Marketing automation has been subject to a lot of hype lately, and there is a reason for that! This buzzworthy technology incorporates software platforms and technologies seamlessly into marketing departments so marketers may work more effectively across multiple online channels such as email, social media, and websites.
Now, marketers are actively searching for the perfect software that will manage their social media, maintain their lead pipeline, and send and create SMS and email marketing campaigns. Using such tools, marketers can focus on other tasks that require manual work, lightening the repetitious part of their workload while still achieving the same results.
As of last year, 55 percent of companies are now utilizing marketing automation in their company’s advertising strategy. In fact, 79 percent of the top-performing companies have been using marketing automation for over two years.
75 percent of companies using marketing automation reported seeing an increase in ROI in just twelve months, and 80 percent of businesses using automation also have an increase in leads. Overall, 91 percent of the most successful businesses agree that marketing automation is “very important” to the overall success of their marketing strategy.
The International Data Corporation, or IDC, predicts Chief Marketing Officers will drive 32.3 billion dollars into marketing technology spending by 2018, reaching an annual growth rate of 12.4 percent. The Marketing Automation Industry alone will hit 1.9 billion dollars by 2020.
Aside from taking repetitive tasks out of marketer’s hands, other benefits of marketing automation include: allowing marketers to focus on newer, more exciting projects, better targeting of customers and prospects, improving the overall customer experience, reduction of human error in campaigns, and the ability to manage leads and multichannel marketing more efficiently.
So how can you, as a multifamily housing professional, use marketing automation to your benefit?
Just as software has changed the way we do business, marketing automation is doing the same. Marketing integration applications showcase scalability, prioritization, and effectiveness of marketing efforts and is beneficial in branding and marketing communities with different budgets and of different sizes. Property management companies who use integrated automated applications tend to be more efficient, better organized, and more profitable.
The best part is you no longer need a dedicated team of operators, marketers, and IT experts to effectively execute a marketing automation strategy. You, along with 74 percent of respondents, can enjoy the technology’s ability to save time: businesses using marketing automation see increased customer engagement at 68 percent and increased opportunities at 58 percent.
Without automated marketing, your company is missing out on the interest of prospective residents and the opportunity to keep in touch with those very prospects. Marketing automation can help pinpoint someone earlier in their apartment-seeking journey. Once you become aware of what your prospect wants, where they are looking, and how much they are willing to spend, you can begin to nurture them—eventually taking them through the entire resident lifecycle.
To fully experience all the benefits of this 21st century tool, multifamily companies need to establish a data warehouse. Data allows you to identify prospects, evaluate prospect behavior, target their needs, and nurture them through generation and renewal. Whichever way you choose to approach your marketing strategy through automation, many multifamily companies now see marketing automation for leasing apartments playing a bigger role in their strategic goals for 2018 and beyond.