Kill the Guest Card as We Know It

October 17, 2009
By

I was perusing some of my favorite blogs this Saturday morning over some coffee and ran across one of my favorites, The Social Media Marketing Blog, by our own Detroit Scott Monty, His blog titled Why Apple and Google Win and Your Company Doesn’t could so directly speak to our Apartment Industry about our sacred Guest Cards.

Guest Cards are Dumb, Drop Them, or at least simplify them. All you need are

1) An Email Address

2) A Cell Phone Number

That’s It! Anything else is such an aggravation to the prospect, and information you just don’t use. I am sure the apartment market gurus will argue this point, and I encourage them to shed the old ways, as prospects just don’t want to answer all those questions, nor do we as an industry really use any of the information.

From Scott’s Blog Post;

It’s all about usability.

googleproduct

Common sense dictates that the easier something is to accomplish, the more readily it will be passed along. What information do you ask your customers to submit? And of that, which is really necessary? Less is more.

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;

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  • Mike

    I don't know many good apartment peeps that use the card in the fashion you are implying. The really good ones get the phone and the email – as you suggest – and the rest comes out of conversation with the prospect and is recorded after they leave. I think the information is very helpful – especially when marketing a larger community. I do think it should all be digitized – so if you are suggesting getting rid of the paper version – AMEN. If your impying getting rid of the whole thing with the exception of the email and phone number – I respectfully disagree. Maybe it works for really small communities or a number of small very similar communites in a small geographic area but I can't imagine leasing big 900 unit communites without the kind of trend information a guest card provides.

  • Eric Brown

    Hey Mike, Thanks for stopping by,I am interested in your comment and understanding how information on a Guest Card would help you market an apartment community? Are you implying there are underling trends reveled on Guest Cards? I am advocating to get rid of the whole thing, and do not think it has any different impact on a 20 unit community or a 2,000 unit community. It my years of watching leasing folks at VG, the Guest Card information was half baked at best, as it came from fragmented post it notes mostly, or someone trying to just get the information filled out for the regional marketing director for the feared Monday Marketing Meetings, of which just produced mounds and mounds of silly reports. The larger question is, what does anyone do with the Guest Card information anyway, what is the Value, verses the Cost? It seems the focus should be in increasing Tours per Leasing Consultant, and Lowering the Cost per Lease, which starts with helping them purge and delete some of the traditional things they are doing because they have always been done that way.

  • Mark Juleen

    Eric, I think Mike has a point with managing a larger community or even a larger portfolio. As company's grow it becomes more challenging to oversee each customer touch point. You are in a unique situation in that you touch nearly every customer that leases at Urbane. You also have an intimate relationship with each member of your leasing team. Larger companies may not have that luxury and still would like to get a pulse on how customer transactions are being handled. That being said, having a formula or game plan that a guest card can help provide for a customer visit is a great tool for training and for having consistency. Yes, each customer situation is going to vary, but having a game plan going into the meeting is much better than winging it. Not everyone is a great story teller, and may need some triggers to help get them through. I'm the intimate relationship you have with your staff helps keep this process more open. If you were bringing in new staff more frequently, and having to train more often you too would want a more consistent method that can be aided by a guest card. I'll agree with you that a majority of the information on the card could be viewed as irrelevant, but the card should be a tool for building a conversation and not just building data. We use it as a way to add some structure and consistency to a customer experience while building a relationship. It's not a tool just to gather info. That being said, entering that info into our management software can help develop some ongoing demographic and marketing information that can be helpful.So, "kill the guest card as we know it" … kind of, I suppose. It should be a tool that helps a leasing associate build a relationship. It may gather more information than a name and email address, but it should also not be used as a canned way to "process" a customer. If using it to "process" as customer is the "guest card as we know it," then, yes, kill it. It's about the experience, and I feel the guest card can help guide that experience if used properly. So I don't think they should be killed all together, but used in the right way to build a relationship and experience. It can be done, and can be very helpful for many.