Real Estate Journal — Green Buildings — January 26 - February 8, 2018 — 19B
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G reen B uildings By Lisa Cassidy, ecoImagine Three digital marketing methods every property manager can use to promote recycling
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address and mobile number when they are renewing their lease, paying their rent or even making a complaint. Next, create a content sched- ule for the year, then set-up educational emails featuring tips, reminders, important links or videos, to go out to residents twice a month. Email messages that are personalized are typi- cally the most effective. People are more likely to open an email if they see their name in the subject line. Content marketing tools like Hubspot allow you to use personalization tokens throughout your email to per-
sonalize messages even further. Hubspot can also connect to all your social media pages so you can set-up social media posts to be released all at once in just a matter of minutes. So- cial media is a great way to rally groups of people around a com- mon goal, so make sure to set- up a page for your building on Facebook, Twitter or Google+. Which social media outlet you choose really depends on what you plan to say, how you plan to say it (short, long or with images or video) and how often. Between emails, you may want to text residents, par-
ticularly if you need to alert everyone at once about an urgent matter. TextUs.com allows users to send up to 250 text messages at once using their online platform. You can personalize messages, use your work phone number (versus your personal phone) and sched- ule texts ahead of time. In conclusion, it’s important that you choose a digital format that is convenient for residents so they get, understand and act on your message. There are many tools that offer automa- tion, scheduling and real-time reports – be sure to use one that
makes sense for you and your organization. Most importantly, you will want to set-up metrics that show how your recycling pro- gram has evolved over time. Whether you use recycling rates, trash removal costs or satisfaction surveys as your gauge, it is important to have a way to way to see just howmuch progress you have made in your recycling program. Lisa Cassidy is founder and senior strategist at eco- Imagine. n 1 h t t p : / / www . nmh c . o r g / C o n t e n t . aspx?id=4708 2 https://www.propertymanagementin- sider.com/adopting-recycling-multifamily
Survey, there aremore than 18.9 million multifamily househo l ds in buildings with five or more units. If you include two to four
Lisa Cassidy
unit buildings, multifamily households represent 61% of all households in the US. 1 In recent years, most multifamily residents have begun viewing recycling programs as an added benefit. According to an article in Propertymanagementin- sider.com, in 2015, recycling was among the top five commu- nity amenities in the National Multifamily Housing Council/ Kingsley Apartment Resident Preferences Survey. 2 This is a pretty significant and welcome change. Histori- cally, resident turnover, space constraints and the inconve- nience of storing and sorting recycled materials has made it more challenging to get resi- dents of multifamily units to recycle correctly and consis- tently compared to single fam- ily dwellings. However, thanks to property managers, easily accessible collection points (in some cases on every floor) are nowmuch more common. Avail- ability of colored bins alongside trash dumpsters and easy to understand signage is also more the norm, then the exception. So, the question becomes, how do you continue to foster participation, while decreasing costs and increasing education? Simple. Frequent and clear communication. Okay, not so simple. However, we know it works. The growing trend in most successful recycling programs is to go to residents directly and on a continuous basis. The easiest and most cost- effective way to communicate with residents on a frequent and continuous basis is through the following three digital mar- keting methods: 1) email, 2) so- cial media and 3) text messages. All three can be scheduled and automated ahead of time and evaluated in real-time. According to Forbes.com, the average person checks email 15 times a day and checks texts as they come in, so why make your audience go anywhere else? Simply ask them for their email
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