We use appfolio for texting tenants and to confirm showings..I love being able to text an entire building or just one tenant at a time—saves me time during snowplow season!
currently Community Rewards’ core focus is to engage property team members with their residents. However, Community Rewards 3.0, the newest version, which will have a messaging center between residents and the property team, will be coming soon in 2019!
I use to work for Rentpath a few years ago. I know they had a Text-resident product then. I'm sure Apt.com has one too. Call your advertising rep and see if they have one.
Text Box is the best texting program out there, I believe! It works just like your phone. You can text anyone at anytime, and they can text back. It uses your office phone number, so you can tell residents and prospects they can call OR text you! The company will set up your contact list so that all of your residents are already entered by apartment number, building, and name. If you need to text an entire building, you can just text @bldg3 and it will send an individual text to all in building 3! It is great.
I use Google Voice as well. I have my phone go straight into voicemail on my personal number when I don't have any units available. It says, "Thanks for calling, we currently do not have any vacancies coming up, but please feel free to leave a message if you have any further questions." That way I'm not being bugged all hours of the day. I get more telemarketing calls than anything. Tenants just leave a message and I get right back to them. Most issues tenants have are texted to me and we handle it that way. I like it because it creates a paper trail for me. The texts also go right into email so I can file them in my apartment file for later if I need them.
The part I like the best is that I can text tenants right from my laptop instead of having to do it on my phone.