As the multifamily sector becomes increasingly competitive, keeping residents engaged is a proven way to set your property apart from the competition. Not only do engaged residents leave better reviews and refer more friends, but they represent better value, renew more lease contracts and help grow the property’s community. Below, we’ll discuss what resident engagement is and why a resident engagement app is essential not only for occupants but for staff too.
What is resident engagement?
In the multifamily sector, resident engagement refers to how connected residents feel to a property, including its management, services and amenities, as well as the other occupants.
Resident engagement can be thought of as a strategy to foster a sense of belonging, security, and wellbeing in residents that ultimately leads to better NOI. This is because residents who feel satisfied in a property are more likely to renew their lease, refer friends to the building, and leave positive reviews to attract new tenants.
A good resident engagement strategy will actively encourage residents to meet each other, socialize, and give a multifamily property a sense of community among residents. It also involves property management keeping in touch with residents in ways that are suitable to multifamily occupants, i.e. on-demand and ideally via a smartphone. This can be to gather feedback to empower residents and improve facilities or give a frictionless way to report problems or submit maintenance requests.
More specifically, resident engagement involves:
- Fostering community by connecting residents
- Offering services and help using modern technology
- Providing frictionless, easy ways to pay rent, and manage leases
- Connecting staff to residents
- Crafting experience enhancing events and social gatherings
What is resident engagement software?
Resident engagement software facilitates the processes involved in keeping your building’s occupants engaged and happy living in the community.
While managing resident engagement is possible using legacy software solutions such as spreadsheets and manual communications, modern renters are used to services available via apps. This is because most multifamily residents are millennial-aged or younger professionals. They are comfortable using modern technology and are used to using their smartphone to conduct almost all aspects of their lives.
This means a flyer pinned up in a lobby or a courtesy phone call once a month is no longer going to cut it. Instead, modern multifamily residents expect to be able to manage tasks like paying rent when it’s convenient for them as well as access useful services any time of the day.
Flamingo’s Resident Engagement Software not only empowers residents to do all these things but staff too. Seamlessly connecting residents and staff through an app, Flamingo is built for teams to keep the modern multifamily demographic engaged throughout their lease.
What is a resident engagement app? (Residents)
For residents, Flamingo’s resident engagement app is a one-stop solution for everything relating to life in the property. It makes it easy for residents to engage with the building amenities, on-site services, help, staff, as well as their neighbours.
With smartphones being integral to modern life, Flamingo leverages this to keep always-connected residents connected with your property and its community. While some apps offer barebone experiences, Flamingo offers a fully-fleshed out experience including the following:
- Service booking and amenity reservation
- Community social feed and announcements
- Resident event booking
- Resident-to-resident messaging
- Surveys and feedback generation
- Digital resident guides and wiki
- Integration with other housing platforms
- Virtual keys
- Rent paying tools
Most importantly, Flamingo encourages engagement when it suits residents. Residents are able to arrange their own social gatherings using the app’s social features, as well as see who’s attending organized events, boosting attendance figures dramatically.
With a familiar interface, the social feed also acts as a lifeline to the rest of the multifamily community, giving residents a way to share a bit about themselves and their lives. This helps form a true community in a property that leads to improved retention rates and greater resident satisfaction.
Residents don’t enjoy having to install a bunch of different apps to accomplish different tasks. Flamingo solves this by having everything in one place making it easy to perform tasks such as paying rent and getting in touch with staff, at any time of day that suits them.
What is a resident engagement platform?
The aim of resident engagement software is to improve the resident experience of occupants and NOI as a result. This is achieved by the software giving resident engagement managers and other staff the tools they need to keep their occupants happy and engaged.
Flamingo offers resident engagement managers an easy and impactful solution to foster a thriving community that keeps resident turnover low, and lease renewals high. It streamlines resident relation management and allows staff to offer services in a user-friendly way and can save over $1.5k a month by automating processes.
Using automatically generated feedback forms and review requests, residents use their phones to deliver essential data that can be used to gauge how engaged they are. This allows staff to address non-engagement head on, identifying where residents are happy and in what ways things could improve.
The software can be fully customized from the ground up to suit your multifamily community including branding. As well as digital resident guides and checklists, staff can also arrange to move-in gifts to enhance the resident experience right from the start.
Flamingo also has built-in tools to allow residents to communicate with staff. This allows maintenance requests to be submitted easily, without fuss. Not only does this make residents feel directly connected with the upkeep of their building but helps staff fix problems while they’re still minor, avoiding the cost and downtime of major repair jobs.
Where to find resident engagement ideas online?
Flamingo’s killer feature for property managers is the ability to organize and book unique events that keep residents truly engaged and generates buzz within a property. Guests can RSVP and book through the app with other residents encouraged to attend thanks to transparent attendance figures. There are hundreds of inspired events and experiences on offer that encourage residents to get involved. These include various fitness sessions, dance nights, outdoor cinema evenings, talks, wine tasting, wellbeing events, and plenty more.
Rather than spend hours coming up with resident engagement ideas, Flamingo does the hard work for you. You simply need to book an event for your property and residents can RSVP or book at their convenience. With 96% of residents using Flamingo when available in a property, it is single-handedly the best way to keep occupants engaged throughout their lease.
Creating a resident engagement strategy that works
A well-crafted resident engagement strategy should deliver the following:
- Unique events, quality services, and relevant information
- Foster a sense of community
- Keep residents happy
This is best achieved through Flamingo which has been developed from the ground up to increase resident engagement and improve the resident experience. Flamingo offers residents familiar tools to perform tasks and engage with the community that can be performed when it’s suitable for them to do so.
By focusing on offering these things in a way that suits the younger multifamily demographic best, engagement is boosted considerably. As residents feel more connected with their building and the community, they are much more likely to renew their lease upon expiry.