How HubSpot can improve tenant retention in Build-to-Rent

Build-to-Rent is an emerging trend in the property industry, which offers rental accommodation specifically designed for long-term tenants. One of the biggest challenges in Build-to-Rent is tenant retention, which is directly linked to profitability. Retaining tenants for longer periods reduces the costs of acquiring new tenants and increases the lifetime value of each customer. In this case study, we will discuss how a digital agency used HubSpot to improve tenant retention for a Build-to-Rent property management company.

Background

Our client is a Build-to-Rent property management company with several properties across the UK. Facing high tenant turnover rates, which resulted in higher operational costs and lower profits, they approached our agency to help them improve tenant retention and increase the lifetime value of their customers.

Strategy

After a thorough analysis of the client’s business, we developed a three-pronged approach to improve tenant retention:

  1. Personalised Communication
    We recommended creating a communication strategy that focused on personalizing communication with tenants. We developed a communication plan that included regular check-ins, personalized messages, and notifications based on tenants’ preferences. Using HubSpot’s marketing automation tools, we automated much of this communication, freeing up the property management team’s time and resources.
  2. Enhancing Tenant Experience
    We identified areas where we could improve the tenant experience, such as upgrading common areas, providing better amenities, and organizing community events. By leveraging HubSpot’s CRM tools, we were able to keep track of tenant preferences and feedback, allowing us to tailor the tenant experience to their needs.
  3. Streamlining Maintenance
    We streamlined maintenance requests and ensured timely resolution of issues by using HubSpot’s ticketing system. By centralizing maintenance requests, we were able to track issues more efficiently and ensure they were resolved in a timely manner. This resulted in happier tenants and improved tenant retention.

Results

The implementation of our HubSpot-based strategy had a significant impact on our client’s tenant retention rates. Within six months of implementation, our client’s tenant retention rate had increased by 20%. We were also able to reduce operational costs by automating much of the communication and maintenance processes.

Conclusion

In conclusion, by leveraging HubSpot’s marketing automation and CRM tools, we were able to improve tenant retention rates for our Build-to-Rent property management client. Our approach focused on personalized communication, enhancing the tenant experience, and streamlining maintenance. By centralizing these processes using HubSpot’s tools, we were able to improve tenant satisfaction, reduce operational costs, and increase the lifetime value of our client’s customers.

Visibility of the sales funnel

Way of Life has a complex customer journey where leads can join at any part of the journey. For the marketing team, it has been not easy to visualise the conversion rate of their leads and to estimate the ROI of their spending.

By using Snowflake to extract and transform their CRM data, and by using Tableau to visualise it, a clear sales funnel was created to show exactly how leads joined at different stages of the journey. This has helped the marketing team to identify the most effective lead sources for each location and to calculate their ROI.

Client: Way of Life
Benefit:  Understanding the customer journey, calculation of ROI
Platforms involved: Snowflake, Tableau

Managing Lack of Stock

Way of Life didn’t have stock available during high-demand periods. Leads entered their website and couldn’t see any units available.

This was the end of the customer journey for many leads. As a solution, a HubSpot form was embedded when the search results showed that no units were available to rent. The form captures the lead’s information and search preferences. Then the sales team receive a notification that a lead has been entered into the waiting list pipeline in the CRM. These leads are the first to be called when a unit becomes available and it has been showing good conversion rates. The implementation has included other automation such as filtering leads by budget and closing leads whose preferred move in date has passed. This has allowed the sales team to focus on the leads with a higher chance to convert. The solution has reduced the marketing cost as units are offered to the waiting list and sometimes have been let before being advertised.

Client: Way of Life
Benefit: Time savings, reduce advertising costs.
Platforms involved: Wagtail, HubSpot

Set up tenancies with one click

Setting up a tenancy was a time-consuming and inducing to human error task. It involved multiple people entering the same data in multiple systems.

With an API integration through multiple platforms, the information is entered and checked once in the first platform, and then is passed to the next stages with only one click. All the fields will be passed to the next platform, saving time and avoiding data entry errors. The integration has helped Way of Life to save 15 minutes per tenancy created and significantly reduced the amount of data errors on their system.

Client: Way of Life
Benefit: Time savings, reduce data entry errors
Platforms involved: Bespoke portal development, Rent Profile, Qube.


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