Live chat can improve multifamily marketing conversions by offering prospects speed, convenience, and a more comfortable way to communicate.
Marketing for property developers has evolved considerably in the past few years. In particular, one innovation holds immense promise to improve digital conversions. According to Neil Patel’s research, just including live chat on a multifamily marketing agency website can improve conversion rates by as much as 45 percent. Beyond improved digital conversions, live chat also enhances the customer experience and saves time.
Look into the reasons why property development marketing plans should include live chat to connect with renters.
Why a multifamily family marketing agency should use live chat
Conversion Logix offers live chat technology solutions. According to them, the best live chat solutions for apartment marketing mix technology with people on the other end of the chat line. They backed up the effectiveness of their solution with performance data from their own marketing for property developers:
- Five-year average response speed: Their solution employs live agents. Over five years, they maintained an average response time of only five seconds.
- Query-to-lead conversion rates: About 75 percent of potential renters submitted contact information.
- Scheduled-tour conversion rates: One in three people who engaged in live chat scheduled an apartment tour.
Why does live chat perform better than other marketing channels?
While apartment marketers have employed live chat for years, today’s era of social distancing makes it particularly attractive. When combined with virtual tours, it provides a way to introduce renters to both a property and people without having to first schedule in-person visits.
Zendesk found that customers really do appreciate live chat sessions too. Their benchmark studies found that 92 percent of customers felt satisfied with live chat. They compared that with 88 percent who felt satisfied with a phone call, 85 percent with an email, and about 85 percent with Facebook or Twitter messages.
Some particular advantages of live chat include:
- Speed: It sometimes takes hours or even days to get responses through email or social media channels. Automated phone systems generally require users to dial through lots of annoying options. Compare that with the average response time of five seconds for live chat. This also helps establish the community as one that’s responsive to its renters.
- Convenience: In general, both agents and prospects can conduct a live chat session while they’re also doing something else. Since most people tend to message apartments during the day, they can chat while they’re working, supervising children, or browsing the internet.
- Comfort: Since people can chat from anywhere they have a device, they can make themselves comfortable. They can also begin the conversation fairly anonymously, so prospects tend to feel more comfortable asking questions than they do on the phone or in person.
Using live chat most effectively for apartment marketing
Just about everybody, including staff and consumers, already have experience using some sort of messaging software. That means incorporating live chat into property development marketing should not require a long learning curve. At the same time, staff should have some training to use the system and of course, to represent their apartments well.
Typically, chat sessions should begin with a professional and formal tone. As the conversation continues, the agent can use more casual and friendly language. For instance, most people don’t use complete sentences when they compose text messages, and it’s fine to adopt the style of the prospect.
Just as with any marketing, leasing agents should have a marketing goal in mind. For instance, they may hope to prompt people to complete a lead form, click through to a virtual tour, or schedule a visit. Along with these goals, it’s important to keep track of results to help measure performance and tune messaging.
Benefits of live chat for the leasing office
Not only does live chat offer speed and convenience to customers, it also saves representatives time. For example, today’s systems may include templates that the agents can use to greet customers or answer common questions. Prospects can use live chat while they’re attending to other tasks, and in general, so can apartment representatives.
Besides just using live chat for leasing, many apartment communities also employ it to provide customer service for current tenants. It’s a great way for renters to ask questions about service requests, events, or lease renewal specials. As live chat has evolved into consumer’s preferred method of communication, it’s also great for the leasing team.