To understand the overall impact of your marketing activity, you need to define the value of a lead, or potential customer.

By doing this one exercise, you will gain valuable insight into how to improve your marketing and lead generation efforts…

… and help answer a simple question: is my marketing working?

What is a lead?

In commercial real estate, a lead (also referred to as a “prospect”) is anyone that shows interest in buying, leasing or investing in your property.

A lead generated from your company or property website could contact you by filling out a contact form, registering to gain access to something, or by simply sending you an email.  They key is to track this activity so you can measure your lead generation and understand its impact on your business.

How to calculate value of a lead?

The value of a lead can be calculated by a very simple formula:

Average commission x Conversion rate = Lead value

There are simply two inputs that you need to know to plug into the formula. Let’s break it down:

1. Average commission or sale 
How much money do you make from a typical closed transaction? Although every market, property and deal is different, you need to look at your historic sales and create a good approximation of how much money you make on average.

2. Conversion rate of transaction
What percentage of the leads you receive convert into a closed transaction? Again, this will probably be different depending on the size of the deal, property, market, etc. but you need to make a good approximation.

Here’s an example:
Let’s say on average you make $40,000 for each closed transaction and you typically close 1 out of every 20 potential customers (leads). That means the value of a lead would be:

$40,000 x 5% (1 out every 20 leads) = $2,000

So, the value of a lead (or potential customer, or “prospect”) is $2,000.

This now gives you a framework to put your marketing activity into a quantitative context.

With this information you can now set objectives and have a better idea of the number of leads you need to produce from your marketing activities. For example, if you want to make $300,000 in commissions in the coming year then you would need to produce 150 leads ($300,000 total value / $2,000 lead value), or approximately 12.5 leads per month.

How to generate more leads?

Online lead generation is a numbers game and there are really only two ways to increase your numbers.

Either: 1) increase visitors or 2) improve conversion rate.

To increase your lead volume, you need to increase visitors to your website or property listing. There are plenty of good marketing ideas but the key is to create a well-defined game plan, stay consistent and continuously measure success.

Also, make sure your website is optimized as best as possible before launching your property online. This can have an important impact on your conversion rate, or the ability of your website to convert visitors into leads.

 

There are plenty of great CRE blogs from which you can get valuable information to help you become a better commercial real estate professional.

To save you time, we’ve dug through a few of the top CRE blogs to pull out some of their best posts — packed with insights and best practices you can actually use to improve your marketing and help grow your business.

Let’s dive right in.

1. Coy Davidson:
Stop Sending Ineffective Marketing Emails

We all hate receiving property email spam. It’s simply not effective and 9 out of 10 times, the property is not relevant for the end user and the email goes unopened straight to trash (or spam).

Coy calls out building owners who still think general broadcast emails non-targeted spammy emails are an effective digital marketing strategy to help create visibility for properties.

It’s time to rethink this and stop clogging up all of our inboxes.

2. Allen Buchanan:
Create a “Digital Footprint” for Your Vacant Building

Creating a digital footprint for your property is key to help secure a tenant for your vacancy. If you’re still only relying on traditional marketing… time to step up your game.

Although it seems obvious, in today’s digital age there are plenty of commercial real estate marketing tools and platforms that can help generate visibility for your building so it’s easily found online by all potential prospects.

Allen says it best:

“If a vacancy cannot be found digitally, a vacancy may stay that way…vacant!”

3. Massimo Group:
Focus on Your Clients and Provide Them Relevant Content

How do you cut through clutter and reach your target audience?

Greg Schraff boils it down to two things:

1. Make it easy for people to find what they are looking for

2. Deliver something that is relevant and useful to your customer

If you can’t figure out how to reach your audience, your competitors will.

4. Duke Long:
Don’t Hold Back from Your Individuality

Duke is best known for his straightforward, non-B.S. authenticity. He keeps it real.

The biggest thing you can learn from his post is this:

Don’t compromise your personality.

This goes for CRE but also a good life lesson to apply in any industry.  Our sense of individualism often times gets lost when working in business settings…

… or better said:

Don’t “hide behind the suits and shitty generic glam shots.”

5. Joe Stampone:
Build and Maintain Your Network

Joe knows how to hustle.

In fact, he dedicated an entire blog to it and shares plenty of secrets.

If you want to cultivate a real estate network like Joe has,  it’s important to have a systematic approach using CRM tools and staying in touch with proper follow up strategies.

Check out some effective follow up ideas in his post. It even includes real life sample emails.

6. Bo Barron:
Build a Sustainable Business by Creating a Database of Prospects

How do top producers succeed (even in down markets)?

Answer: Dedicated and focused prospecting.

When inbound prospects don’t come to you, you need to build your sales pipeline and get after it yourself. According to Bo, there are three effective ways to build yourself a database of prospects:
1. Buy it
2. Outsource it
3. Do it yourself

Every broker can “build a sustainable business by creating a database of prospects”.

7. The Broker List:
Use Blogs to Market Yourself (Even If You Don’t Have a Blog)

Blogging is an extremely effective way of marketing yourself, increasing brand awareness, and driving traffic to your commercial real estate website or listing.

But… it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to maintain your own blog.

Linda Day Harrison gives some useful tips of how to blog using existing content platforms like BrokerList, LinkedIn, Twitter and even Guest Posts on other blogs.

8. CRE Outsider:
Bolster Your Online Presence with Social Media

You may understand the importance of social media, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to participate and make most use out of it for your business.

Chris Clark (CRE Outsider) is fairly active online and helps break down recommended strategies with social networking. If you haven’t figure it out yet, this post is will help you know where and how to start.

9. Apto:
Take a Systematic Approach to Prospecting

We already saw three ways to create a database of prospects but there’s a lot more considerations you need to make when prospecting for new business.

The folks at Apto provide six golden rules to help you better define the process and make sure you generate the results you’re looking for.

Here is an example: #6 Prospecting Pays Off When Conducted Regularly

10. CompStak:
Time Kills All Deals

In commercial real estate, time on market is critical and Michael Mandel clearly spells out of why “signing a market deal as quickly as possible should be everyone’s number-one goal.”

The post outlines a play-by-play scenario of how time (and information) can impact a deal and affect the landlord, the tenants, and both tenant and landlord rep brokers.

Bottom line: access to information is key to help reduce time and close transactions faster.

 

Following up with potential business prospects is the single most important factor to help you win more deals.

On any given business day, people will open approximately 66% of their emails, but will respond to less than 40% (of the ones they receive).

With the amount of emails (and other distractions) your clients receive every day, chances are that you may not be at the top of their priority list. But don’t let that bring your morale down.

Even if you don’t consider yourself a typcial “salesman” you can outperform your competitors by out-following up with your clients. The truth is that most sales professionals don’t always take a pragmatic approach and give up too easily after not receiving a reply. This is not only true for commercial real estate, but also applies to almost every other industry.

So what can you do to get more replies?

We’ve put together 4 golden rules to help you get back on your prospects’ priority list and increase your chances of responses.

1. Lightning Speed

It seems obvious enough, but response time is the most critical first step. Quick responses establish a sense of trust, responsiveness and professionalism.

In fact, in a recent study by Dr. James Oldroyd, the results showed that “the odds of making a successful contact with a lead are 100 times greater when a contact attempt occurs within 5 minutes, compared to 30 minutes after the lead was submitted. Similarly, the odds of the lead entering the sales process, or becoming qualified, are 21 times greater when contacted within 5 minutes versus 30 minutes after the lead was submitted.”

Sometimes a quick response simply is all it takes to win the deal and prevent your prospect from “shopping around” and talking to competitors.

According to InsideSales.com, an astonishing 35 to 50 percent of sales go to the person that makes first contact. Don’t let that be one of your competitors.

The numbers don’t lie: the faster you reply, the more chance you have to get a response.

2. Improve Your Messaging

Staying on top of the radar does not mean you need to craft long-winded emails. Nor does it mean you need to use generic (“just wanted to check in”) cookie cutter emails. Messaging is key and plays an important part to help you garner a response.

Try to stand out and keep it brief.

The best follow-up emails are short, offer some kind of value, and always ask an action-based question that prompts a response. This is so important that it’s worth repeating again: always ask and action-based question that prompts a response.

Also, personalize as best as you can so it does not seem like a cold, auto-generated response. Check out some email follow up template examples here: https://goo.gl/OQFpai

Finally, try sending emails outside of normal business hours. A study by Experian shows that email response rates are highest in the evenings between 8:00pm and 12:00am. You can schedule your emails to be delivered at just the right time for recipients with Right Inbox’s email scheduler.

3. Stay Organized

There’s nothing worse than losing track of the status of your sales prospects or trying to recall what you last spoke about. One of the cardinal rules of sales follow up is to take good notes and know the status of each prospect.

Keep track of the last contact date, what their needs are, what their budget is, their target move-in date, and any relevant information about next steps that have been discussed.

If you’re not using a CRM (customer relationship management) tool, now is a time to think about one (see below). Besides keeping notes on your prospects, a CRM can also help you organize your pipeline. You can categorize prospects and keep tabs on “warm” leads vs. tirekickers so you know how to better allocate your time and energy.

This will also prevent you from surfing unorganized data and help centralize all of your sales activity to make your life much easier.

* BONUS:
Here are three simple and free CRM tools that we recommend:

• • Streak (https://www.streak.com)
  • Insightly (https://www.insightly.com)
  • HubSpot (http://www.hubspot.com)

4. Increase Follow Up Frequencey

Consistency is the name of the game and it’s what sets winners apart from losers.

Here’s the truth: approximately 70% of sales emails stop after the first attempt and only 19% go on to follow up a second time (source: Yesware). This means a great majority of people (including your competitors) are missing significant sales opportunities simply for the lack of persistency.

This is a numbers game.

The number of emails sent directly correlate with response percentage as shown by analysts at Yesware (below).

Remember: silence doesn’t necessarily mean rejection.

So don’t be afraid to keep sending emails (2, 3, …. 10) or pick up the phone and call until you get a response.

It’s a seemingly small part of the process, but it can be a game changer for your real estate marketing efforts:

Your domain name.

How do you find the perfect real estate domain name that conveys everything you need it to communicate in just a few short characters?

There are a number of things to consider, some general tips related to domain name selection and others specific to the industry.

The bottom line though?

This is one of those seemingly small but incredibly important decisions that will have a decent impact on the effectiveness of your property website.

There are two factors to consider in the process:

The root – the part you get to choose and that will describe your property – and the TLD – the bit at the end (.COM, .ORG, etc.)

Both are important, and with options becoming more plentiful in recent months, you’ll have more to choose from than ever before. Let’s look at some of the factors that will impact this decision the most.

What’s in a TLD (top-level domain)?

For a long time, this wasn’t much of a discussion. If you could find it, you bought a .COM domain name for your website.

Why?

Because they were the most universally recognized form of top-level domain and there weren’t that many alternatives.

So what’s changed?

These days, there are hundreds of TLDs to choose from, many of them very specific to our industry. If you can find a .COM domain that matches the other factors we’re about to discuss, it’s still worth buying first, but you can also choose from location specific domains (in New York City for example, residents are able to buy the .NYC domain), or words like .REALESTATE or .REALTOR (if you are a member of the NAR).

So which is best?

Location is important, as is the memorability of your site. If you can get a .COM that fits all the criteria below, it is still the easiest to remember, but if the region offers location-specific domains, consider them, especially if they have heavy branding behind them like New York’s.

Use the Property Name when Possible

First thing’s first – make sure the property name is included in the domain whenever possible. This should be the brand name if you can find it. For common-name related properties this may be tougher, though. If your property is named “Blackstone” or “Capital Square” or something similarly evocative but generic, you likely won’t find a matching domain.

Sure, you could make it longer and use the address or city, but don’t risk breaking the following rules in doing so. Quick rule of thumb here is to search for the property name in all of its common iterations. If you can’t find a matching domain, consider moving on to something related.

Most of the time, by combining location and property name, you should be able to find something that represents your property without sacrificing existing branding.

Shorter is Better

Shorter is better for several reasons. Not only is it easier to remember for tenants and prospective tenants, it is easier for your colleagues and brokers to give it to people when networking, and it fits more readily on a business card if it is short.

There’s a big difference between RDUcenter.com and RDUcenterMorrisvillegGA. The latter is a mouthful to say and hard to read by sight. Aim for 13 or fewer characters except under special circumstances (if your exact property name is a bit longer that is fine).

KISS – Keep it Simple!

Even if you can keep it short, don’t get too creative to do so. Overly complicated domain names are equally as hard to remember as those that are too long. Extra acronyms, a mishmash of letters, or over abbreviation of city and state to make your domain name unique can be a big problem in this case.

For example, “echelonbkny.com” is short but it’s also a bit complicated. By including abbreviations for both Brooklyn and New York, the letters start to run together and you’re once again left with a complicated mess.

Even more potentially problematic is if you abbreviate the name of your property to make it fit – don’t create new abbreviations or acronyms that people wouldn’t recognize automatically without prompting.

Don’t Hyphenate

Hyphens as a general rule of thumb aren’t used in domain names. There are several reasons this goes against best practice:

They are hard to read, harder to convey to people in speech, and people frequently forget them when typing in a domain name, ending up on the wrong site (or getting an error page).

This fits well with the tip above to keep it simple. If you have to use a hyphen to get the domain name you want, it’s getting too complicated. Find an alternative if this is the case and ensure you get the maximum value for your effort.

Check for Trademarks

This happens to far too many business owners and marketing managers:

They think they find the perfect domain name. It’s short, easy to remember and a perfect representation of their brand.

But a few weeks later they get the DMCA notice telling them they are using a registered trademark in their domain name and must sacrifice the domain to the rights holder. Not only do you lose the domain name, you lose all the efforts put into building it up as part of your brand.

Even if a domain name is available, the trademark holder “owns” the rights to that domain as related to their trademark. They can very easily come after you and pull it out of your hands. Do a quick search on the United States Patent and Trademark Office website to ensure you’re not risking a notice down the line.

How to Find Domain Names

With all of that in mind, how do you look for available domains? There are several resources out there to help you search for domain name ideas. We don’t recommend using the same site to search for and buy your domain.

Why?

Because registrars (companies that sell access to domain names) have an interest in selling as many domains as possible. So their search tools aren’t always the best, and they don’t have access to the full list of options or suggestions.

Instead, use tools like the following to help in your search:

• Instantdomainsearch.com – Quick and active search helps you find domains that fit your needs. Also has a very robust aftermarket search tool to help you find domains that others are selling.
• Domainr.com – Helps to find the shortest available domains based on the criteria you provide. Doesn’t just spit back alternatives to the name you give but offers suggestions based on the current batch of TLDs on the market.
• Leandomainsearch.com – Offers a powerful domain name generator that will help you find different permutations of your brand or property name in relation to what is currently available.

Each of these offers something unique and different and when combined, you can see options you may not have considered previously.

Where to Buy Domain Names

There are thousands of registrars that sell domain names and for the most part, they offer comparable services and prices. There are a few rules to follow when buying your domain, however:

• Choose an established company – While you don’t need to choose the largest registrar out there (e.g. GoDaddy or Network Solutions), you should choose one that is established, has a decent number of customers, and has a history of service you can check.
• Check comparable prices – Because most registrars are resellers by nature, make sure they aren’t marking up domains any higher than their competitors. On average, you should expect to pay $10-$15/year for a popular TLD like .COM and a bit more for customized TLDs that are industry or location specific.
• Don’t buy from your host – Avoid buying a domain from the same company that hosts your website. If you ever need to change hosts, you don’t want your domain name stuck of held hostage against the move.

Once you’ve purchased your domain name, you’ll be coming back here to connect your domain to the host where your website lives, make changes to your email settings, and other changes that might require customization of the domain settings. So be sure the service you choose offers accessible, easy-to-use features for each of these requirements.

Real Estate Domain Name Ideas

The best way to think of real estate domain name ideas for your new website is by instantly checking availability as you come up with an idea. Don’t waste time writing down names because chances are, most of your ideas are not available. Use the tool below to type in an idea and instantly find out if the domain name is available to purchase.

Ensuring the Best Domain Name

What’s in a name?

When it comes to your domain name, a lot. You need something memorable, easy to share, easy to type, and brandable. If you can find the right combination of these factors in conjunction with your property name and description, you’ll have a good start for your online presence.

Just be sure to do your research and find the best fit based on the above criteria. Spending that little bit of extra time will pay off in the long term, both for your marketing efforts and your search engine optimization efforts.

Having a property website has become a necessity for all sales and lease-up efforts in commercial real estate.

Especially for a high-profile space, having a property website is one of the top commercial real estate marketing ideas to implement that will help to attract the kind of attention needed in a competitive market.

But how do you build a quality site that works with a thousand other priorities?

You get organized.

Use the 21-point checklist below to ensure your property website meets a high level of quality, provides substantial information, and helps convert visitors to commercial real estate leads.

Property Website Content

Does your description explain what makes the property unique?

The copy on your website should point out the key differentiators for your property. What makes it unique from others in the same region, price range, and available space? This is more than just a bulleted list of features of the property.

It should be a detailed commercial real estate description with an overview of the best features plus any specific benefits a potential tenant will gain by choosing to operate out of this space. The benefits should speak to your potential tenants – consider the target industry and demographics of your prospects.

Only then will the details you provide work to not just attract attention, but the right attention.

Are you using short, descriptive phrases to describe key amenities?

While a detailed description covers everything that makes this property unique, too much content can be a problem as well.

It’s important to emphasize key points by using short, descriptive phrases for each of these key features and benefits. Use visual language that drives home why these features are so much better than other options out there.

Whether it’s location of the property and foot traffic or the space offered, get to the point quickly to answer the questions your prospects have.

Have you highlighted relevant building specifications?

Property features are the core of your marketing message, but don’t forget the functional components. Equally important to the marketing of your property is a focus on the building specifications and other data that potential tenants need to determine if it’s the right fit for their business.

This includes dimensions, floor space, applicable building permits, additions, and whether there are restrictions in the space that would affect their business.

Have you highlighted relevant area amenities and transportation?

A significant portion of your content will focus on things outside the property itself. For new tenants, it’s important to highlight area amenities and transportation options with a interactive amenities map.

Reference public transportation accessibility, nearby highways, nearby schools and parks that might affect foot traffic, nearby restaurants and business centers, and anything else that might affect the type of tenant you are trying to attract.

Did you proofread to make sure spelling and grammar are correct?

Make sure your descriptions and write-ups are as professional as possible.

How many poorly written property descriptions have you seen on other property sites?

How bad of an impact do you think these have on the managements efforts to fill those empty units?

Professional, well-crafted copy with no grammatical or spelling errors is vital to ensuring you don’t get caught in the same situation with your property website.

Are you using a striking and professional main image?

Photography has long been the cornerstone of commercial real estate, but with the advent of digital tools, websites, and apps in the marketing of property sales, it’s more important than ever before.

Spend the extra on a high quality camera or photographer and get professional images to be used as the top image on your new property website. This should perfectly capture the possibilities represented by the property.

Do you have professional exterior photos?

Create a list of outdoor amenities and make sure your photographer gets at least one presentation quality photo of each of them (preferably more so you have options).

This might include the exterior of the building, the exterior of the retail space, sign space, parking options, and other outdoor components.

Do you have professional interior photos?

The same is true for the interior of the property. Provide as much detail as possible, capturing every office, every angle of open spaces, the lighting during daytime hours and whatever else is relevant to your efforts.

Not only is it important to show this space in as much detail as possible, but you can never have too many photos. Prospective tenants want to see everything they can to help them imagine operating out of this space.

Do you explain the key tenant services?

Most properties offer some degree of tenant services. Make sure these are not only emphasized but explained in as much detail as possible.

The more detail you can offer on the types of services you provide and the benefits of those services to your tenants, the better deal your property looks like to those individuals. If you can provide more in-depth descriptions or even visual representations with images or videos, all the better.

Website Accessibility

Is there a maintenance emergency number?

Your property website can also serve as an important tenant management tool for existing tenants. When they have a question, concern, or more urgently, an emergency, they’ll turn to your website for information.

One of the most important pieces of information they can and should be able to find on your site is the emergency maintenance phone number. Include a link for existing tenants or put the maintenance number on the homepage for quick access.

Have you included all important property management contact info?

 Perform a thorough check of your website and make sure that it’s possible to quickly find property management contact information with no more than one click.

It’s better to include this information too many times than not enough. Review the contact page for accuracy, check the internal pages, and consider including this high level contact information in the header and footer of the website for quick access.

Existing tenants will need this in a number of situations and prospective tenants may need to speak with management during the selection process.

Is your company’s logo and contact information visible?

Your information needs to be front and center throughout the website. The logo should be included in a prominent place on the site.

It should also be included on any branded pages, images or downloadable documents that your prospects might access. Also make sure your contact information is visible, both on a contact page and in the footer of the website for quick access.

Does the design match the style of your company’s or property’s brand?

A good property website should clearly match the branding of your main company website and collateral. If the property has its own branding, it should be coherent and linked (when necessary).

If someone is familiar with your brand this will lend your new site credibility. It also makes the shift from the main website to a property website a smoother, more organic experience when the branding matches. Double check each page of the site to ensure the branding matches.

Did you include the broker(s) headshot?

Trust is one of the rarest and most valuable commodities online, and it’s hard to earn because of the impersonal nature of a website.

If you meet and shake someone’s hand before a transaction, it’s much easier to get a feel for them, accurate or not. Online, there is no such interaction. Offer what you can to build trust by providing ample information and a professional headshot of the broker.

Attach a human face to the potential transaction so the prospect can focus first and foremost on the property.

If there is space available, have you included floor plans?

Whenever space becomes available, make sure it is noted on the website and that unit-specific floor plans are provided for each unit.

Potential tenants will want this information for measurements and determining if the space fits their specific needs. It’s also one less technical question that needs to be fielded over the phone from prospective tenants.

User Experience

Do the floor plans have the correct floor, suite, type and available RSF?

If floor plans are included for available units, double check each of them to ensure they include the correct floor in the building, the suite number of the unit, the type of unit being offered, and the exact RSF available in that property.

There is a lot of data here to review, so make sure it is as detailed as possible and double checked against the property records before publication.

Have you verified that the written address is correct?

Address information may seem like an afterthought, but a mistake here can have several ramifications.

Not only does it lead people to the wrong address if they try to visit (even just for a drive by), but it can affect your ranking in search engines. It can also create confusion when someone attempts to look up the area around your property.

Have you verified the map location is correct?

Even if your address is correct, there can be errors on the map, especially if you are using automated tools that pull address information and match it to a database.

Even Google Maps can be incorrect at times, especially in areas with non-traditional street layouts. Check the map and make sure the pin matches the actual location of the property.

Did you include the broker(s) contact information?

Provide every piece of information needed to contact not only the company but the specific broker representing this property and the open units in it.

If someone has a quick question, they should be able to reach someone within a few hours. Broker information can be provided on the homepage above the header as well as in the footer and on your contact page.

Did you include links to your social media pages?

Social media helps to build trust both on and off your property website. It shows that you are active with your community and if there is an issue, people can often see it in the reviews, comments, and feedback on those profiles.

When it’s clean and they see happy tenants interacting with your brand, they will be more inclined to trust you. Social media should be linked either in the header or footer of the site.

Did you include an optimized page title and meta description for search engines?
For every page of the property website, be sure to include an optimized title and meta description.

The title is an important factor for search engines indexing your site for local properties, while the meta description will affect what someone sees if they find your site in a search engine – it can have an immediate impact on how many people click through to see your site.

Your Total Score:

As the global pandemic continues to drive astonishing advances in digital life, the commercial real estate industry is adapting rapidly with exciting innovations. Now more than ever, building owners and property managers are discovering that engaging, informative, and accessible property management websites can deliver a wide range of advantages in today’s marketplace.

Along with most other aspects of their businesses, tenants today expect to be able to accomplish a variety of tasks 24/7 with a click or tap of a screen.

Why do you need a property management website?

Beyond simply existing as self-service portals, a well-developed property management website helps property owners and managers streamline services and communications by providing an intuitive information hub that empowers tenants to easily access everything they need.

Here are 5 reasons why a property management website can help enhance the tenant experience from end-to-end. 

1. Present a consistent digital identity

As with any business, you need a professional and inviting digital presence for your properties. A management site can connect seamlessly to the main site for each property, offering a fluid experience as prospective clients become tenants. This external-internal flow helps you maintain consistent brand and marketing identity, further developing trust and confidence as you build long-term relationships with your tenants.

2. Centralize information and access to support

At the most basic level, your property management website should act as a main information hub and connection to your management team.

At every hour of every day, your site can provide DIY access to details like building maps and parking rules, and automated services such as maintenance requests and guest registration. This also reduces the administrative workload for your management team, allowing them to prioritize key interactions.

3. Highlight and improve access to tenant amenities

By featuring property amenities on your management site, you can further support your internal marketing efforts by showcasing everything your building has to offer. Additionally, providing online access to booking tools can encourage more tenant uptake – an easy way to enrich their day-to-day experience.

4. Create a sense of connection and community

In the brave new world of living virtually and working remotely, a sense of belonging to a community is more important than ever. Many property management website templates have tools or integrations with tenant experience apps that facilitate connections between tenants, including message boards, interactive directories, instant messaging, and more. These services help build a digital community that tenants can interact with every day, at any time, at their own pace and convenience, to foster feelings of connectivity and satisfaction.

5. Increase tenant engagement

Along with encouraging communication between tenants, a property management website can provide ways to boost communication between tenants and management. From delivering immediate updates about COVID-19 safety protocols to sharing details about an upcoming appreciation event, email campaigns sent from your dashboard can proactively keep your tenants informed and engaged.

6. Gather invaluable data

Running smoothly behind the scenes, certain tools can allow you to collect and present detailed insights on tenant satisfaction and paint points, space usage trends, and demand for different amenities. You can then draw upon these insights for future improvements to monetize and market your building for greater revenue and retention.

Overall, a great property management website can help differentiate your building experience to attract and cultivate long-term tenants.

Property Management Website Examples

Now that you know the rationale behind building your own property management website, along with the key elements to include, here are a few successful examples for inspiration.

Key Elements of a Property Management Website Template

Here are the indispensable qualities to look out for when evaluating property management website templates:

Visuals

Make sure the template allows for beautiful and enticing images, videos, floor plans, virtual tours, and navigation elements to bring your property to life. This section can also include photo galleries of different tenant events, for example.

Property descriptions

This is a key way to re-emphasize and accentuate the top amenities and unique facets of your asset. Additionally, you may feature interactive maps of neighborhood amenities and points of interest.

Building certifications

Organize any accolades, awards, sustainability certifications, and professional accreditations in one place to form an impressive display of third-party endorsement.

Integrated work order system

Make it convenient for your tenants to create a new ticket by integrating a maintenance request or work order system within your property website.

Document portal

Allow your management team and tenants to securely exchange sensitive, important information. For example, SharpLaunch’s Document Portal offers a central online repository as a simple way to sign, process, send, receive, and store key documents.

Tenant directory

Build confidence via peer influence by visibly showcasing your tenants. This can have both an external and internal component. For example, SharpLaunch offers a module to display tenant logos, links, and locations in your property. Internally, this can then be linked with a messaging service, social media-style comms portal, or message board.

Tenant Services and Property Management Team Contact Information

Offer a direct, instant, and transparent link between tenants and management services for high-quality customer service. Additionally, you can use a specific section of the website to list all the available tenant services and key contacts. This way all the information such as cleaning and security services, timetable and availability, parking and access information are in one place and accessible 24/7 online.