This may or may not come as a surprise to everyone, but we are in the year 2015. According to what we learned from Marty McFly we should have hoover boards zipping around later this year! Okay,  I know we can't really use a fictional movie as an example of where technology has progressed, but we can see that we have made incredible advancements in technology in my lifetime. However, somehow in the multi billion multifamily industry we seem to fall behind on the latest tech.

With so many technological advancements we should be taking advantage of these tools to improve the way we are communicating and interacting with our prospects and residents. It can be hard to make the jump to something new that we are not used to, but can be a huge benefit to you- the user- and the end user. I can specifically recall, for example, the learning curve that I had when I switched from a simple mobile device that just texted and called to a smartphone. However, after a few days of using it I felt that I had become very effective in using the device. I now am not sure what I would do without it when it comes to helping my customers and my coworkers.

So the main question is what can we do to leverage technology to better communicate with residents and prospects?

I believe that the number one item is that you should be using a system that can create and send messages to these people. This can be via automated emails, drip campaigns or SMS messaging. You will find a lot of things out there that can help you do this, but having everything in one place will help you manage it better. In order to make this as successful as possible you will want to make sure that you are collecting email addresses from all of you residents. When they come into the office for an issue you should be requesting that info so you can communicate with them faster and more efficiently. Stop taking the hours out of your day go to every door to drop of announcements or flyers. Create an email and schedule it to go out in the future.

Using technology to follow-up with leads as well will save your team time and will create a electronic paper trail that anyone will be able to view. This will allow you to have automated emails created or save responses that can be used to get your leads the info that they need.

The bottom line is that nowadays people are able to have all the info they need at their fingertips. People are waking up in the morning and checking their email or other social media sites. With this trend you should do whatever you can to leverage the technology to get all your messaging out to your residents and prospects.

By: Jeremy Bell