To celebrate Valentine’s Day RentSentinel named Forest Creek of FPI Management our ‘RentSentinel Valentine!’  Choosing a special community was difficult because we love all our customers, so how did we decide?  In typical RentSentinel fashion it came down to analytics!  After reviewing our Ghosting Ads Summary, Craigslist Weekly and Content Refresh Reports it was clear the Forest Creek Leasing Team is the object of our affection.  Here’s why!

• They never post more than one ad per hour
• Forest Creek repeatedly refreshes content to avoid ghosting
• They create basic templates and posting titles.  Don’t get too fancy, Craig doesn’t like it!
• Forest Creek follows Craigslist rules and doesn’t overpost
• Their leasing agents use RentSentinel everyday

More and more Americans are saying goodbye to the white-picket fence dream of homeownership.  Rather, the US population is choosing to rent.  By the numbers, thirty-four percent of the US population is renting.  Moreover, in thirteen of the top twenty-five Metropolitan markets over fifty percent of the city resides in rental properties.  Market factors like unemployment rates, rising home foreclosures, and property prices under pressure are leading the revolution toward a Renter’s World.

Another shift remaking the face of the US housing industry are social trends.  First time marriages and family planning continue to be put on hold.  Generation Y are opting to pursue roommates, job mobility and professional and academic development rather than cul-de-sac and car pools.  First-time homeowners once accounted for nearly half of home sales, now less than thirty-five percent.  New generational tendencies are stock piling demand for renter populations.  I think it’s safe to say not only will 2012 be the year of the Landlord but many more to come.

Between market and social trends, the rental market is undoubtedly changing.  A question to ask the industry is will the existing tools for renters meet the needs of this new generation?  I’m unsure of the answer myself, but I’ll certainly stick around to listen and learn.

Marketer

Review & Post screen updated to support changing unit descriptions.

ILS

We’re excited to welcome Zillow to the ILS family and expand our ILS Feed.  We recently partnered with Zillow to syndicate their listings to a wider circulation!

Social

Enjoy the growing capabilities of our Social product:

• Full integration with ApartmentRatings
• Ability to limit direct access to Facebook & Twitter – keep users in RentSentinel dashboard
• Track results with automatic daily portfolio reports of all social activity

Prospector

As if tracking your prospects from one platform wasn’t enough, it just got better:

• Prospect name and community logo added to online quote
• Ability to create custom email templates for quotes, applications and appointments
• Ability to configure automated emails to be sent to either property or prospect

Leasing

Attention readers and all Yardi customers, this is BIG!  Check out our online Leasing enhancements:

• RentSentinel now offers full Yardi integration
• Blue Moon integration
• New Lease Document Admin tool that includes significant documents in online lease and e-signature process
• Driver’s license validation in all 50 states
• E-signature confirmation of typed name versus name on application
• Application form offers unemployed applicant option

Tablet

Make the iPad work for your property, we’ve enhanced Tablet and now it’s even cooler:

• Works with or without Prospector
• Don’t just show floor plan images, now you can also show Unit Type photos
• New site map image type
• Update your guest cards, and more!

CHICAGO – January 5,2012 – RentSentinel, an industry leader and provider of apartment marketing management software, kicks off 2012 with a new website at www.rentsentinel.com.  The dramatically redesigned public site was a collaborative effort between the RentSentinel team, The Resident Connection, LLC and 30 Lines, LLC.

“The website redesign represents our commitment to the growing needs of our customers with a comprehensive suite of apartment marketing solutions,” says President Eric Broughton.  “The site is easy to navigate and provides flexibility for future growth.  It’s about building a relationship with a new audience and giving our longtime clients what they have come to expect.  I’m happy we had the opportunity to team up with the Resident Connect and 30 Lines.  I am proud of the finished product.”

RentSentinel partnered with Mark Juleen from the Resident Connection and Mike Whaling from 30 Lines to restructure the layout, offer fresh product information and improve company and client communication.  The more interactive approach provides better news, a social vibe, bold new colors and a clean design.

Managing Craigslist for a single account can be a challenge, imagine supervising 680 communities and their Craigslist marketing strategy. RentSentinel caught up with 18-year industry expert Heather Campbell, Vice President of Property Marketing at Riverstone Residential , to learn how a multidimensional routine has jump-started team success.

Need to know Heather Campbell & Riverstone Residential Quick Facts:

• Riverstone consists of 680 communities under management
• Heather started with Riverstone in Feb 2011, at that time 100 communities used RentSentinel
• Currently 400 Riverstone communities use RentSentinel Marketer & ILS
• 15% of Riverstone’s leases come from Craigslist leads

RentSentinel: How did you help Riverstone build an effective brand presence on Craigslist?
Campbell: We believe the more detail you provide a prospect the better. A benefit of Craigslist is agents can advertise in real-time so prospects know what’s available, right now. If unit 2016 is vacant I encourage teams’ to communicate this detail in their ads. Using fresh, specific unit content prevents ghosting, a challenge the multifamily industry struggles with as a whole.

RentSentinel: What do you encourage your onsite teams to focus on?
Campbell: We find that the most successful agents tour a property and translate that experience into an effective ad. This means creating consistent ad content. If the title of your ad says “Huge walk in closet and large balcony with city views,” your photos better prove that! We must stay cognizant of posts and check for correlation between titles, photos and content.

RentSentinel: So it’s safe to say your leasing teams are heavily involved in the Craigslist process?
Campbell: Absolutely, Riverstone teams are fully engaged in the renting lifecycle. I encourage teams to personalize and specify their favorite apartment features on ads because people can relate. Ads with personality create a human connection. Their opinions not only add flare, but give apartment shoppers an idea of who they’re possibly renting from.

RentSentinel: How do you effectively manage so many communities at a high level?
Campbell: We use RentSentinel to manage our property portfolios and we benefit from the software by implementing “Craigslist Training” to all teams’ schedules. This keeps us on the same page and ensures optimal results.We’ve found detailed Craigslist ads trigger conversations and improve click thru rates which leads to more signed leases!

RentSentinel: How does RentSentinel support your complex apartment marketing strategy?
Campbell: We employ a specific approach and RentSentinel supports our complex strategies to help us resolve occupancy issues. RentSentinel has an excellent reporting system that provides over 30 marketing reports. We have visibility across our property portfolios and can see which templates, titles and posting times work best. Our marketing plan can continuously develop because the RentSentinel platform successfully manages multidimensional strategies.

RentSentinel: Any last minute pointers?
Campbell: Only implement initiatives with a purpose. Before we implement any marketing strategies we ask teams to consider these key questions:

• How is this specific action going to help you lease apartments?
• What are your target units? (We should know by your ads)
• Did you personalize your ad template?

RentSentinel: Thanks Heather, before we wrap up can you tell me something awesome about yourself other than that you used to live in Chicago?
Campbell: I married my college sweetheart and live in Denver with our two kids, Franny and Gus. I can also say the alphabet backwards in less than 5 seconds!

CHICAGO – November 21, 2011 – RentSentinel, an industry leader and provider of apartment marketing management software, launched Social today. The new product gives leasing agents the ability to manage social media sites from the RentSentinel platform.

The RentSentinel Social Homepage

Social provides property management companies control and visibility to their communities’ social media portfolios and delivers detailed reports that gauge social success. Users can monitor results, manage workflow and share content across the most popular social sites from one centralized location.

“Much like Craigslist years ago, we see a great need in the Multifamily industry for insight and management of a portfolio’s social media strategy. Our latest solution delivers the reporting and analytics top management companies come to expect from RentSentinel,” says President Eric Broughton. “With Social, an organization can regain control of their presence on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and more using the same tool for all of their communities marketing activity from listing to lease.”

Social Features:

• Track number of likes, re-tweets & total fans
• Create, manage and control content
• Monitor posts, shares & updates
• Control scheduling (date, time) of any post
• Property dashboard includes detailed analytics that report number of likes, number of comments, etc.
• Approve tweets and posts before content goes live
• Access all social sites from RentSentinel
• Differentiated posts pending on site, ex: hashtags from twitter won’t get pushed to Facebook
• Blog to your resident portal
• Monitor reviews from Apartment Ratings and Yelp

See it for yourself!

RentSentinel Social Facebook Analytics

“This accomplishment is a direct result of the collaborative spirit between the RentSentinel and Yardi Teams,” says President Eric Broughton “Being a verified interface vendor with Yardi will provide a more seamless service to our mutual customers and greatly improve the quality of data over using a custom integration. The best part of this announcement is that the service is free to Yardi and RentSentinel customers! We’re proud and excited about this new partnership.”

Yardi is the nation’s leading provider of high-performance software solutions for the multifamily real estate industry. As of September, RentSentinel is located on Yardi’s Client Central Site as a MITS (Multifamily Information and Transaction Standards) compliant property management solution.

Benefits Include:

• Simplified and easy implementation process
• Provides customers their most up-to-date pricing, availability and property data, plus the insertion of guest cards with sources and events
• Flexibility to set-up integration according to customer schedule
• Capability to implement with existing and new customers
• Scalability to work on all Voyager or Interface Plug In versions
• Affordability, it’s free
• Seamless interface with Yardi for import and export of end-to-end customer activity
• Approved by Yardi means that the integration is supported through upgrades and patches
• Formidable combination of Marketing Management and Property Management
• Comprehensive management of customer portfolios from importing marketing and lead generated contacts to exporting existing customer data to managing leases, social networks and guestcard activity

About Yield Technologies

Yield Technologies is a leader in the next evolution of Real Estate technology and services. Capitalizing on its’ industry experience, Yield builds innovative solutions that increase overall profitability and productivity.

Yield Technologies implements solutions that integrate data warehouses, ERP implementations, management dashboards, and revenue management solutions to companies across the globe. Yield Technologies focuses on providing companies with visibility that demonstrates how well their people, processes, and tools work together through the use of various metrics.

The Yield Technologies management tools are an essential feature for the success of the multifamily industry, and the company continues to grow and expand through modern and innovative technology.

About RentSentinel

RentSentinel, owned and managed by Yield Technologies, is a fully featured Marketing Management System for the Multi-Family industry. Geared toward the management of property portfolios, RentSentinel’s suite of products puts the power of marketing, prospect, and lease operations in the hands of leasing professionals. RentSentinel is an innovative solution that markets, measures, and manages the full lifecycle of activities from listing to lease.

Today I’m writing a new blog about ghosting. It’s actually more of a story. I call this entry ‘The Nightmare before Craigsmas’. Some of you might be saying, is this new blog’s title a play on a Tim Burton movie title? No. Now let’s move on.

This blog is about a place I’ve come to discover over the last three years. I call this place Craigslist Town and it’s a world filled with werewolf spammers, cranky elves, automated posting monsters, ad flagging vampires, misinformation ghouls, identity goblins, and of course ghosted ads. The mayor of Craigslist Town is a fellow by the name of &ltcough&gt, Craig. Craig is in charge of all the craziness in Craigslist Town, and ultimately it’s his job to make sure that Craigslist Town remains crazy by randomly punishing people that do and don’t follow his town’s rules.

About 2.5 years ago Hank “The Sentinel King” emerged from the shadows of Craigslist Town. Hank began leading demonstrations of how the citizens of Craigslist Town could become nice and possibly less crazy by following some simple rules. And to this day those rules have worked quite well as Hank has a huge following of citizens that play by the rules and are less crazed: no more than one ad per hour; use a single computer; refresh their content; and use a unique static IP address. Yes, I’m aware I just drifted from the story…stay with me.

One day Hank and his trusty dog, Flaggo, took a stroll through the Forest of Broker Ads; a horribly dark and dense forest of trees upon trees. On Hank’s mind was a feeling that something was missing in Craigslist Town. It was here in the forest that Hank stumbled on a random door. He found that he ‘liked’ this door. Flaggo yelped his approval, and a bird tweeted as he turned the door’s knob. Hank had found a portal to Social Town.

Social Town was an amazing and beautiful place. Hank couldn’t believe how the citizens were so friendly. They all seemed to like each other, and everyone was sharing news with one another. Cute little birds were tweeting as they flew overhead. Hank couldn’t walk more than a few steps without someone commenting about the wonderful weather.

Suddenly, someone poked Hank in the back. Hank turned around and there was the mayor of Social Town, Mark. “Welcome, my friend! I understand you’re new here. I hope that you become a fan of our town. You’ll find it’s a lovely place to live, and we’re of course pet friendly!”

Hank was confused. “No ghosts? No elves? Nobody has asked me to verify my phone number?” Hank was pressing for words when he finally said, “This is what I’ve been looking for; this is what I need to bring back to Craigslist Town.” Hank had decided it was time to takeover Social Town and bring its benefits back to his followers in Craigslist Town.

On November 1st, Hank promises the biggest holiday of them all. Craigslist Town comes together with Social Town for The Nightmare Before Craigsmas…

What if increasing your leads by 20% was an accomplishable task? You better believe it is! It’s understandable why property management companies struggle to balance marketing properties online and finding time for customer service. Without the help of a marketing management tool, who has time to form customer relationships? No one does! But we didn’t give up that easily, that’s why RentSentinel created a solution.

We caught up with Sarah Greenough, Chief Marketing Officer at Princeton Properties, for expert assistance. We discussed the proven benefits of property management software along with the positive effects it has on employees.

Princeton Properties has 6,500 units at 35 different locations; they currently have 28 RentSentinel Marketer accounts activated. The Marketer product posts to all directory listings sites, simplifies the Craigslist process and, with the evolution of integration, attaches to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. That sounds easy enough because it is, but Sarah recalls many years she didn’t have a marketing management system streamlining property activity.

“We had a need for ‘prettier’ property ads that were posted more frequently,” she says, “but our site teams didn’t have time to create and post on a regular basis; plus we didn’t have a solid method to monitor ad success.” To minimize her struggle Sarah hired a company to post all property information to Craigslist. “I spent hours creating spreadsheets with property information including pricing, amenities, availability etc., I also provided a schedule with dates and post/repost times to ensure things were updated consistently,” she says, noting this went on for quite a while; and though it functioned, it didn’t eliminate tedious tasks or save time. The process lacked benefit because creating spreadsheets and giving direction was equally as frustrating for Sarah as doing it herself.

“This is when I found RentSentinel,” reports Greenough, stating that Princeton Properties needed a content management system that organized property information, in one centralized location, with no hassle. “Using RentSentinel provided immediate value to our company; our site teams noticed improved internal and external communication, and from a structural point of view it’s fantastic,” adds Greenough.

Currently, 20% of Princeton Properties lead sources find their apartments thru Craigslist; whereas in 2008, less than 1% of leads were a result of Craigslist. This proves the ads RentSentinel builds are not only valuable, but meticulously executed in conjunction with posting times. “Adding prospects thru Craigslist makes our company less dependent on expensive lead sources,” says Greenough.

Additionally, RentSentinel provides numerous reports that measure ad success. Marketer users, on the Managerial level, receive daily emails displaying charts, ghosting lists, high/low ad views and more. Once Sarah deploys the info to her team it’s easy to effectively communicate and monitor next steps with apartment shoppers. “RentSentinel provides excellent customer service; the support teams trained our staff, advised on content direction and made the process fun,” Greenough explains. “There’s self-fulfillment in organization,” she says, adding that she has three favorite reports.

Princeton Properties’ Most Admired RentSentinel Reports:

• Title Success Report: First impressions are everything, find out which titles gain the most traction
• Content Refresh Rate Form: This report rocks because it helps quiet everyone’s worst nightmare, ghosting!
• Portfolio Overview: ‘Broad stroke’ summary of the entire portfolio, high level updates

MultiFamily leasing teams are now daily users of many web based products that can deflect the importance of real customer relationships. Implementing a content management system allows companies like Princeton Properties to leave the concaved desk chair; meet people and lease apartments. “We aren’t robots, we must humanize this process,” explains Greenough, “RentSentinel optimistically can free up the leasing teams time and puts the focus on customer service.”

Any effective apartment manager understands the significance of long term relationships with customers from the prospect stage to the signed lease to the renewal and/or move out stage. Catching up with Princeton Properties verifies the benefits of a content management solution and inspires RentSentinel to continuously add valuable products to our platform. Stay tuned for new, innovative products coming soon!

Stationed in the heart of Chicago’s loop, the larger space will provide an optimized work environment and function as the corporate headquarters. With the expansion of the product platform into online leasing, lead management, social media and mobile solutions, the move emphasizes RentSentinel’s commitment to developing excellent products that meet the growing needs of Property Management Companies.

“Over the last year, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in business opportunities; based off our growth and product diversification we had no choice but to relocate. The consolidation will streamline our services with our key goal in mind, to provide our clients the best marketing management solution in the multifamily industry,” says Steven Small, CEO. “This will enhance the synergy of our staff and provide a more conducive work space, with opportunity for expansion. We are very excited!”

Yield Technologies will leave their current location, 200 West Monroe, Suite 1675, where they have been since 2007.

About Yield Technologies

Yield Technologies is a leader in the next evolution of Real Estate technology and services. Capitalizing on its industry experience, Yield builds innovative solutions that increase overall profitability and productivity. Yield Technologies implements solutions that integrate data warehouses, ERP implementations, management dashboards, and revenue management solutions to companies across the globe. Yield Technologies focuses on providing companies with visibility that demonstrates how well their people, processes, and tools work together through the use of various metrics. The Yield Technologies management tools are an essential feature for the success of the multifamily industry, and the company continues to grow and expand through modern and innovative technology.

About RentSentinel

RentSentinel, owned and managed by Yield Technologies, is a fully featured Marketing Management System for the Multi-Family industry. Geared toward the management of property portfolios, RentSentinel’s suite of products puts the power of marketing, prospect, and lease operations in the hands of leasing professionals. RentSentinel is an innovative solution that markets, measures, and manages the full lifecycle of activities from listing to lease.