6 Reasons Why You Should Text Your Tenants

Tenant retention is one of the main challenges property managers are facing. Maintaining a good relationship between tenants and property managers starts with good communication. Texting, as part of the property management’s processes, is a powerful tool that helps improve communications between property managers and their tenants. It’s no surprise many property management businesses have already added text messaging to their operations. However, what are their motivations? What are the reasons why they text with tenants?

In this article, you’ll find the main reasons for property managers to use text messaging to engage with their tenants.

1. Provide timely information

Some communications are time-sensitive. Some information needs to be sent at the right time or it becomes irrelevant. The worst case scenario is that your message is about an urgent matter and you have to make sure everyone is going to see your email the same day. You may consider calling everyone; however, it’ll be long before you’ll have reached every resident.

Even if it's not urgent, you’ll want your residents to be sure they received the message and get a quick answer from them.

Text messaging allows to send the right message at the right time to the right person.

2. Make communications easier for them

Make your tenants’ life easier by allowing them to reach out to you quickly and efficiently. This is particularly compelling when it comes to reporting a problem. The easier it is to communicate with you, the more likely they will follow up on your requests, for example. You don’t want your tenants to have any hassles reporting an issue. Most of the information they need to communicate with you is time-sensitive (leak, outage, etc). The speed in which they will report a problem may affect the entire building. A case in point? If a tenant doesn’t flag a water leak because he considers it’s minor or it will take ages before he reaches out to someone over the phone, you may be in a situation where the leak gets bigger and damages the building. The quicker you know about a problem, the quicker you can evaluate it and fix it.

By offering your tenants the option to text you, you will improve their customer experience and make sure they will diligently report issues to you. You just have to tell them they can communicate with you by text and it’ll quickly become a reflex for them.

3. Exchange photos or videos

As the proverb says, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” We just saw that it is easier for tenants to text you. It’s even better for you if they can include photos or videos. If something happens, they can send you a picture or you can ask for a video. That way you are going to be able to judge by yourself the level of the emergency (leak vs flood, scratch vs hole, etc).

4. Improve your tenants’ satisfaction

As discussed in a previous blog post, Why do your customers want to text with you?, texting is the most popular communication channel used by smartphones users. Whether they are Millennials, Gen-Yers, Gen-Xers or baby boomers, tech-friendly or technophobes, texting is the best way to communicate with tenants and reach them easily. It’s always complicated to satisfy every tenant because not everyone has the same expectations; however, texting is the best way to satisfy the most of them. There’s a unanimous agreement among consulted studies that texting in 2018 was the most popular communication channel used by mobile users, with 93% of consumers1 in the US. And 90% of customers reported a preference for SMS contact over phone calls. Download our ebook Mastering Text Messaging for Business to read more about the importance of text messaging.

Adding business texting to your operations will help you provide better service and might result in a competitive advantage.

5. Save time

Don’t lose time leaving voicemails, writing down a note to call later and trying multiple times unsuccessfully to reach a tenant. Send a text once; depending on the purpose, you could send the text to multiple tenants at the same time as quickly as to just one. You’ll probably have the response you need sooner. Tenants will answer briefly and quickly right, whereas they would probably have waited to be out of the office to call you back or be at home to answer to your email.

Text messaging performances compared with emailing or phoning are amazing. To learn more, read our blog post 5 great arguments in favor of text messaging for business.

6. Increase tenant engagement

Using texting to communicate with your tenants will help them feel closer to you because texts are more personal than email. Better tenant engagement is definitely a key point to increased retention.

Whether you send a personalized message for Christmas or their birthdays, congratulations for moving in your building, or to check on them regularly, you will create a relationship with your tenants. They will feel listened to and that they have a connexion with you. This will directly impact the satisfaction of your tenants and you’ll notice less tenant churn.

In conclusion, text messaging is the favorite app used on smartphones. It is no surprise it’s also the preferred communication channel when it comes to tenants and property managers.

Text messaging appears to be a valuable tool for property managers so they can better communicate with their tenants faster and more efficiently.

While used wisely, text messages help property management businesses improve their productivity and profitability. In the meanwhile, texting helps them better engage with their tenants and improve their retention.

  1. Deloitte 2018 Global Mobile Consumer Survey


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