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 Brown
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 Urbane Media, 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 Urbane_Media on Twitter. Eric also writes regular articles for the following publications; Multi Housing News Social Media Examiner Search Engine Guide
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