his expert view on the design of an optimal multifamily revenue management system with modules including:

• Data Aggregator – links the property management systems and the RMS
• Statistics Operator – estimates a number of business statistics based on the aggregated historical data
• Demand Forecaster – predicts the remaining unconstrained demand for a finite planning horizon, which will be fed into the Rent Optimizer module
• Supply Forecaster – predicts the number of units available for lease for a finite horizon of future weeks
• Reference Rent Calculator – estimates reference rates
• Rent Optimizer – calculates optimized rents from which the optimal rental rates are derived in the Rent Recommender module
• Rent Recommender – module that recommends optimal rents by disaggregating optimized rents

Dr. Wang has more than 16 years of experience in mathematical modeling, system architecture, and implementation in engineering and software vendor industries. He’s a demonstrated leader in operations research and is published in several top journals.

Click here for entire white paper

The multifamily industry spends around $170 per unit yearly on marketing costs – over $50,000 annually for a 300-unit property, or $1.7 million per year for a 10,000-unit portfolio. The bulk of this spending goes to advertising, yet the typical owner/manager still struggles to determine if this money is delivering cost-effective results.

Many advertising decisions are made without clear data on how effective different forms of advertising can be. The multifamily industry can change this by using principles of direct marketing to assess which advertising methods will generate the most leads and leases for the least amount of cash outlay.

John Helm, CEO of MyNewPlace.com stresses the importance of consistently tracking the effectiveness of each advertising source in a white paper Cost Effective Resident Acquisition.  His team worked with the heads of marketing for several owner/managers in implementing the recommended analytical approach.

In every case, the owner/manager was able to identify that 20%-30% of their advertising spend was simply not cost-effective. In many cases, they were able to cut this spend, redeploy half the “saved” dollars and replace, or even increase, the number of leads and leases generated.

There are five basic steps owner/managers can take to evaluate most cost-effective lead sources:

1) Identify Sources

2) Determine Common Metric

3) Benchmark Sources

4) Allocate Spend (and Effort)

5) Repeat

Using these basic steps can help multifamily housing managers identify ineffective cost areas of their advertising spend. That money can then be reallocated to more efficient advertising methods, resulting in better leads and leases for the same or lower costs.

Click here to read the full report.