Good Morning Friends
Apartment Industry Leader Tami Siewruk from MultifamilyPro sent me a tweet while on Twitter Saturday about a new product that she suggested we try out at the Urbane Lab.
Well, The Urbane Way is about trying new things. We appreciate our industry friends recommendations, thank you Tami! We will keep you all posted of the results.
The Rip Card
While not a complicated idea, the Rip Card enables you to track who referred your community to a prospect. It is a perforated business card, which you can order and customize right on their web site, which easily and instantly enables your existing residents or prospects, friends and associates to personally refer new prospects to you.
You personalize an incentive as to what you want to give away to the new prospect for leasing an apartment with you. And the very cool part about this perforated business card is that each half is individually numbered – you keep one half they get the other half, this way you can track exactly who referred you the new customers… and therefore give an incentive to everyone helping you lease your apartments. It seems that having a card that clearly outlines what they need to do and what they get for that will help make the program work better.
Prospects Referral Program
We are ordering our first set of these for Urbane Apartments this week, and will begin giving one of these to each prospect. Urbane has typically promoted a $300 referral fee for each referral lease we secure, but that was mostly aimed at existing residents. With the Rip Card we will infuse this as part of the Leasing and Touring Experience at Urbane and broaden our Referral Program significantly.
We also started giving each prospect, as a gift for touring an Urbane VIP Card as a take away. The Urbane VIP Card, which is a plastic card, similar to a Credit Card, when presented at participating area businesses offers significant discounts. It is a Win Win for the prospect, the local area participating businesses and Urbane.
Resident Referral Program
As outlined above, we have always had a Resident Referral Program in place. Our typical promotion of that has been door hangers. The Apartment Expert, Lisa Trosien suggested a couple of weeks ago that we launch a Double Rewards Program for new move ins, meaning that if the new resident refers someone and they lease an apartment from Urbane within the first (75) days then that resident gets a Double Rewards. The simple beauty of the Rip Card is that it allows you to write in on the card what your special is, so we can customize the Referral Program between Prospects that get $300 per referral and residents who get $600 per referral.
As always, we shall keep you posted as to what works and what doesn’t and why at the Urbane Laboratory. Lisa and Tami, we thank you both for the suggestions and recommendations!
Make it a Great Week!
Eric’s background is rooted in the rental and real estate industries. He founded metro Detroit’s Urbane Apartments in 2003, after serving as senior vice president for a major Midwest apartment developer. He established a proven track record of effectively repositioning existing rental properties in a way that added value for investors while enhancing the resident experience.
He also established The Urbane Way, a social media marketing and PR laboratory, where innovative marketing ideas are tested. Eric has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine and Business Week Magazine.
You can connect with Eric_Urbane on Twitter.
Eric also writes regular articles for the following publications;
Related Posts -
Lead a Tribe I have been fortunate enough to be involved in a Social Web Site, Trilibes.com launched and led by Seth Godin, who is coining a name for Social Networks as Tribes. It was by invitation only, and has been an interesting and learning experience at watching and participating at how easy...... - FOLLOW HYUNDIA'S LEAD Urbane Lab Project #010609 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEJanuary 6, 2009Contact:Eric Brown248.767.4460eric@urbaneapts.comURBANE APARTMENTS GIVES RENTERS HIT BY RECESSION A WAY OUTRenters who experience an “involuntary loss of income” in 2009 can get out of their lease with the local apartment company’s “carefree Freedom Lease.”In a local economy that is experiencing falling home prices and double-digit unemployment,......
-
Give People Something to Talk About; Word of Mouth Marketing Do you spread your ad and marketing dollars around, or put all your eggs in one basket? While there are solid arguments to spreading things around, at Urbane Apartments we are putting all of our Marketing Budget not in one basket, but in one truck in 2011.While I always sort of wanted a Taco...... - All Blog Posts Are Not Created SEO Equal We have been working on lots of different ideas here at the Urbane Way Laboratory about how to show up differently on Google Search Results. Urbane Apartments recently entered a new market, and wanted to get to Page One of a Google Search for "Apartments Birmingham MI"Community BlogsWe have long......
- Apartment Marketing; Videos to Enhance the Prospects Experience Good Morning Apartment Marketing Friends,We are doing some Video Marketing Experiments here at the Urbane Lab on our own apartment portfolio, Urbane Apartments as viewed on our Home Page, "Go Solo". We are drilling down deeper into further Enhancing the Prospects Experience, and we want to start before they ever......
Related Websites - Prosper Launches Referral Program Rewards Existing Members for New Borrowers and New Lenders Prosper.com just launched a referral program rewarding existing members for referring new borrowers and new lenders. New lenders are also rewarded for being referred with a $25 bonus. This replaces the Group Leader match rewards, but not the payment rewards. New borrowers brought to Prosper are are worth 0.5% of the loan value......
- How to Leverage Online Surveys and Get More Responses When it comes to running a successful business, online or offline, one of the most important factors is having a great deal of knowledge about your customer base. You don't want to have to guess at what your prospects really want, you should find ways to actually learn this from......
- Prosper Group Match Rewards Cancelled in Favor of Referral Program As any serious Prosper lender will tell you, Groups don't make make much sense for lenders.  What is the benefit? Sure I have a group and sure my group (all lenders) get benefits (such as early looks at analysis I am working on), but in general why would a lender want......
- Resident Referral Tracking Urbane Lab # 061509 Good Morning FriendsApartment Industry Leader Tami Siewruk from MultifamilyPro sent me a tweet while on Twitter Saturday about a new product that she suggested we try out at the Urbane Lab. Well, The Urbane Way is about trying new things. We appreciate our industry friends recommendations, thank you Tami! We......
-
Small Business Financing: Taking Advantage Of Credit Cards And Knowing When To Avoid Them If you’re looking at starting a small business, you may be overwhelmed by the prospect of finding a way to fund your new venture. While there are a variety of options out there, one size does not fit all, and you’ll want to take a careful look at your own......
