As we put a bow on 2022, our team has applied some significant updates and additions to RentVision's marketing and revenue products in our mission to make renting apartments easy.
Predictive Digital Advertising
Important Changes Coming To RentVision's Digital Advertising Services
This past year, RentVision rolled out our Predictive Advertising solution with two separate versions. One version alternated ad spend between either a high budget or low budget depending upon a community's Future Occupancy. The other solution alternated spending incrementally between high and low budgets depending upon Future Occupancy at a community's floorplan and bedroom levels.
We evaluated our separate Predictive Advertising packages and found utilizing the stair-stepped budget model, which makes smaller incremental changes to ad spending, to be the most beneficial to the client. With this in mind, we have made the decision to upgrade all Predictive Ads accounts to receive incremental spending based upon bedroom and floorplan Future Occupancy beginning January 5, 2023.
This change includes sunsetting the Beta package and reverting those partners to our standard digital advertising solution. (Those partners on the foundation package utilizing digital ads will not experience any differences with this change.)
Stair-stepped budgets dynamically change ad spending according to the differential between a community's bedroom and floorplan Future Occupancies and its Future Occupancy Target. Instead of switching between your pre-set high and low ad budgets, a stair-step model allows spending amounts to adjust gradually between those values, optimizing budgets overall. Furthermore, we can often target specific search terms in Google, like '2-bedrooms', when you have vacancies in your 2-bedroom floorplan.
Community Websites
Cleaned Up The Look Of The Featured Floorplans Section
We redesigned the cards in the Featured Floorplans section of community websites to have a cleaner look. Before, critical details about each floorplan, including the bedroom/bathroom count, square footage, price, and advertised special, were shown over the image of the floorplan within the individual cards.
Now those pieces of information are shown in a small section below the card, allowing prospective residents to see more of the photo of the individual floorplan. Redesigning the cards makes it easier to see key details about the floorplans and improves the color contrast of the cards—which we did in our ongoing effort to improve the accessibility of RentVision community websites.
Coming Early 2023: Ability To Link Photos To Amenities
We can link photos to any community or floorplan amenity beginning early next year on our partners' websites. Amenities with a photo link will have a camera icon next to them. If a user clicks the icon, a slideshow will appear with up to 5 photos of that amenity.
Analytics & Advising
Designed The New Future Occupancy Graph For The RentVision Platform
Partners with the Future Occupancy integration will now be able to log in to the RentVision Platform, accurately forecast what's coming down the road at a specific apartment community, and see how our dynamic marketing system is reacting to those changes.
The new Future Occupancy graph shows the historical difference between a community's occupancy and its Future Occupancy target. The data in the blue-shaded section shows what a community's Future Occupancy projects to be in the next couple of weeks.
The three cards above the graph provide a quick glimpse into relevant data, such as the community's Future Occupancy compared to the target (top left) and Current Ad Budget (middle). Next, we'll dive more into the card at the top right—'Recommendations.'
Created Automated Recommendations To Give Teams Actionable Tasks Towards Optimizing Marketing, Leasing, & Revenue
We're now providing automated recommendations to our partners using Future Occupancy integration. Our AI system evaluates critical data points daily to determine actions on-site teams or managers should take to optimize their community's marketing, leasing, or revenue.
We will show these recommendations on the card at the top right of the Future Occupancy graph. Users can hover over and click the number of active recommendations to open a pop-up window that details the recommendations and sorts them by category, priority, action needed, reason, and active duration.
The new feature erases any doubt or conflict in decision-making by giving apartment teams actionable and evidential cases for critical tasks.
Enhanced The Calls Card In The Marketing Analytics Leads Page Of The RentVision Platform
In the Marketing Analytics Leads page of the RentVision Platform, we've updated the Calls Card to include a Percentage Of Calls Answered pie chart to make it easier for partners to evaluate critical phone call performance data. This vital information impacts leasing agent evaluation and can diagnose issues hurting leasing performance.
Started Showing Key Availability & Rent Details With The New Floorplan Performance Table
The Floorplan Performance Table helps our partners see their floorplans' Future Occupancy and comparison to Future Occupancy Target, current and historical rent changes, as well as trailing 12-month rents and occupancy. Partners with Future Occupancy integration can now get a clear breakdown of each floorplan's status with real-time data insights, which is vital for identifying and addressing vacancies at the floorplan and bedroom levels first before they become community-wide issues.
Improved The Main Navigation In The RentVision Platform
A key initiative in 2022 was to simplify our navigation and provide a more straightforward path to find the specific metrics our partners are looking for in the RentVision Platform. To that end, we renewed the main menu in the Platform, as shown in the graphic above. There was also work done on further simplifying navigation that we're excited to share soon!
Created The Monthly Report Card And Made Key Improvements To The Weekly Report Email
We significantly improved our unparalleled reporting tools by enhancing the Weekly Report email and creating the Monthly Report.
The Monthly Report is a PDF sent to partners that shows vital marketing, leasing, and revenue data for each apartment community. We dedicated an entire blog to explain the insightful apartment analytics included in the Monthly Report.
Additionally, we've applied upgrades to the Weekly Report, a PDF document jam-packed with essential analytics, which is sent to partners' email inboxes every Tuesday. The video below explains in detail what users can see and how they can use our Weekly Report:
Photo & Video
Upgraded Camera Equipment To Shoot In HDR
Our media team upgraded their camera equipment and switched their workflow to capture media in HDR (High Definition Resolution) format. HDR better shows shadows and highlights, improving photos' overall quality. Not only does HDR enhance an apartment community's visual content, but our team was also able to add these photos to websites without impacting page speed or loading times.
And in the continuous effort to improve website accessibility, alt-text is being added to all photos on our partners' websites, and audio descriptions are being added to walkthrough video tours.