Challenge
Multifamily real estate developer and management company, Braden Fellman, had not been consistently communicating with its residents, nor measuring resident satisfaction. As a result, the company was experiencing a large increase in complaints, negative posts on Yelp and other social platforms and a rise in residents moving out of their properties.
c21 was tasked with developing monthly resident satisfaction surveys for its multiple properties across metro Atlanta measuring five key areas: move-ins, move-outs, maintenance requests, renewals and prospects. In addition, we were asked to help improve the company’s brand image.
Solution
c21 worked with the client to create and distribute short, monthly surveys to each target audience – residents who had recently moved in, those who had moved out, prospects who visited a property, residents who had renewed and residents who had submitted maintenance requests. Once a month, we obtained the recipients lists, distributed the surveys, collected the data and analyzed it.
Based on the analytics, we developed a monthly newsletter to better connect residents to the Braden Fellman brand and update them on metro Atlanta happenings. We created targeted social media content to address any issues that were voiced via the surveys and used social advertising to boost leasing at specific properties that were lagging. In addition, we worked with Yelp to improve satisfaction ratings and drive prospects to the website and (at the time) used sponsored stories to incorporate word-of-mouth recommendations.c21 launched the campaign to leverage Braden Fellman’s current Facebook page interactions and enhance the ads’ exposure.
Results
Over three years, overall resident satisfaction improved by 11%, complaints decreased by 43% and renewals increased by 5%. In addition, c21 helped to drive increased traffic to the website and averaged a 27% open rate on their monthly newsletters.
Within one month, the sponsored posts received more than 527,000 impressions, a near 280% increase from previous online advertising efforts. These numbers remained consistent throughout the campaign period, which was extended indefinitely based on its success. Three months into the campaign, the Braden Fellman Facebook page earned 213 page likes because of the advertisements, surpassing our original goal by 79%. The campaign also stayed within the client’s budget of $10 per day, and thanks to Facebook’s viral nature at the time, c21 was able to surpass expectations and garner a measurable return on investment.