Five Tips For A Successful Resident Referral Program

One secret to having a successful property management company in Albuquerque and Rio Rancho is to create a the big pool of quality residents to chose from when a home becomes vacant.  The best vote of confidence for our Property Management Lease-up Services comes straight from the mouth of our current residents.  I an surprised at how few companies and landlords incentivize referrals from their residents.  If you manage one property or a thousand units,

If you are considering starting a resident referral program—or already have one that isn’t as successful as you’d like—check out these five tips from Entrepreneur.

1. Make sure residents know about the program. Talk about your resident referral program in every communications channel you have—email, social media, website, leasing docs, staff interactions and text alerts. Ask new rental shoppers how they found out about your leasing services.  That will tell you which communications channels to focus on more.

2. Make it easy. Your referral program needs to be easy for residents to both make the referral and then get credit for it. If it’s a complicated or multistep process, they probably won’t bother. Test out your process on someone who will give you honest feedback.

3. Educate staff. Make sure staff understand how the referral program works so they can answer any questions about it. They can also help promote it in day-to-day conversations with residents.

4. Offer a good bonus. Residents need to feel properly incentivized to send their friends and family your way. Make sure what you are offering is what residents want—and will prompt them to act.  It is not the size of the bonus as much as the usefulness to the resident.

5. Make residents happy. The best promoted, most awesome referral program in the world won’t work if your apartment community isn’t meeting your residents’ needs. People don’t provide referrals to things they don’t like.