Speaking at AIM 2012 (left to right) Judy Bellack, Dennis Cogbill, John Kobs and Dennis Smillie

I’ve been talking to quite a few reporters and editors in the apartment trade media over the past week about PRIMEDIA’s announcement that it plans to purchase Rent.com from eBay. “So what’s next?” they ask, or, even more pointedly: “What does all of this mean—if anything—to apartment operators and marketers?”

Perhaps the more critical question that needs to be asked is what does ILS consolidation, and really the total evolution of “first-look” online apartment marketing, mean to the customer? By “first-look” I mean exactly that: what is the first thing a prospect sees in the lifecycle that eventually ends with them moving their furniture into an apartment unit (and hopefully renewing at the end of their lease expiration)? What is the beginning of the customer experience?

At AIM 2012 – Customer First, you’ll hear from a panel of top experts who are on the front lines of first-look customer experience. Judy Bellack, Dennis Cogbill and John Kobs will speak on “What Prospects See When Visiting an ILS,” a blockbuster discussion, to be moderated by Dennis Smillie, that will survey best-in-class opportunities for enhancing multifamily’s presence in the first-look customer experience.

It’s the perfect opportunity to catch multifamily marketing experts and get exclusive insight into an industry flash point in the making. If the deal happens to close between now and AIM, attendees will again have a first-look into online multifamily marketing trends in the making. Either way I’d personally wager the panel will be another tour-de-force apartment marketing presentation—we’ve got 18 of them prepared for you at AIM, not to mention three days of world-class multifamily networking.

Don’t miss out: Register for AIM 2012 – Customer First.

Can the apartment industry increase customer engagement and sales by better adapting to (maybe even warmly embracing) ratings and review sites? Great video clip here from Zero Moment of Truth says it can. The clip says it’s simply imperative to engage with the online review of your products and services and even more critical to react to the customer experience in order to claim any input or control over your online reputation.

In the most honest way I can put it, the multifamily industry has been wrestling with ratings and review sites for some time, but I have a feeling all of that is about to change.

Consider RentWiki’s announcement yesterday regarding its name change to RentAdvisor and the firm’s move to establish a baseline online ratings and reviews score for clients, ostensibly to measure and improve that score. “In the past 18 months we’ve worked directly with thousands of renters,” said Robert Turnbull, president and co-founder of the company. “We’ve learned a few things: First, ratings and reviews have a much bigger influence on the renter’s decision to visit an apartment community than anyone realizes. Second, what the Apartment Industry needs is a way to proactively tackle the apartment reviews and ratings proliferating the Internet.”

At AIM, we’ve been working overtime to confirm an industry-first power panel of the top ratings and review sites, and are pleased to announce that executive representatives from ApartmentRatings.com, Google, and Yelp will kick-off the 2012 conference. This historical expert panel will offer attendee exposure to their methods and models, discuss the collaborative opportunity inherent in customer review and showcase how next-generation businesses are leveraging third-party review sites as a top marketing and customer interaction channel.

Can AIM help to validate the idea that ratings and review sites generate traffic and offer an arena for positively and profitably engaging with new and existing customers? You be the judge. Register for AIM 2012 – Customer First. April 25-27.

Note: OVERFLOW HOTEL: The Sheraton AIM room block has sold out. We’ve booked additional rooms at the Westin Phoenix 2 blocks away at the same $199 rate. That room block will be available through April 9 or until sold out, so be sure you’ve got your lodging in place. Use the link below or call 866-837-4213 and ask for the AIM 2012 conference rate:

WESTIN PHOENIX DOWNTOWN
333 N. Central Ave, Phoenix, AZ 85004 https://www.starwoodmeeting.com/Book/aim2012annualconference

In a scathing editorial published today in the New York Times, Goldman Sachs executive director Greg Smith publically tendered his resignation, citing a loss of culture and total lack of customer focus as his primary reason for leaving the 143-year-old financial services firm.

Apparently not content to leave without the last word, Smith railed on his employer, offering an insider look into the highest levels at Goldman Sachs, where customers are referred to as “Muppets” and employees are rewarded for bringing in profit regardless of whether or not products or services are in the best interest of the client.

“It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you,” Smith writes in the Times, going out of his way to name current Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein and president Gary D. Cohn as culprits in the loss of culture and customer focus. “Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them.”

Smith’s message on the importance of integrity as part of a broader customer-first strategy shows just how much the customer experience has become integral to the success or failure of 21^st Century businesses. It’s no different in multifamily, and we hope at AIM 2012 – Customer First to impress upon our sponsors, speakers and attendees alike the critical importance that customer focus plays in everything.

As progressive apartment Internet marketers, we’re front and center participants in the customer experience, a place where Smith says businesses have the opportunity—if not the obligation—to get to know their customers and what motivates them, to learn how our customers define success and what we can do to help them get there.

Smith’s resignation letter is also evidence of a new 21^st century business truth: that brand, messaging and reputation are increasingly forged and forwarded in an online public arena, a place where Smith chooses to say “I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist.”

Think Customer First. Register now for AIM 2012.

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.