Blueprint to Multifamily Success: Prioritizing Qualified Leads for Maximum Efficiency

The ability to identify and prioritize the most qualified multifamily prospects is key to maximizing occupancy rates and rental income while maintaining the efficiency of your onsite teams. So, whether those teams are responding to leads in the order they come in — or utilizing an ad hoc approach — prioritization based on likelihood-to-lease insights can help dramatically improve your conversion rates. This enhanced level of lead prioritization is a powerful tool that improves the performance of multifamily communities while providing leasing teams with meaningful competitive advantage.

That advantage is critical for today’s multifamily operators. Earlier this year, Bisnow reported on how changes in demand are putting renters in the driver’s seat. “With vacancies rising and rent growth cooling, bargaining power is shifting away from landlords. The consequences of prolonged rent declines could be broader than individual landlords taking hits to their bottom lines.”¹

Add to these macro issues the fact that onsite teams are frequently pulled in different directions — one moment focused on filling available units, the next on delivering resident experiences — and the need for data-driven prioritization becomes clear. Responding without knowing which leads are most likely to convert is a waste of valuable resources and opportunities.

In this blog post, we’ll explore the importance of identifying and prioritizing your most qualified leads, why AI-enabled lead prioritization is a crucial strategy in accelerating apartment leasing demand, and how you can use automation to increase lead-to-lease conversion rates.

5 ways to identify more qualified leads — and then prioritize them

#1 – Embrace Transparency in Availability and Pricing

One way to effectively qualify multifamily leads is by providing greater transparency in availability and pricing. Let prospects self-qualify by allowing them to view the availability status and prices for all your units. You can make this information known through:

• Integrated Online Leasing that automatically updates your website with the latest unit availability and pricing while also providing 24/7 ability to lease independently
• Smart Digital Advertising that serves dynamic ads with pricing and availability — integrated with multiple PMSs — empowering leads to prequalify themselves

Providing prospects with this information empowers them to do much of the prequalifying — from self-selecting the units that meet their size and price ranges to contacting you directly regarding their interest. Transparency allows your teams to focus their limited hours and energies on the most promising prospects while simply avoiding any leads that aren’t the right fit.

#2 – Enable Lead Tracking

Another way to successfully prioritize leads is by putting a robust lead-tracking system in place. Lead-tracking allows multifamily teams to carefully assess lead sources, allowing them to manage and track the entirety of your marketing channels — from Google Ads and email campaigns to internet listing services. Tracking lets you know where exactly your leads are coming from, enabling you to invest your budget on the best channels. Likewise, organizing your lead tracking by source helps you quickly determine which platform and marketing campaigns are the most productive for your business.

#3 – Automate Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is the practice of gauging a prospect’s level of interest and likelihood to rent. Using modern AI-enabled tools like a CRM, the lead-scoring process can be automated to help leasing agents prioritize leads. When a highly qualified lead is captured in a CRM, leasing agents can be notified of the lead and take the necessary steps to nurture the prospect.

#4 – Respond Rapidly

The ability to respond rapidly is another important way to capture qualified leads. This can be achieved through AI-driven chatbots and virtual assistants that provide instant responses to prospect inquiries, even during weekends and after hours. The tools can answer common questions, provide information about your properties and schedule onsite tours. If prospects are using these tools to inquire about a unit, there is a high likelihood that they’ve prequalified themselves. In competitive markets, it may also mean that they want to act now and will sign a lease with the community that responded first with answers to their questions — making anytime responsiveness and availability essential to leasing teams.

Start prioritizing your best leads now

Prioritization of the most qualified leads is a critical strategy in the increasingly competitive multifamily industry. For operators who want to fill units quickly and efficiently, lead prioritization is the answer for maximizing efficiency, improving conversion rates and providing an exceptional customer experience.

Contact RealPage® to learn how your company can use data-driven insights to drive lead quality. And discover how your onsite and remote teams can harness the power of lead prioritization with Demand^X™, the industry-leading multifamily intelligence solution designed to accelerate leasing demand and achieve maximum occupancy for your communities.

¹Bargaining Power Is Shifting Toward Tenants As Multifamily Rent Growth Dissipates - Bisnow.com, Olivia Lueckemeyer, June 13, 2023