When the COVID-19 calamity began to wreak havoc on daily apartment operations about a month ago, Jamin Harkness, CAM, CAPS, Executive Vice President, The Management Group, Atlanta, knew it would be something he couldn’t handle on his own. With everyone involved in property management putting out their own fires – mostly the same crisis’ he was dealing with – he decided to reach out to seven of his closest peer confidantes in the Atlanta area and arrange a one-hour roundtable call. The goal was information-sharing — learn what was working and what lied ahead – for this unprecedented work interruption. The Management Group is a new, smaller but growing management company that has six communities under development. Call participants represent small-, medium- and large-sized companies. Everyone had something to contribute. For information how to participate, reach out to Harkness at [email protected]. The group discussed high-urgency topics such as working with a skeleton crew, renewals, amenities and evictions, among other things, and decided to make the call a regular, weekly thing. And as the days went by, everywhere they looked, another unique and critical issue arose, so more contributors were needed. Each weighed on their own networks and word of mouth, and by Week 2, there were 32 people on the call. Week 3: 65 Week 4: 108 The greater the number of participants, the greater the information. Harkness, who has been in property management since 1997, serves as organizer, moderator and secretary for the 11 a.m. ET calls. Realizing his phone system and general IT capabilities were unable to bring together a group this large, he reached out to Yardi and had them create a platform to help the calls run more smoothly through Zoom. Realizing that every participant on the call had their...

The National Apartment Association (NAA) recently hosted the 2017 Education Conference in Atlanta. Marketing Maneuvers: Data in the Driver’s Seat explores how data can inform marketing decision and maximize revenue. Panelists included Candace Weaver, Director of Marketing, Bell Partners; Diana Norbury, Vice President, Multifamily Operations, Pillar Properties; and moderator Dharmendra Sawh, Industry Principal, Revenue Management and Business Intelligence Sales at Yardi. The trio reinforces the importance of operations, revenue management, and marketing working together to reach goals. Below are three takeaways from the session: Understand the “Magic Mix” Before you can gather data, four key components must be in place to generate web-based data sets: SEO– search engine optimization is how your site is written to interact well with search engines. If you don’t have this solid foundation, you’ll have to work harder and spend more on SEM. Quality SEO contributes to higher organic rankings. SEM– search engine marketing includes paid search features. It is second best to organic rankings. “In one of our properties, there were an average 497 organic views but an average 690 views with paid search. Paid search will boost you but you can’t do SEM well without SEO,” explains Weaver. SEM comes with unique benefits as well. In one Bell case study, only 23 percent of leads came from SEM yet those leads made up 43 percent of total conversions. ORM -online reputation management entails how your brand is perceived online. This includes but is not limited to reviews and comments on your site and third party sites. Both Norbury and Weaver recommend having designated reputation management teams. “Of the 2 percent of people that click ‘Reviews’ on our property website, they have a 46 percent chance of converting,” says Weaver. SMO- social media optimization may overlap with ORM...