Communicating with Residents at once...

Any recommendations on digitally communicating general messages, alerts, pool opening, etc. to your residents at once?

Hi Rodel,
There are several companies that do mass text messaging. I don't know if rokitnow.com/ does mass texts, but you might want to check them out.

Thanks for the mention Brent!

We do have the capability to mass text residents. They need to first opt-in to receiving texts, but after that you can send a mass text to any groups you have setup via our web portal.

Feel free to email us at [email protected] if you would like to setup a demo.

Brent, what about communicating via email? Create a MailChimp or ConstantContact List?

We switched over from Constant Contact to Mailchimp and have loved the change. That said, we don't have an audience that also moves out, which means some list cleaning. That said, I think it was Mike Whaling who said he does that with his clients and its not a problem. Let me reach out to him to see if he will chime in.

Thanks Brent! I appreciate it!

Speaking just for myself, since we had ZERO $$$ for having someone else do it, we went old school with mass emails. These are easy to send, no cost, and can easily reach our 600 strong audience with a click. Never any issues.

First, I'd check to see if your property management software offers a way to send a mass email or text to all of your residents. Many of them do.

If you want an email service that offers more flexibility and features, my company is a huge fan of MailChimp . It's easy to use, affordable, and integrates with all the other online marketing tools that you're probably using.

I would definitely recommend using an email service like MailChimp over sending the emails yourself through Outlook. Email services handle the liabilities that come with managing a list of subscribers, and you'll get way reporting about how many people you're reaching with your messages.

I like the idea of texting apps like RokitNow, too. Like Rokit mentions in their comment, you have to get residents to opt in to receive those messages, but texting can be a great way to reach people quickly.

The third option I've seen work well (although it's a distant third place to emails and texts) is in private Facebook Groups. Facebook is really good at notifying its users when there's something they need to see. You could set up a private Group for your residents, then use that as a place to share your updates. It also gives residents an opportunity to ask common questions in a setting where you can answer them for all residents at once.

Thanks Mike! We currently use Tenant Tech/Yardi and can look into it.

I do like the idea of using MailChimp, but I realized some of the resident emails are not up to date so I will have to do a paper form asking people to update contact information and if the would like to opt-in to our email list for quick communication.

Rodel, Mike actually helped us on our webinar invite email, so if you need help getting a nice look and feel for your emails, just let him know.

Mike, in case others are reading this, can you share how you keep your Mailchimp list current with move-outs, especially?