According to the Pew Research Center, more U.S. citizens are renting their homes than they have in the last fifty years. While this is great news for property management companies, it also means that they have a lot more tenants to manage. This might explain why so many property management companies are turning to business text messaging.
Business text messaging platforms allow property management companies to send, receive, and organize tenant messages. These platforms receive messages from both native texting apps and over-the-top (OTT) apps like Facebook Messenger, allowing property management companies to capitalize on the immense popularity of messaging.
As long as tenants explicitly opt in to your texting service, property management companies can use business text messaging to keep them up-to-date and happy. Read on to learn how.
Simplify Maintenance Management
One of the biggest challenges for property management companies is managing maintenance requests. Property managers have to coordinate with their tenants, their maintenance staff, and vendors in order to successfully complete maintenance requests in a timely manner.
By allowing tenants to text in with maintenance requests, your property management company expedites the maintenance request system. All tenant requests arrive in a shared inbox, so on-duty team members can quickly read and respond to messages. With fast responses using auto-replies, your tenants will feel like they’re in good hands. Best of all, tenants can send text messages with photos of issues, which expedites the process of identifying the issue and which vendor to call.
Additionally, you can use business text messaging to collaborate with your maintenance team. Contractors or in-field staff won’t need to download any new apps to connect with your administrative team; they can simply send texts to your business text messaging number.
Provide Tenants with Real-Time Notifications
Often, property management companies alert their tenants to scheduled maintenance, inspections, emergencies, or even local events. These messages can be critical, especially to tenants who don’t stay up-to-date on email.
However, like we discussed earlier, when these notifications are sent via email, they aren’t always read in time. And calling every tenant with a timely message simply isn’t feasible.
Business text messaging allows property management teams to send personalized texts en mass to their entire tenant base, or a list of specific tenants. Employees can simply create a template and indicate custom fields. The business text messaging platform will automatically use merge tokens to draw from tenants’ custom field information and personalize each message in turn. Tenants will feel as though each message was sent individually, while property management teams can save massive amounts of time.
An SMS notification might look like this:
Hello, {{tenant name}}! We’re upgrading the building’s water heaters. Water will be unavailable on Thursday from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM. Sorry for the inconvenience. Feel free to text back with any questions or concerns.
Answer Tenant Questions
In addition to maintenance requests, tenants often have simple questions to put to property managers. For example, a tenant might ask about new landscaping efforts or recommendations for pet sitters.
While these questions are simple, it can take a lot of time for property management teams to answer the phone, find the person with the pertinent information, and provide answers. Email can be frustrating for tenants, because it is a slower channel for all parties involved.
With business text messaging, property management teams can receive tenant questions in their shared inbox and quickly determine who is most qualified to answer. Tenants receive answers within minutes. If property management teams are out of the office, they can set up sleek auto-replies that let tenants know when someone will answer.
Collect Feedback
Property management companies can use business text messaging to collect feedback. Feedback on facilities and maintenance allows property management companies to make improvements that boost tenant happiness. Even the process of asking for feedback can make tenants feel as though your business really cares for their well-being.
Most feedback requests sent through email are ignored. Even if tenants have good intentions, they will often plan to return to your survey, but forget about it.
SMS surveys are a great way to increase the amount of tenant feedback your business receives. Considering business text messaging’s high open rate, sending feedback requests through SMS is an easy way to capture tenants’ attention, improving the chances that they’ll answer your survey—and that they’ll appreciate your effort.
Send Rent Reminders
Many tenants prefer to turn in their rent checks or online deposits each month, rather than setting up automatic payments. Even if they do set up automatic payments, tenants still like to know when payments are made, just so they can keep an eye on their finances.
Most property management companies do alert their tenants about rent payments, but they often do so through slower channels, like email. These notifications are often ignored, or read too late; email has a low open rate of 20%.
To save tenants from a last-minute panic to send in their checks—or to just keep them in the loop—text them a week or so before rent is due. Just be sure that you comply with local debt collection regulations, and keep the messages positive in tone. Because SMS has an open rate of 98%, tenants are sure to see and read your reminder. (Plus, they’ll be more likely to send in rent checks on time.)
An SMS rent reminder might look like this:
Hi {{tenant name}}! Just a reminder that rent is due next week. Send it via your online account or mail us a check by January 1. Text us back if you have questions or concerns.
Ready to start texting tenants? Try our text service for business for free today.
