Read this before you decide to add a digital leasing agent to your team.
Multifamily marketers are a fascinating group of people. They are constantly looking over the horizon and looking for the next game-changing product on the market. BetterBot benefited from this, especially in the early days when we needed early adopters that believed that digital leasing agents could revolutionize the leasing process.
While the initial hype may get you in the door, relationships in this industry are built on results. That meant analytical marketers quickly started requesting data that could show ROI before agreeing to move past the pilot stage and onto a portfolio-wide deployment.
The first calculations of ROI closely mimicked estimates of other products commonly found in multifamily marketing. This meant measuring visitor and lead conversion and additional revenue side calculations. It was imperative to show how quickly a digital leasing agent could move prospects from one tier of the funnel to the next. The goal was for visitors on marketing and advertising channels to engage with the digital leasing agent and continue on the path to a scheduled tour and, eventually, a signed lease agreement. It makes sense, right?
There is nothing wrong with the ROI calculations above except that they are one-dimensional and don’t consider that digital leasing agents are designed to save massive amounts of time no matter which leasing tasks they are automating. For example, the revenue side ROI calculations make more sense in a lease-up but not nearly as much in a property with a high occupancy rate. In a high occupancy scenario, a digital leasing agent might do even more heavy lifting in fielding many availability requests but not contributing to a higher number of leases. Based on this, it only makes sense that we use the time saved as part of the ROI calculation.
Calculating ROI correctly has never been as crucial as now due to historic labor shortages forcing property managers to rely on automation. Luckily, automation tools on the market promise to give you a return in multiples of your investment. Just make sure to ask for the correct data demonstrating time savings before committing to a solution.
