David Kotowski

• How Are Apartment Companies Managing Leads?
  This should be a really easy question, but with new technology the answers might surprise you.
• Web Feature: Where and Why Are Prospects Looking for Apartments?
  If you're not asking how prospects heard about your community... well, I don't even know how to finish this without being rude. (Nice shout-out to MyNewPlace).
• Use New Media With Old Marketing Techniques
  Social media might seem like a brand new marketing concept, but it really has its roots in old fashioned word of mouth marketing. Great tips and advice on how to use these new media sources effectively.
• Special Report: Everyone’s Mobile but Are You?
  Ram Partners and Gables Residential are doing it. Is your company providing leasing and community information to prospects and residents that they can easily access using a mobile device? If not, you should.
• What Trolls Can Teach You About Reputation Management
  Oh, the infamous online troll. Mostly annoying, but suprisingly helpful (if you're really trying to be the best you possibly can).
• Why You Should Care About People That Visit Your Site But Will Never Buy Anything
  They might not have leased from you, but they're still valuable and might even result in additional sales if you treat them the right way.

• 5 Ways to Promote Your Social Media Efforts OFFline
  Great techniques when you can't refer through a hyperlink. No surprise that QR codes are used in several examples.
• HOW TO: Use QR Codes for Small Business Marketing
  Great ideas on how to use QR Codes for advertising your business.
• Facebook Acquires Fb.com, Set to Launch E-mail Service
  Would you be interested in a facebook.com email address?
• HOW TO: Activate Your Brand's Super Influencers
  Your brand ambassadors are the most important part of any social media marketing plan.

• How To Design A Website That Won't Piss Everyone Off / Flowtown
  I love the folks over at Flowtown. Great tips on how to create useful and relevant content.

• How To Unlock Your World With Foursquare
  Awesome video that quickly and accurately tells people about Foursquare.

• 10 Ways Not to Be a Jerk Online | PCMag.com
  Lots of these points made me stand up and holler (especially about spelling and grammar).

• Google for real estate professionals
  Want to use Google to help you lease apartments? Not sure which pieces go together? Use this guide to help.

• Building a social profile for your business – the basics
  Simple breakdown of how to build your business up in the social media realm. It shouldn't be surprising that their story starts with making a Facebook Page.

Believe it or not, this won't be a discussion about how people are judging you for not being environmentally friendly by using paper to correspond with your customers (that's only part of what I want to talk about).

Have you ever looked at what you're giving out? Like flyers, letters, and lease paperwork? It might not be something you're thinking about and I really think you should.

Prospects look at your collateral material to form an opinion about you and your property. Everything they receive needs to look good and provide relevant information.

• Check spelling of everything.
• Make sure prices, deposits, fees, etc. are all accurate (if you find yourself constantly crossing through things as you finish your tour is a good indication that it needs to  be updated).
• Flyers should have your logo (preferred over just typing the property name), phone number, address, internet listings (property website, Facebook Page, or whatever has the best information), and Fair Housing logo.
• Print original copies and not copies of a copy of a copy of a copy.

My best advice would be for you to do things electronically where possible. At the very least try to limit printouts to things that only pertain to their needs.  For example, instead of handing out price sheets and brochures just give a floor plan for the apartment they want with the price printed on it.  Not only does this help reduce paper waste, it also personalizes the information.

Your residents trust you with their most expensive monthly expense and one of the most important things in their lives. What are you saying to them indirectly with your letters?

• Always use letterhead to send letters, notices, and announcements.
• Sign your name at the bottom of all correspondence. "David Kotowski, Community Manager" looks and sounds better than "Happy Heights Mgmt."
• Use fronts that are easy to read, but different. Times New Roman is so 1990! Try Calibri, Georgia, or Trebuchet MS for some variety.
• Address letters to specific people when possible. When you're sending out letters to an entire building or the community use "Dear Neighbors" instead of "Dear Residents" to sound more friendly.

Again, this is another chance for you to utilize technology to reduce paper. You probably already have email addresses for all of your residents. Are you using them? If you have their permission start sending notices and letters via email.  If you can't email you can post information on your community website and Facebook Page.

Lease paperwork is one of my biggest gripes because most companies are kind of ignorant to the fact that their residents are laughing at them. The lease is a very important document and most onsite employees haven't even read it (neither have many corporate employees).  Otherwise they would realize that some of the required addenda contain information and policies already covered in the lease. I recently completed an audit for a company and they actually had an "Addendum to Acknowledge Addendums" that residents were signing. Yes, you read that right.  That's right up there with making residents without pets sign a pet addendum and then write "NO PETS" all over it.

I would encourage all of you to read and learn the lease you're using if you haven't done so already. While we're on the subject, I HIGHLY recommend participating in NAA's National Lease Program. The lease forms are provided electronically by Bluemoon software and can be obtained by contacting your local apartment association. Some local apartment associations provide more specifically written leases for your area and are recommended over the national version to ensure strict compliance with your state's regulations.

Here is an example of what I determined from that lease audit. It's long and that in itself should be an indication of how many forms could be eliminated.  The company chose not to follow any of my recommendations, so now you can have them for free.

Lease Paperwork

• RED = NO
• TAN = Sometimes/Maybe/Alternative Suggestion
• BLUE = Bluemoon

1. Concession Addendum – Use Bluemoon form instead of custom one.
2. Handicap Priority – This is a Tax Credit requirement and does not pertain to your communities.
3. Pet Addendum – Only use if resident has a pet. DO NOT have residents without pets sign by writing “No Pets” on it. Lease already states that pets are not permitted without written permission. This form *is* the intended written permission, so it’s only necessary when granting such permission.
4. Pet Policy – Pet policy is already covered on the Statement of Rental Policy.
5. Drug Free Housing – This is a Tax Credit requirement. The lease already states that conducting illegal activity constitutes default and allows us to evict/non-renew based on that behavior.
6. Rules and Regulations – Most of this is already covered in the lease in general terms (i.e. “Resident, occupants, guest, and visitors must abide by posted rules at amenities.”). Also, this is currently three pages and seems to ramble more than inform.
7. Acknowledgement of Understanding – This was used at Tax Credit properties to ensure that residents would report any additional occupants within 14 days to the office for recertification to maintain compliance. Lease already states that no one other than resident and listed occupants may resident in the apartment.
8. Fire Addendum – This is ONLY required at properties over 3 stories tall in the City of Atlanta. You don’t manage any communities that meet that description. Also, current lease has an entire section with personal safety tips including most of these about fires.
9. Eviction Charges – First, it’s not legal in most places to charge more than the actual cost of filing for eviction (specifically, I know that’s the case in Georgia and Virginia). For example, filing a dispo in Cobb County costs about $90, but you charge $200. Yes, if you have to go through a full eviction including an attorney for court the cost easily rises beyond $200. Regardless, you’re supposed to charge for those items as they come up, not in advance.
10. Standard Charges – Instead of making residents sign this at move-in you could send it out when you receive their Notice To Vacate. There’s not really any reason to acknowledge these costs because most times they’re paid without much argument. Can you think of any time you’ve ever had to bring this to court??
11. Satellite Policy – Add this policy to the Statement of Rental Policy.
12. Satellite Addendum – Use Bluemoon form instead of custom one.
13. Balcony and Patio – Already covered in the lease.
14. Recreation/Pool Addendum – Already covered in the lease.
15. Mold & Mildew – Use Bluemoon form instead of custom one. The lease specifically discusses ventilation and this might not even be necessary. It became popular when “black mold” was on everyone’s mind a few years ago and was created to overly cover landlords. Probably not necessary.
16. Utility Connection Agreement – Lease already states that the resident is responsible for all utilities during the entire lease term. Some billing companies may require some sort of consent form, so I would need clarification before deciding either way.
17. Water Addendum – See above.
18. Grills Addendum – Not sure what this is, but I assume it just says that grills aren’t allowed on balconies. This is already covered in the lease.
19. Smoke Detector Acknowledgement – Specifically covered in the lease with other safety information.

While we're on the topic of addenda, I would encourage you to include a consent form to opt-in to use their email address for newsletters and other correspondence. Also, if you plan to take pictures at events and post them online you should probably start having residents sign a release form. I know these might sound overly protective (and the opposite of what I'm trying to communicate by eliminating extra paperwork), but the email opt-in is absolutely a requirement of the federal CAN-SPAM Act. You are guilty of spamming if you're sending emails to your residents without specifically getting a request from them to receive it or other information.

This is the second installment of a series about Ways People Judge You and another segment will be available in a few days, so please check back.  Feel free to leave a comment or send me a message if you'd like to hear about something or if I can help you go through your forms and notices.

Additional Resources

Mailchimp - How Legitimate Marketers Can Prevent Spam Complaints

The CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide For Business

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via theoatmeal.com

I needed a good laugh today and this definitely gave me one. Mostly because I've seen similar email signatures... and because I worked for a company that made everyone do this and it was embarrassing.

You can thank my buddy Jonathan over at The Training Factor for prompting me to write about this because he recently shared a link on Facebook about the topic. The article, What's In Your Email Signature?, had some good tips that I think everyone in property management should consider.  This is especially important for onsite teams because we sometimes forget that they're communicating with people outside of the company via email.  Long gone are the days that email was only used to send reports and correspondence back and forth to corporate. How does your email signature look to residents and prospects?

In my case, it probably looked okay and no one really paid attention to it at first. The only time it got annoying was when you had to read through replies. The company required all of the email signatures to include a lot of unnecessary and irrelevant information along with an image relating to one of the paragraphs and was laid out very similarly to the example above.  I'm sure someone at corporate read about it in an outdated or poorly advised book about how to start your own company.

Here are the suggestions from Jonathan's link:

Do not include…

• Your entire life story (see The Oatmeal example).
• Disclosure/Disclaimer information (unless you are required by law).
• Every single way to contact you (again, see The Oatmeal example).
• Your email address. This is more of a personal pet peeve of mine. Isn’t including your email address redundant as well as a waste of valuable email real estate? If you just sent me an email, then I know your email address, right?
• Images. This one could be debatable. The issue with images is that most email clients have them disabled by default. So if you are trying to communicate something “important” via an image, it may never been seen. 

via Blue Sky Factory Blog

There really isn't anything I can add to that because they're all right on and very useful for our industry, especially the disclaimer information. Yes, we are managing multi-million dollar assets and handling people's personal information. Unless you're sending sensitive information (and I hope you're not) it's not necessary to add a disclaimer. Even then it's probably not necessary, but if you're in doubt ask your attorney.

I think it's a good idea for companies to have a standard email signature. It helps communicate your brand and makes sure that everyone is sending messages that look like they were sent from someone who knows that they're doing.  Make sure you include a link to your Twitter and Facebook Page with a call to action encouraging people to connect with you.

This is the first article in a serious I plan to write about the Ways People Judge You. You're probably aware of the most obvious like your landscaping, sign, and office.  There are a few that are equally, if not more important, that are disregarded by many companies. Without realizing it, you could turn into a comic strip making fun of email signatures. Don't be that guy!

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Last week I posted an article (see: What Did This Video Teach Me About Mobile Marketing?) about how social media marketing plans must include mobile marketing to be successful.  Well, that's all I meant to say, but I think I may have gone off on too many tangents and lost some of you toward the end.

Anyway...

The folks over at Flowtown are my kind of people because I started reading back through their blog and realized they have talking about the exact same thing.  They even have awesome graphs and data to back up their claims.

Here's information about the increase in popularity of Facebook Mobile.

via flowtown.com

It's pretty remarkable that the majority of Facebook users now access the site from a mobile device than a computer.  According to this information, YouTube, Google Search, and Google Maps are also gaining in popularity.  Guess how a lot of people hear about you? Probably Google Search and Google Maps.  Plus, if you aren't already doing videos to promote your apartment community it's not too late to start (and a really good idea).

Internet usage is moving from the web to mobile devices. Most of the popular ones like the iPhone and Android phones utilize apps. Users across all demographics are embracing the concept and this trend is sure to continue.

via flowtown.com

There are several apps already available for apartment searches.  For Rent Media Solutions, Apartment Guide, Rent.com, and MyNewPlace.com are some of the bigger players, but my favorite (and probably most useful) is PadMapper. It actually aggregates the information from all of those websites plus others like Craigslist.  It takes that information and puts it onto a Google Map that you can search from their website or using the GPS in your phone.

Take a minute to make sure that your apartment community is listed. It's probably there (unless you don't do ANY online marketing), but if it's not you can add it by using their PadLister service.

Addtional Resources
Flowtown Social Marketing Blog

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The iPad was the first tablet computer that was widely embraced by the public.  It will probably reign strong over its competition, but at least now there's competition. The technology is inspiring the creation of new Apps and programs to create productivity solutions for a wide variety of specialized uses. The healthcare industry was one of the first to embrace use of iPads to serve their customers better and more effectively. For example, hospitals use them in a variety of ways including digitizing medical charts to use when doctors make their rounds.

Possibilities for use in our industry are endless, with much attention being directed on how to use tablet computers to improve the apartment leasing experience.

You can Join the iPad/Tablet Leasing & "Best Practices" Collaboration on Facebook to learn more and to discuss ways to innovate apartment management.

Google's Android operating system, which has been used in mobile phones for the last few years, has been modified for use on tablet computers. Currently there are only a few small companies with Android tablet computers on the market. Large electronics companies plan to release new products later this year. These computers will be great alternatives to the iPad and production from a variety of companies will ensure that there is a device at more price points than Apple. Here are some that I found after a quick search on Amazon.comand some of these are less than $200!

Amazon.com Widgets

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Today I come to you with some sad news. Foursquare isn't interested in apartments. Yes, it's a sad day.

I've spent months using their service and introducing it to everyone I know (mostly through my annoying check-in updates on Facebook and Twitter). It's an exciting new social network with amazing possibility for users and businesses to connect. If you're not familiar with Foursquare, you can check out my article on Multifamily Insiders.

Anyway, I've been encouraging my multifamily friends to visit Foursquare, claim their business listing, and add a special. Heck, I was even the Guest Moderator for the weekly #AptChat on Twitter and talked about it for an hour. One of our apartment communities has recently become extremely popular with 195 check-ins in 30 days. I tried to claim it today and got this message:

"We're sorry... we're trying to limit foursquare specials to places where people meet, socialize and linger."

WHAT THE HECK DO YOU THINK PEOPLE DO AT THEIR APARTMENT?!? They meet, socialize, and linger. Duh!

Sorry for screaming, but it's clear that the folks behind Foursquare aren't as clever as I thought. If they think that I'd rather "meet, socialize and linger" at a gas station (every Racetrac gas station in Georgia has a check-in special for a rubbery chicken log) than at an apartment community they don't know me.  The cool thing about Foursquare is that if you looked at my check-ins you would know me really well by looking at everywhere I check-in.

I realize they're expanding and probably need to take a break in order to grow. I hope this is resolved soon because not only are they missing out, but I'm not able to connect with residents and prospects that are interested in connecting with me (which they made clear with their check-in).

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