As a property manager, one of the most important parts of your job is clear, timely communication with your tenants. But if we were to guess what you’d say is the most difficult part of your job, we think you’d probably say clear, timely communication with your tenants…

Therein lies the problem!

You’re busy and the last thing you have time to be doing is chasing down people for rent. And who’s to say how much a buried email with an essential maintenance request could wind up costing you.

You simply can’t afford to have communications that aren’t timely, direct, and accessible!

We don’t say this all the time, but text marketing is practically made for property managers. And we’re excited to show you why!

We made a pretty big claim just now, but we believe we have the chops to back it up. Here are just a few of the ways texting can make your work as a property manager 1000% easier.

Better record keeping
We hope that things don’t go south for you with your tenants, but if you find yourself faced with a “he said she said” situation, a clear record of your communications is essential.

With our SMS platform, you have a record of all your exchanges with each and every contact. You’ll always be able to return to the root of the issue when it’s right there in black and white!

On a more positive note, this can also be used as a great tool for busy minds. A quick trip through your thread with a tenant can kickstart your memory to check back in about a fixed faucet, an issue with a rent check, or a number of other things!

Accessibility on-the-go
As a property manager, you’re “on” virtually 24/7. You can’t always be glued to a landline or computer screen, so you need a way to stay passively connected to your community of tenants. Enter— the SimpleTexting dashboard. Accessible through your computer or app (for iOS and Google Play) you can reach your messages anywhere you need to.

With no need to give out your personal number, your dashboard helps you organize your communications, schedule messages for later dates, and SO much more. All of our features are available no matter where you access your dashboard, and they’re all built to help you save time.

Easy for your tenants
Texting is something nearly every one of your tenants already knows how to do. It doesn’t require internet access or app downloads on their part. In fact, a great deal of recent communication data points to texting as a preferred method of communication for most people!

All they need to do to reach you is simply send you a message. And on the flip side, your messages will be side-by-side to those of family and friends right in their inboxes. Pretty hard to ignore!

Cost-efficient
Text marketing is incredibly affordable, mostly due to the fact that it’s customizable to each budget! Texts cost cents to send and, better yet, all incoming messages are free!

We think peace of mind is priceless, but since we need to slap a dollar value on it, we make it as affordable as possible to start sending thousands of messages. Like, less-than-the-cost-of-6-Starbucks-coffee-runs affordable!

General admin communications
SMS is a great tool for external communications, but it’s just as useful when it comes to internal operations. Internal employee communication, advertising open jobs, and collecting candidate information are just a few of the ways we’ve seen people take advantage of our platform in the past.

With a little bit of creativity, you’d be surprised at the ways texting can automate and make administrative tasks a breeze.

If text marketing is starting to sound better and better just wait. We hope these ideas for the types of text messages you can start sending will sweeten the pot even more!

Rent Reminders

The first, most straightforward use case is texting out rent reminders. A gentle reminder about this monthly deadline can be an easy way to cut down on missed or late payments. These texts can be scheduled out in advance giving you an easy set-it-and-forget-it strategy.

Outstanding Balance Alerts

As we touched on earlier, having a paper trail is important for all your tenants. In the case of incurred fees, penalties, or delayed rent payments, you benefit from a system for sharing these kinds of records or alerts. It’s a headache when tenants don’t pay what/when they need to, but it’s always a bigger headache for you to chase them down for it.

Make it easier on yourself by shooting off a quick text when your records show an outstanding balance. Best case scenario they pay right away, worst case scenario you have all the proof you need that you’ve completed your due diligence.

Maintenance Requests

Avoid playing telephone tag with tenants in need of service to their property. Instead, encourage them to text you with their maintenance needs! You receive requests quickly, and they have an easy way to reach you quickly, especially in the case of a time-sensitive issue!

Event Invites or Open House Reminders

Whether your property is commercial or residential, there’s a chance you’ll be hosting events in your space. This happens to be more common for residential properties, specifically apartment complexes. In this case, you want to make sure your events are well attended, and reminders are the best way to make sure you get on everyone’s calendars.

This can also be a tool to remind your tenants who are moving out that you have prospective tenants coming in to visit (so please tidy up!)

Report Community Activity

It’s important that you have a way to share important safety information with everyone on your property. Vice versa, your community also needs to know how to reach out regarding things like outages or suspicious activity. Texting can be your one-stop shop for exchanging any kind of alert relevant to your space.

Appointment Scheduling

From tours to one-on-one tenant meetings, texting can be a great tool for scheduling meetings. You can reach out directly, or create an automated message with your availability. From there, set reminders to go out automatically to reduce the number of no-shows!

Create Virtual Tours

Did you know you can send out links in your text messages? Better yet, you can track your click-through rate and send follow-up messages to the people who did or didn’t click? If you’ve put the time and effort into creating photos and videos of your property, you can easily text it out to anyone whose interested!

Simply make a keyword for your property, and link to your virtual tour in your response. From there, you can set up a series of triggers that can automatically answer any follow-up questions, direct them toward an application, or schedule a physical tour!

Communicate With Employees

Depending on the size of your team, there’s a good chance you have a large number of workers who are out and about in the field. Connect with them quickly by sending out texts with timely information blasts or requests.

Getting started with text marketing is actually the easiest part! Here’s a look at your typical order of operations:

1. Select a Number

The very first thing you’ll do when you get started with SMS is choose your number. You can opt to pick and register a 10-digit local number, choose and verify a new toll-free number, take on a unique 6-digit short code, or work with one of our onboarding team members to text-enable your existing voice number.

2. Create Keywords

Keywords are one of the easiest ways for your contacts to find you. You can create an unlimited number of keywords within your account. You can have one for every property you manage, which would make organizing your blasts a breeze!

Contacts can text in your keyword in order to add themselves to your contact list. Your keyword confirmation, which can be an SMS or MMS message, also gives you a great opportunity to welcome new contacts right off the bat! Another great tool for adding contacts is putting a web form on your website.

3. Amend Your Rental Agreements

This step is optional, but a great way to get all your tenants signed up for text alerts is by securing their consent from the very beginning. This means including a portion on every rental agreement where tenants can include their mobile number, and check a box consenting to receive your texts!

4. Advertise Your New Texting Abilities

You want to make it known (to existing tenants and prospective ones) that they can reach you via text at your number. Be sure to include your number or short code on your website, social media, and any other space where your properties are advertised.

If you plan on using texting for tenant communications, you’ll want to give tenants some time to get on board. Be sure to deliver ample communications to them (be it flyers or emails) letting them know step by step, how to get connecting with you through SMS.

Still have questions? Reach out to us, we’d be happy to talk about your specific property managing needs. We also offer a 14-day free trial that makes testing out the service totally risk-free.

At the end of the day just remember this:

The cost of a 120-count bottle of Advil will cost you around $30. The starting price for 500 credits of messaging is only $29. In short, we can make curing all your business headaches a heck of a lot more affordable!