Solving Apartment Occupancy Challenges: Marketing ROI and Operator Insights with Stacey Hampton

Occupancy drives revenue and marketers often struggle to align budgets with operations to make the math add up. Understanding how top operators diagnose challenges and frame solutions can be a game-changer for both leasing and marketing teams.

In this episode of The Apartment Department, Stacey Hampton, founder of AssetNOI and multifamily expert, shares how she helps properties solve occupancy challenges while making marketing investments understandable and impactful. Stacey explains how reframing marketing conversations around revenue gained rather than expenses spent helps teams secure support and drive results.

Marketing and operations teams alike will walk away with actionable strategies to improve occupancy, measure marketing ROI, and collaborate more effectively.

In this episode we discuss:

• How top operators analyze and solve occupancy challenges
• Reframing marketing budgets around revenue impact
• Practical strategies for improving occupancy
• Aligning marketing and operations for measurable results
• Using data to support budget and strategy decisions

Key Topics:
apartment occupancy strategy, multifamily marketing ROI, property management operations, marketing budget alignment, leasing performance, revenue-focused marketing

The Apartment Department explores the people, systems, and strategies shaping the future of multifamily.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Apartment Department, the podcast for multifamily marketers by multifamily marketers. I'm your co-host, Ann Daum, Vice President of Marketing at Town Properties. With me as always is my co-host, Chris Johnson, marketing leader at Irwin R. Rose. And today we are so honored to have Stacy Hampton with us. And Stacy is the founder of Asset NOI Consulting. And she is a guru with KPIs and strategy and obviously driving properties and companies toward their NOI goals. She posts wonderful content on LinkedIn. One of the most popular series is True Confessions of an Operator. And she is always dropping tidbits that both operators and marketers absolutely need to be following. So, Stacy, thank you so much for joining us. We're we're honored. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

I, you know, you know, I listen to every single episode. I really appreciate what you guys do. So I'm kind of having a fangirl moment uh right now. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Yeah, thank you. No, vice versa. I uh feel like I'm talking to a famous person. So that always makes me happy. But I think we're gonna do a couple fun things today because obviously you have such a data-driven analytical mind. Um, and I think that's one of the reasons that, you know, beyond the podcast, the three of us have really been able to connect. And so we really wanted to hear from you the secrets of an operator uh from, you know, what what do marketers need to know? What are you looking at on a regular basis to ensure that the companies that you're working with are reaching their NOI goals and what do marketers need to know about that?

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it might be helpful to kind of, you know, walk through the process that I've used for 20, 25 years now. Um, uh it really starts, you know, you can't look at every single property's KPIs all the time, right? Like there's no way, particularly, you know, when you get up to 50, 75, 100, you know, a thousand properties. So I think one of the most important things is is, you know, to kind of build a set of parameters of what you're looking at on a regular basis. So I, you know, I think it it'd be helpful to talk through some of the parameters of what properties I look at and, you know, what I'm the KPIs I'm stalker-ish uh about looking at. So spill your secrets, please. I I I'm like obsessive. I look at the same things all the time, even you know, for my clients. But when I was an operator um working for management companies, I I did the same thing, right? So you know, the very first thing I look at is okay, what do I need to focus on? I need to focus on the properties that need the most attention. So whether you have a Monday morning report, which most companies do, or you have reporting, you know, some sort of a report within your property management company. Um, the first thing I do, and I typically would do this on Monday and really work out my strategy, but I run those reports and I sort them by occupancy trend. And for me, my parameter is anything over 10% exposure, so 90% and below, those are the properties I'm gonna dig into the KPIs on. And I'm gonna get down to those deeper, deeper metrics. But, you know, 10%'s my parameter, and that depends on if you're renovating or not. But so when you're looking at 50 properties, you sort that by trend, and that's 60 days out. You're looking at now five properties or 10 or 12, hopefully only five. Um, and those are the ones I'm gonna dive into. Um, I look at trend, I mean obviously I look at occupancy, but I'm glancing at it. I'm really focused on trend. I think that's important for marketers because as you know, there's no magic switch you can turn on for leads. Like it takes time for marketing efforts to build up, not to mention the time that it takes to um, you know, figure out what kind of strategies you're gonna deploy or what kind of um adjustments you're gonna make to your strategy.

unknown 4:33

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

No, I think you're right. I think we're seeing a sales cycle of 30 days. Um, you know, so not only are you ramping up your marketing, but then you've got a sales cycle for some of our larger, more complex properties, that sales cycle is even longer just based on the nature of um the residents at that property. So you have fingers crossed, five properties um with exposure of 10% or more. Um, what do you do next?

SPEAKER_01 5:03

So, you know, from there, I I'm looking at, and obviously many times you're looking at the same properties week over week, but um, you know, from there, I'm I'm looking at, and there I'm very specific about this. I'm looking at the lead conversion and the tour conversion, but I'm not just looking at, I'm comparing it. I think one of the things that's really important when you're analyzing data is to have two data points to compare. So for me, I look at the last 30 days of their lead and tour conversion. And then I look at the 90-day period before that. And what I'm looking for is what has changed at this property, right? I want to know, is there, you know, do we have more leads or less leads, right? Because that that tends to indicate that, okay, I need to reach out to marketing and figure out why our lead flow is down. Or if the conversions are are lower, right? I'm looking at averages for 30 days and essentially 120 days. I've always had data points to compare. And I'm like, okay, we're not converting. And a lot of people tend to lean toward when conversions are down, it's a leasing agent. You know, they're not converting. They need to close more, but there's, you know, more nuance to that. So that may lead me to, and before I go barking up any leasing consultant's tree, I'm gonna go look and see like what's going on in the market. Has it competitively changed in a substantial way that we missed? Um, uh, you know, are there comps that had a lot that has a lot of inventory and it's gotten really aggressive? You know, prospects or leads are looking at multiple places. They're not just going to your property. So it could be, could be we're not priced competitively. Um, it could additionally be a product problem. You know, I that's one of the next things. If I see a lead is the problem or conversion is the problem, I'm looking to see, okay, do we have product availability for people to see? We can you can definitely lease an apartment that isn't ready, but your your odds are much better when a prospect can look at an apartment for a couple of reasons. One, we all want to see what we're moving into, right? Like we want to see what we're gonna buy. Not gonna go buy a car without having at least look at it or drove it, most of us. Um, the other thing is I think it really impacts leasing confidence when they don't have product. Like they're not quite sure it's gonna be ready by that time, but you give them some ready product and they see commissions and they see them right then. They have that confidence to close. And so, you know, that's that's looking at tour conversions. But if I'm looking at leads and lead flows down, you know, there's a couple of different ways that I look at that as well. Um, I'm looking at, okay, have we changed any of our marketing efforts? Um, you know, I'm big on digging into move-ins and their sources, like where did they find us? Um, you know what I mean? You can look at all your all your different sources, but the ones that I think you really want to drill down on are the people, the the lead source that are actual move-ins. They've leased an apartment and they've moved in. And I'm gonna kind of compare those as well. But if I have a lead flow issue, you know, I'm talking to my marketing team and saying, fuck, you know, Facebook's been our primary could, you know, highest conversion source. Our leads are down. You know, are we? It looks like we're still posting, but maybe the content's not resonating in the same way. What are you, you know, what do you think about changing it up or what are your thoughts? What are you seeing on your side?

SPEAKER_02 9:02

This is really good stuff. I uh just want to say, first of all, as Ann knows, I only look at trend. I that is true. If my boss like not my boss, but if somebody comes to my if my employee comes to my office and he's asking how occupancy is doing, I never give up current, I never give them current occupancies. I always give them a trend. I'm always marketing to trend. So I'm glad that that's one of the things that you're implementing because I think it's so important. It doesn't matter what it is today, up, down, or sideways. It just matters where it's gonna be. Here's a little trick that I do, Stacy, as I'm looking at all this drill down stuff when we're looking at our properties. I secret shop it. I use a fake email, burner email, give them a phone number that is not my cell, and I see what happens. Because you get a lot of really good information when you get these follow-ups, when they think you're a real prospect. You tell them when you're moving in, you tell them when you want to tour, you tell them their availability, you tell them if you have a pet. It's pretty interesting to see sometimes the replies you get back, and right away you understand why they may or may not be converting. I don't know if you if either of you ladies do this, but I do this religiously. I'm giving it away from my team members that are listening, but I definitely do it. I do my own little secret shop. No, I don't pay for it because I know what I'm looking for.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

I I definitely agree. I call that running the traps. So once I figured out that, you know, we've got we're competitively placed, we've getting leads, then absolutely I'm running the traps. I want to see what part of the machine's broken. And, you know, and sometimes that means like hitting them through, you know, the ILSs, but obviously the websites, you know, if we're using ILSs, I kind of share your your uh methodology on on ILSs. But if we're using those, I'm running the traps and seeing what part of the machine's broke. Um, are the automations working? Is there something wonky in there, embarrassing?

SPEAKER_00 10:53

You know, but you're right, you have to you have to run through that process to five to find those things.

SPEAKER_02 10:59

Sometimes on that, I wouldn't call it running the trap. I would say I'm testing to make sure my marketing is working and working effectively. Like on the automation piece, do we have it working the way we want it to? Like I use knock, right, on the quick replies and things like that. I also when I'm doing those leads, I do go check to make sure the lead goes into the CRM because that's a piece of it too. Yeah. Um, so some of it is really just to make sure that we're doing everything we can as a marketing permit, but then also to kind of just see how the staff do they need a little extra push and training? I mean, for me, it's it's how do you improve? It's not uh it's not an I gotcha moment. It's how do you improve, yeah. How do you improve the staff so they understand how important each of these leads really are? Sometimes I give them the cost. Uh, I talked about that a lot last year. Sometimes I'll run the cost and tell them right now it's costing us$16 per person that walks in the door. Every time somebody's walking in, it costs 16 bucks or whatever. I give them a number.

SPEAKER_03 11:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

That's a lot of money. Let's close that deal. You know, I mean, we're spending money to get that person to walk in. Um, and it's it's higher than that usually on the walk-in cost, but you understand what I'm trying to get at. I give them a cost so they understand exactly what marketing is trying to accomplish for them.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

I 100% agree. By the way, running a running the traps is like an old fogey phrase about, you know, checking the systems, making sure everything's working. And quite frequently, what is broke is not the leasing agent. Sometimes it is, but there's a lot of things that can break down, like you mentioned. If it doesn't, if the lead doesn't go into the CRM, you know, they can't respond to it. Um, but you know, there's definitely some training opportunities, but I don't mean literal trap. It's just an old, old fogey saying. But I love that you do that because I think you can't know if something's working if you don't run the machine, right? Like whatever it is, I because we you have to put your your own self in that lead, in that prospect journey. And see, I even for my clients, this is one of my favorite things to do because obviously I'm not a marketing specialist. I'm responsible for a whole scope of operational um strategies and implementations. I I rent apartments, I go through the whole process and I charge my clients up front. Like they just go ahead and pay me um whatever their at fee is so that way I don't have to hunt them down for 50 bucks. And I rent the apartment. I've got like five or six different Google uh aliases and yeah, Jennifer testing, put that one out there. I retired it. I retired it, so I'm putting it out there. So no one will know it's fine. But I love that you do that.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

Stacy, what do you do just from the operational standpoint? How do you we talk a lot about the KPIs and communication and not siloing? Since sometimes marketing departments do get siloed. What's your strategy on communicating to the executives or whoever you're communicating with and the marketing team to get everybody on the same page? That we can speak the same language, that a lot of marketers do care about the operational KPIs and how operations just work in general. Do you have any strategies around that to get everybody on the same page?

SPEAKER_01 15:08

I do. I do. And it's kind of the same strategies I deploy with my clients, is you know, particularly, let's say I'm seeking um, I'm gonna need additional funding for, you know, to increase lead flow. You know, I'm I'm giving them the math. It's interesting that you asked this question because I'm working on a an a little micro app for my my website right now, but you know, when I look at the lead flow that we have, for instance, over the course of 12 months and exposure is going up like it has the last year. I've had to go to my clients and say, listen, you need, you know, 75% more leads at this rate. And so I really I walk into the math for them. Like, here's our closing ratio, here's what's standard. Our problem is lead flow. And we need more leads to keep up with, and and currently the market turnovers are high at a lot of C and B class properties, I think, because of the the evictions, and we have a lot of unqualified applicants. I know you guys probably have seen or heard some of that. Um, so you know, I'm putting them, I'm as I say, I'm you know, I'm doing the maths for them and saying this is you can't argue with this. This is our average, this is what we would need. And I actually tell them at the current rate, and this one's always the what I call the banger, I'm like, at the average rate, if we change nothing, it's going to take seven weeks to lease up the current inventory we have. So if you're okay with that, we don't have to discuss anything else. But but here's what we'll lose, here's how much vacancy loss we'll have. If we were able to move, you know, 25% more of this inventory and we spin this, here's what we'll gain, here's what we'll spend. Does that kind of answer the the question?

SPEAKER_02 17:07

Yeah, I think it's those conversations that are important that it is number based. And Anna and I have talked a lot about the KPIs that that carry over to both sides that marketing can care about, but operations certainly cares about. I think at the end of the day, occupancy is occupancy, right? But there are a lot of metrics that we can use that are just in the marketing realm or just in the operations realm that can cross over and both teams can understand.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

I agree. Do you think it would be important for I like that too? We don't I like the idea of showing when you are showing like the amount of revenue that might be unrealized based on vacancy, based on, you know, like you said, if we keep it the current pace, then it might take seven weeks to lease up or whatever. When you're showing that amount of revenue that won't be realized, is is that the most powerful kind of number in that entire story?

SPEAKER_01 18:07

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's, you know, just boils down to math. I mean, you know, you tell me how many units you have vacant, um, and I'll run some numbers and tell you how long it's going to take to get those occupied based on, you know, what your your trends have been as far as conversions. Um, if nothing changes, you know, and I always I always really highlight that. If our lead flow falls, it could be longer. If our conversion rate goes down because we don't capture what's going on in the market and move fast enough, it this could be longer. I'm telling you, if everything stays the same, this is seven weeks. I I I actually had that conversation with a new client last week, and you know, they had 52 proper or 52 units, and we were looking at nine weeks to lease it up. Wow. And I'm like, I mean, that's a lot of money. And so what I did was I tiered it. I was like, we can move 25% of the inventory faster, you know, and literally walked them through. Okay, here's 50%. Here's how many. It's literally just math. I mean, you can go back and look at historicals and calculate exactly how many leads you need to get and and what impact that'll have on your your exposure.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

I like, I like that because uh we a lot of times we talk about here's how much marketing is going to cost, but we don't talk about, but here's how much it is going to cost you if you don't, if you don't implement this. And so I think that that's a really smart tactic for marketers to adopt when we're having these conversations.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

I think also, you know, kind of going back to the KPIs, one of the things that I think a lot, probably not YouTube, but a lot of people miss is, you know, and you I'm sure you've experienced it where it looks like everything is going swimmingly, right? You're like, oh, it's leasing up, you know, we've got 40% conversion, but then you never see the needle move or you don't see it move enough on your occupancy or your prelease, um, your trend. And I think one of the big things I'm seeing out here is that people aren't factoring in the cancellation or denial rate. Used to be able to see leases come in and you were, you know, I was like 85% sure that if they lease, they were going to move in. Well, I'm seeing uh denial rates um standardly, and I I track this at 37%. That means 37% of every lease you get is not going to actually convert to a move in. And it's like, so you you kind of have to like up your numbers, whatever your goals are, you have to know what that cancellation or denial rate is for a specific asset to really develop numbers that you can hit.

SPEAKER_02 21:10

I love that you mentioned that.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

I was yeah, I'm so excited.

SPEAKER_02 21:13

Not my current firm, okay, just to be on the record with that. We have a problem with move it where we would get a bunch of these leases, we think everything's great, and then they would never move it. And the teams just weren't canceling them out of the system. And so it was a whole training deal. Please, please, please, like, don't leave it in there because it's false, it's false. If I'm looking at the trend, which I've told you I do, and those leases aren't getting canceled, then my take my trend is higher than it really is. And so it is real important too that the teams move quickly to get this information out of the system uh when they do know that they're not going to move in or they don't have the paperwork or they're not qualified, whatever happens. It's huge.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Yeah, it is, it is because you don't know whether or not you need, you know, you need to deploy additional resources or there's even an issue because that trend looks really strong. You know, one of the things that that I've implemented at at my own companies and you know, additionally for my clients, is you know, giving them that three days that from three days from applying, they need to sign a lease. Um seven days max, but I say three, and it really ends up being closer to like six by the time you look at the average. But you know, three days to to sign a lease. And so some of the PMS systems um that that you know I've used actually have reports that will tell you if they signed a lease. I don't know what you guys use, but It'll it'll show you that a lease has been signed. And it's like, okay, that's got an 85% probability of moving in, right? Or 90 or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

It's been approved, lease is signed. Yeah, that's it. That is interesting because then if you're looking at those numbers, it might be a denial issue, but it might be a process issue that those approvals to lease is executed, to move-ins, like that there's something wrong with that missing, broken something with that workflow where people are falling off. For sure.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

One of the things that really I used to stress to my my leasing teens is don't let that fish fall off the hook. The longer you you wait to get that signed lease, they may go out and find something else in that time. And some people can, uh maybe fewer today, but some people can walk away from 150 bucks or 300 bucks or whatever, especially if they realize that the property down the street's giving uh a great move-in special, and they still come out$200 on top. Some people can math really well. So do not uh let that fish fall off the hook when you've done all this work. Get that lease sign because at that point, very few people will cancel and go somewhere else. But you know, what percentage of people can, you know, lease an apartment and cancel and go move somewhere else? I couldn't tell you. Um, I've tried to track it, it's incredibly difficult, but I've heard of it. I don't know if you have, but heard of it quite frequently. Or they lease somewhere else, they change their mind.

SPEAKER_02 24:36

That's why the AI is so important that Paul talked about, and that's coming out with the RD, where it's gonna like instantaneously do all the approvals and basically you sign the lease right then and then it's done. And you don't have to wait three days to do copies and driver's license and all the other stuff that you have to put into the system.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

Yeah, I don't know why we make it. I always I think I use this when we spoke with Paul, but like you can go to a store and on their point of sale system, you can apply for a credit card and they will give you an instant answer, yes or no. And you know, it's literally at that moment, hey, do you want to save, you know, 10%? And then they tell you how much it is, like it'll be$10, whatever. And then, okay, apply. So the point being is that I think you're right because the fact that that process, like there are instant credit kind of process approvals now. And so uh being able to streamline that is just gonna be so important. And we almost do it to ourselves. We're like, let's do a$50 app fee to get people in and to get them to apply, and then the barrier to entry and kind of the thing holding them to that apartment, if the process is cumbersome, is so low that we're kind of kind of doing it to ourselves.

SPEAKER_02 25:54

We I have gone totally away from recommending zero app fees. Just give them more top, get another week off rent or whatever you're doing. Like if you're doing two weeks, give them three. If you're doing three, give them four. Because the barrier to entry and not making them have some skin in the game to apply makes a huge difference on the denial cancellation. Yeah, like why aren't you apply if it's free? Fine. Hey, I don't care if I have the credit.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

You're paying for it on the back end almost.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

It's like you might as well just give it, give it in the concession when you on the first full month and not give it up front.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Especially if you've let them hold your apartment and other people could have, I mean, you're just extending your vacancy loss at that point. Like the longer you hold it and and you know, the amount of defaults, whatever unit that was, or units, you've extended your vacancy loss at that point. And that's that's another reason. And by the way, I always tell leasing agents make sure you tell the applicant up front that they have three days to provide you all the information you need to process it and sign the lease, or we cancel the application and it can be leased by somebody else. Now it depends on the state, of course. And there's you know, different variables, some places you don't even you're not even allowed to charge those fees. But you know, I'm talking majority of the United States.

SPEAKER_00 27:13

So what else? Okay, so you've given us marketers some really good insight into the the brain of an operator. Is there anything else right now that you think, you know, now more than ever, marketers should really be thinking about um when they're, you know, especially as they're working um, you know, as a team with the operation side? Like what what should we be thinking about?

SPEAKER_01 27:37

Yeah, I think, you know, I don't want to put the onus on the operator, but I really, I really think that the operator, which is, you know, just has a closer proximity, whether it's a VP, director of ops, regional manager, manager. Um, I really think the onus is kind of on them. Um, we're we're all responsible for marketing. We're all responsible for lead flow. So I, you know, I think that message is number one, right? Like you guys agreeing upon, and I know you have, agreeing upon those KPIs and and everyone being aware of it. Like this is something that's important to us. Um, you know, I think the other thing is, you know, as far as marketing goes, I think, you know, knowing more about from the op side, like I said, the cancellation rates, the denial rates, the um, you know, the product availability. And oh, here's one for sure. Not just product availability, but like, do you have specific floor plans that you are struggling with or have a higher inventory or an age vacant? I know you two look at this, but I have to tell you that's not common all the time. It depends on the team. And sometimes you're dealing with a one-man band marketing team or or two or three, and you know that's a big problem in this industry that you know the smaller groups hire one person or even in a large third-party management company where you know one marketing person is covering 50 properties. It's like, come on. So I think, you know, that the aged vacants, I think uh particularly high exposure or inventory in specific floor plant heights, like, you know, they need some like data. I think one of the things that we tend to fall fall to in um in multifamily as a whole is kind of gut feelings as much as you can with your marketing team, give them specifics and and you know, don't well, you know, we're getting a lot of traffic. One of the things I hear, we're getting a lot of traffic that they're not looking to move right now. Okay, I I verify it. That's true. Like, is that true? How is that compared to, you know, 90 days ago, were we getting less traffic that's looking to move in the future? Like, don't come, don't come to me with gut feelings.

SPEAKER_02 30:11

Why don't you say that? Because I was thinking about this the other day. Who calls or sends a lead if you're not ready to move or you're not interested? Like that that has to be a can response, right? Like, there has to be some interest in order for you to do something, unless you're a bot or you're shopping, like me and maybe I'm shopping a competitor or something. But like most of the people coming in the door, most especially people coming in the door, that one kills me. Like, if they walk in the door, don't tell me you're not. The team can't tell me they're not ready to move. Why would you spend the day doing that with technology the way it is today? I was just thinking about this. So I'm glad that you kind of mentioned that because I'm wondering, am I insane?

SPEAKER_01 30:51

No, no, as a matter of fact, what that would tell me, let's say I'm a prospect and I'm like, because usually what leasing agents mean when they say that is that whatever time frame they were looking, they don't have availability for yet, right? But what that tells me about that lead is that that lead is extraordinarily prepared, right? This is somebody that's coming in 75 days, right? If your notices are 60 days, they're coming in 75 days in advance and looking. The leasing consultant will look at that and be like, oh, we don't we don't have anything right now. Uh, we should be able to tell you what we have available by oh no, no, this person wants extra special attention. They are super hyper focused on being prepared for everything they do.

SPEAKER_02 31:42

It's a training. What are you doing just to uh to stay on the training piece real quick? I know I'm kind of going off on a tangent here, but what are you telling? Because as an operator, what do you tell the teams about these scene today, standing up, shaking hands, smiling, getting away from the computer? I mean, what's the training around that, Stacey, today? Because it's it's so much different when you walk into an office that doesn't stand up versus an office that does, you can tell a difference on the people that want to be there, want to be, um, and aren't afraid to get away from the computer. Like, what are you seeing on that standpoint and how are you training those teams up?

SPEAKER_01 32:17

I don't do as much, I'm not as much involved in training as I used to be, but I actually um have done a couple of projects this year where I wrote sales playbooks. But one of the things that I I recommend, um, and it's an I'll say what I recommend, but then I want to I want to speak to the challenges of it, is I tell salespeople when someone walks to the door, nothing else in this office exists. You, your sole job is to pay attention and be present with that person. You know, get your swagger on. You should be enjoying yourself as you're with them. Um, you should be listening. This is somebody that you're here to that that is here for you to help them, and you're the exact right person to help them. Um, don't worry about the phone ringing. Don't worry about the guy, the pest control guy that needs keys. Don't worry about any of that. Your job is sales, and your job is to help people. So, you know, work on your swagger, talk to yourself in the mirror, but give them all your attention. They need to feel very at ease um with you and and want to live in a community you work at. So that's that's always my advice. The other side of that is man, I'm not gonna win any fans with this one. But, you know, often in the office, the assistant manager, manager, whatever, the mentality is is we don't answer the phone, that's a leasing agent's job. And they may be hearing from you that you need to answer those phones. And I think that's wrong. I really do. A leasing agent can't be the one that gets everybody's keys, that shows the apartments, that answers the phones, that you know I mean, like, what do you want them to do? You want them to sell, or do you want them to do all these other things? And a lot of times the leasing agents get stuck dealing with the resident complaints and concerns as well, which by the way, bums out the vibe. Leasing should be the funnest job on the planet, and it used to be.

SPEAKER_02 34:26

It's so funny. I was secret shopping a competitor, and I walked in, and a resident had just laid into this leasing person. And she took a second, took a deep breath, said that was tough, and then actually gave a good tour. But she acknowledged it in the moment because I was there that that was a really rough situation, but it's hard, and it's something we all have to remember from the corporate office. They deal with a lot on site, they're the reason why we're making money at the end of the day. Um, and we need to give them a lot of props. I do think Edin had a great post the other day. Most companies hire their salespeople and take away everything and just say, go sell, and here's how to do it. And at our in the multifamily world, it's like, hey, welcome to the company. We need you to sell, deal with the residents, uh, clean up the apartments, clean up the community. I mean, it's like a million, a list of a million things that these people are responsible for. So just a shout out to all the the on-site team members out there because they really do make a difference.

SPEAKER_01 35:23

Yeah, definitely, definitely. So I think, but I do think it is, you know, it is a good reminder, even for the most seasoned leasing agent, that they really need to bring the the vibe. They're responsible for how the prospect feels when they're there. Um, and you know, I I think everyone needs, no matter who your customer is, everyone needs kind of a reminder that, hey, you know, you're responsible for your side of this exchange.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

I love it. So I think we talked about, you know, what marketers should know, you know, the secrets of what um operators are looking at and some tips on on how the two groups can work together. I know you also mentioned us that you'd been involved in some fun marketing um kind of initiatives this year, either um directed, you know, driven by you directly or as part of client work. And so I'm hoping we can switch to that and you can just talk a little bit about what you're seeing from an innovative um marketing standpoint as you're working with your different clients.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

Yeah, yeah. Well, I have to say, probably the most fun and interesting um project that that I seen. It wasn't my project, but one of my clients uh hired an influencer to come to the property and essentially catered to this influencer, which was local influencer, had like 200,000, some odd followers, was very much involved in what was going on in the in the city and um was say very much a socialite, basically put on a little party for them and and her friends at the pool. They took pictures, they did some Facebook Live, and you know, they moved from the pool and then went into the amenities. So they were like shooting pool and hanging out in the lounge. So what they ended up doing is is splitting those up. And this influencer was posting this, you know, in their on Twitter. And so my job in all this was to make sure that we were capturing um the attribution in the CRN and and then tracking, um, because I had implemented a new CRM for them, tracking how many deals and how many converted. Um, and it was pretty extraordinary. The amount of website traffic alone in the single day uh went up to 7,200. Oh my goodness. That's like a whole year's worth of traffic. One day. That was from the that was from the live. Um, so it was Facebook and Twitter primarily that they were they were posting on. Here's the thing, not all those people were in fact ready to move. But what they were interested in, and I'm telling you, this pool is like, you know, Las Vegas pool, which a lot of them are now. I mean, these pools are pretty impressive. We're no longer doing the jelly bean with you know brick coping anymore. Um, this thing was it was lit. It was nice. They had a little fire pit out there, so they did a little bit of an evening scene. I mean, it was it was terrific in embodying what living at that community could be like. We're all guilty of putting empty pictures and man, they just they're missing something, right? Like you look at this amazing pool and courtyard, and there's not a single person in it. It feels mega sterile. What I what I really appreciated about that project, one was obviously the response, but secondly, you know, it it it had such warmth, and it was kind of like that basketball court in Chicago. Like it, you know, people knew about the property after that. They were coming in and saying that they had seen it on, you know, this person's Twitter.

SPEAKER_00 39:24

That's really cool. I Chris, did you want to tell us about after stage?

SPEAKER_02 39:28

We can just step back. Like, why aren't we putting people in our photos? I love that idea.

SPEAKER_01 39:33

I'm gonna try it. I I mean, I think you should. It definitely is great idea. It was so awesome. I was like, and of course, you know, this is an influencer and they're influencer friends, so they they look like movie stars, right? But but you know, they also still had some reality to them. And so it was kind of like you could really envision yourself hanging out at this fire pit by the pool. Who doesn't want that life?

SPEAKER_00 40:02

Love it one day, me, one day I'll have the I live the suburb life right now, but one day, one day I'll be cool again, right? Um, what are you able to tell us? Like, how much did they spend on that event roughly? Like, was it from a from an investment standpoint? Was it reasonable? I wish I knew.

SPEAKER_01 40:22

Okay, so that I didn't have access to. My whole gig was the CRM. I actually pushed it out in some automations. We retargeted some of their traffic that they hadn't closed on. And so I wish, I really wish I knew. Um, maybe, you know, I hesitated to ask because I figured they were probably pretty sensitive about yeah, that wasn't hard to get pushed through. You know, it must have been. I mean, from a marketing standpoint, you want to hire this person to hang out at your pool and and you want me to pay a videographer and photographer. But I have to say, I and it's probably still working. That thing had legs. I'm no longer on that project. You know, it came to an end. Uh, I finished my piece, but it it had legs. So, you know, 60 days later, it was still hitting um as far as a source, right?

SPEAKER_02 41:16

So social content, it's out there, and people are gonna continue to look at it.

SPEAKER_01 41:22

Yeah, because people that were like who were following her were probably going back through. I I do that. I go back through your, you know, all of us are kind of snoopy that way. We'll go back through all your old stuff. And particularly Twitter, it's super easy and fun to dig through old posts. So, you know, I think it had some TikTok elements. The other thing I thought I'd bring up, because this was really, really fun, and it got a really high open rate and response was um, and this one's mine. I launched a gamification uh marketing campaign, and that so gamification, I'm sure everybody knows what it is, but it's essentially, you know, some sort of online social email, you know, app that kind of like it's like spin the wheel, or you can do a scratch off or whatever. So I had a client that um we wanted to retarget that had gotten a bunch of traffic that they hadn't closed on, figured out the problem, and I was like, ooh, we need to go back and get those leads from 30 days ago. And so I went to this company, it's called prize.com, and you can build a virtual scratch off. No idea, but it's super cheap. It's like$49 for the cheapest package and like$189 a month for whatever, and you only have to pay for one month. So we did a scratch op. Um, we put it on, you know, we put it in emails and retargeted the leads, uh, put it on the social media channels, and the cool thing about it was one, we could see that people were scratching. It's like, two, the open rate, we were like scratched, it's so corny, so don't judge, but it, you know, I always say in marketing, it doesn't matter what you like, it only matters what works. Uh, we put scratch to win, and people opened that the open rate on that thing was like 42%, which is crazy when you're just randomly blasting people. Yeah. 42%. And out of that 42% on the emails, they were scratching. Um, I want to say it was like this is my first campaign. I've done several since, but they were scratching like 21%. They want to know what the heck they won. Um, and so the cool thing about the prize is that it allows you to select and enter different prizes. And it'll randomly, it's so cool. I I loved it so much. I've used this a lot of times since it'll randomly select when they're scratching, and you can put a limit on how many of each prize you want to give. So, say for instance, you want to do, you can use this for renewals, and I have you want to do 250 off. Um, you want to do one of the things we did was a free year of HBO, or it's Max now, Max streaming services. We did like we put a bunch of different prizes on there and they scratched, and then the best part from the Sushimia standpoint is they put their email in to claim their prize, and it automatically catapults them to the website. So I don't know, I just loved it. It was so much fun. I'd never done anything like it. I love that. It's great. That's fun marketing. It is in gamification, you know, as It's Ann and I were talking about earlier, it's like, you know, everyone's using it um in some way or another. Hello, Timu, right? Like you can't even, you can't even open that thing because every time you pick out what you want, it gets you to buy something else. It's like, oh my God, I just won four more free items. What a pain, right? So I've never bought anything from Timu, but one time they they got me and I was like, oh, you know what? I really do like those earrings. Let me hit on there. And then I was so overwhelmed. It's like over gamification. But Timu, you know, Sheen was like the the the be all, the end all of drop shipping. And Tima's like just absolutely obliterated him with their gamification.

SPEAKER_00 45:33

Yeah, it's uh it's unbelievable. Even the we have these uh carts, these grocery carts at the grocery store, and you they're self-checkout carts. So like you go around the grocery store, you put it in, it adds up your total. Anyway, they at the very end when you go to pay your bill, they have a little wheel and you spin and you get like ten dollars off, two dollars off, five dollars off. So um and you love it. Tell the truth. I do. I'm like sometimes I get ten dollars, usually I get two, but sometimes I get ten, and I'm like, oh my gosh, like it keeps me coming back. So Stacy, you've shared so much good stuff with us. I can't even handle it. I wish we had hours and hours more, but um Chris, is there anything else that we didn't ask? Like, is there any other like we must know this before we let Stacy go?

SPEAKER_02 46:26

I think this was a great conversation. Thanks, Stacy.

SPEAKER_00 46:28

Yeah, we're so happy. Thank you. Thank you for taking us into the mind of an operator. Thank you for sharing your fun marketing secrets with us. Thank you for being a fan of the apartment department. We appreciate it so much. Thank you to Carlos, who is our producer, who makes us sound really, really good. By the way, this is going to be episode two of season two. So we have officially made it into our second season of the apartment department podcast. So thank you to everyone who made that possible. And until next time, this has been the apartment department.