Responding to a viral testimonial video leaked from last year’s Apartment Internet Marketing Conference (AIM), at least two national beer makers are vying to gain corporate sponsorships at the 2012 event, anonymous sources said today.

The video–which shows J.C. Hart Company vice president of marketing Mark Juleen wearing a headband and using an ice chest filled with beer to entice conference-goers into a pick-up game of foursquare—reached several hundred thousand hits on popular video sharing sites before being pulled down this morning. See the complete footage of Juleen’s video below:

According to sources, the beer companies now in talks with AIM conference executives were impressed by Juleen’s “loose style” and “casual delivery of testimonial and branding messages.” Juleen’s seemingly natural ability to cross-promote brands like Pandora and Foursquare also impressed advertisers, sources said, although the rumored possibility of Juleen’s move to the Spotify streaming music platform has some Pandora purists questioning his allegiances.

Sources declined to name which companies were in discussions with AIM, but indicated that this year’s “Customer First” themed conference on the evolving uses of internet marketing to attract, retain and interact with rental residents and prospects is likely to blow the roof off past events. “That’s the whole reason why we’re in Phoenix this year,” one source said. “There were some concerns that Apartment Internet Marketing executives were just ‘too intense’ for California.”

Of course, the careful observer by now should realize an actual beer sponsorship of AIM can’t be anything but a spoof. But the Apartment Internet Marketing tactics presented and discussed by cutting-edge speakers from both inside and outside the industry are not, and AIM 2012 attendees will gain invaluable knowledge to more effectively reach target audiences with the messages they are trying to deliver.

AIM 2012 will be held from April 25-27, 2012 at the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown located at 340 North 3rd Street, Phoenix, AZ. Click here to register.

Translation: the development of bona fide online leasing systems is the game-changer everyone thought it was going to be. Certainly MRI and VaultWare aren’t alone out on that particular apartment tech frontier, and you can bet this deal has serious antennae raised down in Carrollton, Tex., out in Santa Barbara, Calif., and up in Provo, Utah.  But are we totally there yet? Does the MRI / VaultWare deal close the loop, or is there work yet to be done in creating total ownership of residents on a single platform, from their first hint of becoming a prospect to the third, fourth and fifth renewal of a lease?

If you’re a supplier or vendor trying to sell into the multifamily ownership and management space, Terry Danner feels your pain. “This is going to be like a self-help session on how to deal with abuse,” joked the president of Dallas, Tex.-based Riverstone Residential in his keynote address at the AIM 2.0 Internet Marketing for Apartment Suppliers Conference held Dec. 7-9 at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, Calif.

Danner detailed to attendees the bandwidth and resources his firm dedicates to owners in the fee management arena as an analogy to the multifamily vendor space, and reaffirmed relationship-driven business and fortified partnerships still carry the day when it comes to creating value with the products and services that make apartment communities and portfolios perform.

“All of our time is spent with our clients on managing their assets,” Danner said, adding that Riverstone deals with approximately 25,000 different suppliers to support a team of 102 regional managers and 700 maintenance professionals serving some 231 apartment owners. “So I know where you are coming from because I am on the same side when we try to sell our clients. We’re not trying to ignore you, because we need to partner with you. We are trying to grow our company, but I’m not going to say it is easy to get in front of me and my counterparts. There are times we dedicate to it, but the days are busy.”

Those bandwidth constraints mean Riverstone does not have the time or resources to entertain ten, twenty, or fifty different vendors in any specific supply vertical, Danner said. Instead, the company looks to have one primary and one secondary partner per product and service channel. Successful vendor partners view the contract as only the entry point to that partnership, and help Riverstone to carry the load with program implementation and stakeholder buy-in.

“It’s never easy getting from A to Z with any particular supplier,” Danner said. “We are a conduit of business to the properties, and we cannot do business without you, but we do recognize it is our job to figure out who is the best supplier, match them up and get them working on the property, and then optimize that relationship to the fullest.”

Reaffirming the effectiveness of Sales 101 strategies, Danner advised apartment suppliers to do as much homework upfront as possible, and impress prospects not just with capabilities, but with an inherent knowledge of what makes that prospect’s business tick.

“Selling to one company is not the same as selling to another. Property managers, REITs and mom-and-pops all have different resources and nuances on how they are conducting business,” Danner said. “Know my company, know who I am, know what I’ve got. There are plenty of people who try to sell me things that have no rational fit with what we do, and you’d be surprised how many salespeople don’t know our business.”

Want more AIM 2.0 exclusive news and strategies? Check back here next week for a Q&A between Danner and Steve Lefkovits and coverage of all of the AIM 2.0 educational programming and breakout sessions.

Rich Hughes

In short, it’s easier to ask for more rent when you know your residents like where they live and when the alternatives in the market don’t match your demonstrated customer service levels. “I already have an algorithm that uses social media as one of the inputs to generate renewal price,” said Chicago-based AMLI Residential’s revenue manager Rich Hughes. “It’s a logistic regression and looks at transactional behavior and psychographic and behavioral demographics, and social certainly falls within that. You find that on the front side the pricing is somewhat homogenized because you are exposing pricing to the market and saying OK, who wants the product at this price? On the renewal side you have a one-on-one relationship with these people that allows for bespoke pricing, and there area lot of strategic levers based on who they are and what they like that affect how much of a price increase you can push.”

Even if you’re not quite up to programming logistic regression algorithms, gauging resident sentiment via social media (including compiling and aggregating ratings on the sites that have them) offers any operator the ability to better determine renewal rates. “I certainly think that resident sentiment can be measured via social to help determine propensity to renew,” says Stacy Westbay, president of Dallas, Tex.-based multifamily revenue management consultancy Revenue Edge. “Obviously a key area to gain uptick in revenue via revenue management is on the renewal side. If you’ve got really strong apartment ratings or scores or if your company participates in regular resident satisfaction type surveys I think you can certainly gauge what your perception is from your residents and know that you can push rents a little bit here or there.”

Stacy Westbay

Still iffy for the apartment set is whether or not social media can be used effectively as a direct marketing channel, or for targeted marketing to create incremental and variable demand to improve revenue management pricing outputs. “On the gaming side with both Facebook and Twitter you can target very specific demographics for push marketing messages as compared to blast marketing to the general population,” Westbay says. “That is a little bit harder to do with multifamily, where fans of apartment companies on Facebook and Twitter are typically going to be existing residents, not prospects.”

Hughes says that even if social media is going to pull prospects in the door, it can still be tied to guest cards as a way to better to gain inferential data for qualifying and selling applicants. Is Jane Doe checking in at the local BBQ joint? Make sure to point out the fire-pits and poolside grills during the community tour. “That and the final element of social of course is the extent that you can get highly relevant long tail tie-ins for SEO lift. You’re not going to rocket up the rankings and knock off Rent.com because you’ve got Facebook at Happy Acres, but in the domain of long tail marketing, which is probably where the smart operators are looking right now, I think there is a lot of value there in social media.”

Have a killer idea about integrating social media with revenue management? Email me at steve@jtimedia.com

The multifamily industry has unique marketing and customer communications challenges. Suppliers and vendors must not only develop a brand and reputation that reaches the decision-makers on the corporate, divisional and regional levels, but also garner a confidence among the on-site staff. So how do you profitably and efficiently connect across a portfolio?

Answering that question is at the heart of the AIM 2.0 – Internet Marketing for Suppliers Conference, the premier educational forum and networking event for multifamily suppliers and vendors. The conference brings together Internet sales and marketing experts to help you refine online business strategies and successfully reach property management and investment companies. You’ll learn how to:

• Market directly to property professionals
• Leverage online marketing and advertising to reach the “deal guys”
• Sell portfolio-wide services
• Gain benefits from online business networks
• Leverage employees as brand ambassadors
• Create stress-free and successful email marketing campaigns
• Effectively use rich media to deliver your message
• Manage the complexity of online advertising
• Get marketing benefits from membership organizations
• Maximize customer relationship management tools

This high-tech conference is a must attend for every multifamily supplier and vendor. Big and small companies alike will learn how to better use the Web to market to multifamily management and investment companies. From social media to blogging to pay-per-click, you will learn successful strategies to convert multifamily prospects into loyal customers.

If you’re interested in learning the effective strategies that will allow you to sell your company’s value proposition in the multifamily space, then plan on joining us December 7–9 at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara in Santa Clara, California. Be sure to register before November 7 to take advantage of the early-bird special price of $695—a $200 savings. You can find more information and session details at www.apartmentsupplierconf.com.

I hope to see you there!

The visionary and inventor who created the products that would make us rethink how we communicated, worked, played and marketed our products met with what he called “very likely the single best invention of life”—death. Jobs passed away at the age of 56.

In his June 2005 commencement speech at Stanford, Jobs apologized for the drama of those words, but it was typical Steve Jobs. To him, death was Life’s change agent, where the old was cleared out to make room for the new. It was this type of thinking that had paved his path in business, fully believing that, in the end, all the dots would connect somehow and we would be the richer for it.

And we are. What he left behind is a legacy of tools that not only ushered in the digital age but pushed the doors wide open for millions of consumers, young and old—Apple II, Macintosh, iMac, MacBook, iPod, iPhone, iPad and iTunes.

Perhaps greater than those iconic computers and tools, however, is what he taught us about marketing: Innovation and product functionality might get you in the channel, but designing products with the consumer in mind would bring a loyalty to brand that went beyond the bottom line. It was that appreciation for the consumer—coupled with a drive for perfection—that created legions of devoted fans and had Apple supplanting Exxon Mobil as the most-valuable company in the world for a time.

It’s been said that Jobs knew what we needed long before we did. We wanted technology, but we also wanted something that appealed to our senses. In a January 2000 Forbes interview, Jobs explained that the attention to design “is what customers pay us for—to sweat all these details so it’s easy and pleasant for them to use.” And when the iPad 2 was unveiled this past March, he commented, “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough—that it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields that result that makes our heart sing.”

We could all learn a lesson from Jobs on how to bring our products to market. Rest In Peace, Mr. Jobs.

RealPage, the industry giant that has been scooping up companies over the last few years, rounded out its portfolio of services by acquiring Multifamily Technology Solutions, Inc. (MTS), which offers an Internet listing service for rental properties marketed under the trade name MyNewPlace®.  

MyNewPlace has approximately 7,500 property listings with 1.8 million rental units. It is one of the largest and most efficient generators of traffic in the multifamily industry, offering a suite of tools under its Rent Engine® solution that creates and manages advertising campaigns for Internet classified directories.  

In the release annoucing the acquisition, RealPage’s Chairman and CEO Steve Winn said, “Internet marketing in the rental housing industry is highly inefficient because property owners lack transparency into the real costs associated with generating a lease from each Internet lead source.”

Do you agree with his statement? Are we as Internet marketers not focused enough on transparency of our sourcing to determine our actual spend? And how do we fix it?

RealPage will acquire MTS—the transaction is expected to close tomorrow August 24th—for approximately $74.4 million. Executives believe the acquisition, along with last month’s acquisition of SeniorLiving.Net, vastly expands the company’s lead origination and syndication capabilities.

This acquisition by RealPage not only elevates the importance of Internet marketing but is ultimately going to change the way each and every one of us conducts business in the future. Are you ready?

If you want to learn how to leverage online technology for all aspects of the renter experience, including online leasing, lead management and more, then be sure to join us next year at the 2012 Apartment Internet Marketing Conference.

To read the complete RealPage press release, click here.

Last week we announced our 2011 Call for Presentations. We encourage industry executives, thought leaders and marketing gurus to propose innovative session topics to reveal marketing opportunities for the identification and retention of residents.

Each year our speakers consistently deliver the most educational and relevant content by highlighting successful marketing strategies in practice inside and outside the apartment industry.  Our goal is to present a wild two and a half day avalanche of ideas our attendees can implement to drive revenue, improve sales and grab mindshare awareness among their target renters.

We ask interested prospective speakers to propose topics the reveal the inner workings and various facets of marketing, how these tactics deliver results and for whom.  Possible areas include: search marketing, social media channels, lead tracking and conversion rates, emerging technologies, revenue management, resident retention, local search, mobile search technologies, online maps, old-school websites and the interactions between these channels.  Session topics may be targeted to the novice and/or advanced/expert marketer and the content presented by the speakers should address the challenges facing each of these groups.

Proposed session topics can be submitted by downloading and completing the Call for Presentations template currently available at http://bit.ly/aim-presentation-proposal-2011.  Proposed session topics should be emailed to proposals@jtimedia.com. Deadline for submissions is Friday, February 18, 2011.

Due to the educational nature of the conference, proposals related to specific products, services or self-promotional sales presentations will immediately be rejected.

Rumor has it this video was taken from an actual multifamily owner/manager’s headquarters and converted to animation to preserve the identities of the speakers. I think I see hints of several people we know in this. You can check it out and the site where it was made at http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/8268219/

Creative marketers are enjoying using Xtranormal.com to create short, fun, engaging videos that can describe a process, provide instructions or inexpensively create a human interaction without models. The possibilities are endless, and I expect to see strong brands using them to market apartment amenities and neighborhoods as a differentiator. Perhaps just a fad, but if we got you to watch, I’d say it worked. Hope to see you at the 2011 AIM Conference where we’ll have at least one session on the effective use of rich media.

It's confirmed!  AIM 2011 will be held at the beautiful Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort and Spa May 2-4.  Please mark your calendars!  Last year 400 apartment industry executives joined in the learning, teaching, sharing and discovery of everything involved in effective web marketing. 2011 promises to be even bigger and more comprehensive.

We're always looking for good ideas about what to present.  If you're an apartment owner/operator and have ideas about areas where you'd like help improving your marketing, please let us know.  Please email or call Steve Lefkovits and share your thoughts (510) 444-2988 or steve [at] jtimedia.com.