Multifamily Lead Nurturing 101
An Introduction to Prospect & Lead Nurturing for Multifamily Marketers
Multifamily lead nurturing, also called prospect nurturing, is critical to building smooth lead-to-lease journeys. However, it is often overlooked. The agents are either too busy or don’t know the right way to nurture their prospects.
AI-powered automation can come to their rescue. We’ll explain in a 5-part multifamily lead nurturing series:
- Multifamily Lead Nurturing 101: Introduction (this article)
- Multifamily Lead Nurturing 101: The Nurturing Sequence
- Multifamily Lead Nurturing 101: The 0th-Hour Send
- Multifamily Lead Nurturing 101: The Anatomy of an Email
- Multifamily Lead Nurturing 101: Best Practices for Effective CTAs
Here’s a summary of what’s in this post:
- Introduction: Prospect nurturing in multifamily means engaging the prospects with relevant information and nudging them to take action.
- The goal: The goal of prospect nurturing in multifamily is to get the prospects to schedule a tour.
Challenges: Multifamily needs prospect nurturing to solve the following challenges:
- 97% of leads in CRM are ignored or poorly nurtured, and only 3% get a good follow-up.
- Agents are outnumbered and unequipped, and prospect nurturing happens manually
- Prospects fall through the cracks
Best Practices: The article introduces you to the best way of lead nurturing in multifamily
- A seven-step prospect nurturing process that uses the Humans+AI approach.
- An AI nurtures the prospect by automatically sending emails in the right sequence.
- Meanwhile, a (Human) agent creates a personal connection with the prospects.
An introduction to lead nurturing for multifamily marketing
What is the similarity between growing your garden and converting a lead to a resident? They both need nurturing. Both your garden and prospects/leads require the right ingredients and tools to flourish.
But what exactly is prospect nurturing in multifamily?
Simply put, you nurture a prospect by engaging them with relevant information at the right time. Nudges accompany this information to make the prospects take action according to the stages of their prospect journey.
Remember our prospect Jamie, the chef at an Italian restaurant in New York?
If you haven’t met him yet, check out our ‘Multifamily Journeys are broken’ article.
What relevant information do you think Jamie will be most interested in? A spacious kitchen with top-class appliances, perhaps. Or a BBQ grill area to host family dinner parties. Once Jamie is sure about his requirements, it is time for you to help him in the consideration stage.
According to Chris Hood, an average renter initially considers ten properties. However, 70% of them will seriously consider only 1-3 properties.
The challenge is to stay in the top three communities that the prospects are seriously considering. And prospect nurturing can help you solve this challenge.
Let’s uncover how.
What is the goal of prospect nurturing in multifamily?
There is only one goal of prospect nurturing: Get your prospect to schedule a tour.
Remember, that to make your prospects schedule a tour with you, you need to be in the top three communities they select.
But how do you stay in those top three communities:
- By being on top of their mind &
- Sharing the information they need
Thus, it’s a win-win when you educate the prospects about your property and send them nudges to schedule a tour when they are ready. You need a prospect nurturing strategy that leverages both Humans+AI. One that uses automation for prospect nurturing email campaigns and agent contact for personal connection.
However, prospect nurturing in multifamily comes with its share of challenges.
Current challenges with prospect nurturing in multifamily
Despite a single goal, current prospect nurturing workflows fail to achieve it. They are unable to make most of the leads schedule a tour. The challenges they face are:
1. 97% of the contacts in a CRM are ignored
Despite the high cost of lead generation in multifamily, 97% of the leads are either ignored or poorly nurtured. Agents are either too busy or unaware of the best ways to nurture prospects. This results in 97% of the leads being marked dead in the CRM, with only 3% getting a good follow-up.
2. Prospect nurturing happens manually
Like the other processes in multifamily, prospect nurturing is also done manually. The need for onboarding more people eventually worsens the existing workforce crunch in the multifamily industry. The agents become overwhelmed and overworked and can hardly follow up on the leads that multifamily marketers generate. Moreover, they get minimal to no support from MarTech tools.
3. Prospects fall through the cracks
When agents can’t reach out or nudge the prospects often, they lose potential residents. For instance, they might be in Jamie’s initial top 10 properties. But if he does not receive the prospect nurturing emails with the information he is seeking from a community, it will never make it to the top three.
Every PMC needs a well-defined lead nurturing strategy to overcome the above challenges. To help your PMC always be in the top 3 community choices for prospects, we share our well-thought, research-backed prospect nurture email campaign process.
What’s the best way to nurture a prospect?
Post-COVID, the lead-to-lease velocity has decreased from 46 days to 32 days, says Chris Hood. This means that PMCs don’t just need to act, but they need to act fast. And they cannot act fast without the support of AI. Prospect nurturing in multifamily must leverage automation and the human connection the agents can bring in based on their expertise and experience.
The 7-step prospect nurturing process is designed to do just that.
You can see that it combines the best of humans (highlighted in yellow) and the best of AIs (highlighted in blue) to get the maximum results:
- Agent (Human) contact creates a personal connection with the prospects
- Automation (AI) nurtures the prospect by sending emails in the right sequence
Let’s see the 7-step prospect nurturing process in action.
The 7-step Prospect Nurturing Process
A prospect visits a property website and fills in their information and preferences. Next, the PMC’s CRM creates a guest card for that prospect. The prospect nurturing process comes into play as soon as the contact gets created.
Step1 [AI]: The 0th-hour Email
The first step of the process is to send an email immediately. Let’s call it the 0th-hour email. It is called so because it is triggered in the 0th hour of contact creation. The 0th-hour email is proven to be the most successful in scheduling the most tours. More on this in article 3.
Step2 [Human]: Agent Contact
After triggering the first prospect nurture email, an agent contacts the prospect for a more personal connection and to understand their needs better. Throughout the nurturing process, the prospect should always feel there is a person behind those emails.
Step3 [AI]: Explore Amenities Email
Around the 3rd day of the prospect nurturing campaign, the automation process sends an ‘explore amenities’ email. It highlights the community's various amenities and a “Schedule a Tour” CTA.
Step4 [AI]: Explore Features Email
Once the prospect knows the top-notch amenities your community offers, they would want to know specific apartment features. Hence, automation sends the ‘explore features’ email next with a “Schedule a Tour” CTA.
Step5 [AI]: Explore Neighborhood Email
So the prospects have all the information for the community amenities and apartment features. It is time to introduce them to the community neighborhood, such as the nearby cafes, restaurants, drugstores, and entertainment centers. etc. The explore neighborhood is what the automation triggers next in the sequence with the same CTA.
Step6 [AI]: Offer Email
The next email sent in the sequence is an offer email. The community can motivate the prospects further by offering specials such as discounts on rent and leasing fees, etc. This will be an additional nudge for the prospects to schedule a tour.
Step7 [Human]: Agent Contact
By this step, we have sent all the prospect nurturing emails with all the required information. But if the prospect still hasn’t scheduled a tour, the agent will try again to check why they haven’t done so. Finally, if the prospect does not show interest after all the information shared and the nudges, the agent can mark them dormant in the CRM.
Endnote
Converting your leads to leases requires a lot of time, effort, and cost. When done right, it can be a game-changer for your PMC’s growth. But when ignored, it can cost you heavily.
As Mike Whaling, Founder of 30 Lines, aptly says:
“It’s easier (and far less expensive) to improve your leasing by doubling your conversion rates than by doubling your traffic.”
Hence we showed you the right way to nurture prospects, i.e, when humans and AI work in collaboration.
In the coming articles, we will see the perfect email structure for these campaigns and the miracle hour to begin the prospect nurturing campaign. And lastly, the best practices to help you create effective CTAs in your emails.
Time for some feedback. Did we miss an important topic? Did we mess up on a concept? Help us improve these lessons so everyone in multifamily can benefit.
Member discussion