As consumer behavior evolves and multifamily marketers do their best to keep pace, increased deployment of AI and automation technology offers opportunities for measurable improvements in lead generation, conversion rates, and overall leasing performance. Jacob Kosior, VP of Client Services at EliseAI and Andrew Doar, Client Services Partner at EliseAI are each well versed in leveraging cutting edge technologies to drive improved leasing performance while offering increased visibility into marketing spend, with over 20 years of collective multifamily experience. They recently held a webinar called “Goodbye Chatbots - Intro to AI for Multifamily Marketing Leaders,” where they covered need-to-know developments in the AI space for marketing leaders as well as shared strategies for AI deployment and optimization. Let’s dive into key takeaways from the session.
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Demystifying Key AI Terms and Metrics for Marketing Leaders
Since ChatGPT hit the scene in 2022, people have thrown terms like “generative AI,” “machine learning,” and “chatbots” around interchangeably without actually understanding what differentiates them. Let's break down the technical terminology to know about AI:
Conversational AI
Technology that mimics human interactions through speech (either written or spoken), enabling computers to hold natural conversations with users through various communication channels.
Machine Learning
The AI technology that allows AI systems to identify patterns and improve responses over time. AI uses machine learning to draw conclusions from data, reinforce or break existing patterns, and improve over time.
Natural Language Processing
Natural Language Processing is a branch of artificial intelligence (AI) that focuses on the interaction between computers and human language. It enables computers to understand, interpret, and generate human language. NLP bridges the gap between human communication (spoken or written) and machine understanding.
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Unfortunately, many software vendors fail to differentiate between basic chatbots and advanced conversational AI, leading to confusion that can make selecting the right solution difficult. Traditional chatbots are limited to pre-programmed responses and menu-based interactions, while conversational AI uses NLP to adapt and respond to nuanced questions and improve over time using machine learning. EliseAI’s solutions fall into the latter camp, enabling them to provide personalized and valuable, context-based responses to resident and prospect inquiries, whereas many other vendors in the space advertise their pre-programmed chatbots as if they were AI.
When deploying AI, it's important to measure key metrics like “automation rate,” which measures the percentage of conversations that AI can manage without human intervention. A higher automation rate means fewer repetitive tasks for leasing teams, allowing them to focus on high-value interactions like tours and personalized follow-ups. On the flip side, the handoff rate tracks the percentage of conversations transferred from AI to human agents. Reducing unnecessary early handoffs ensures AI is used efficiently, freeing up staff to prioritize tasks that require human attention. EliseAI’s solutions have some of the highest automation rates and lowest average handoff rates of all conversational AI tools for the property management sector.
Leveraging AI to Optimize Marketing Channel Performance
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AI has transformed the way property management teams manage their resident and prospects communications across channels including email, voice, and text, enabling operators to leverage data-driven insights from these AI interactions to understand which channels drive the best outcomes and tailor their strategies accordingly. In 2024 alone, EliseAI managed 11 million leads and facilitated nearly 70 million leasing communications for over 415 owners and operators. EliseAI’s massive data sets offer a unique perspective on lead behavior and the effectiveness of a wide variety of marketing channels, and EliseAI continues to leverage that data to provide valuable insights to student, affordable, and multifamily marketing leaders.
Our research shows that prospects expect faster response times than ever, even after hours. EliseAI data shows that 41% of the 11 million guest cards we created for communities last year came in after the leasing office was closed. Fortunately, EliseAI’s solutions respond to leads in an average of 28 seconds, ensuring that inquiries are addressed quickly even outside of regular business hours. This speed helps ensure leads don’t get frustrated and go elsewhere, while also driving high prospect engagement rates throughout the leasing process.
We've also found that different channels perform better or worse at various stages of the lead-to-lease journey. Email remains the dominant channel for initial lead inquiries, with nearly 80% of inbound leads coming through email. However, EliseAI data shows that conversion rates for SMS surpass email at later stages of the funnel, particularly when prospects are closer to submitting an application or signing a lease. This insight underscores the importance of using an integrated multi-channel approach, and transitioning to SMS for key touchpoints as prospects move further down the leasing funnel. With those insights in mind, Jacob and Andrew encouraged marketers to explore strategies for increasing SMS-originated leads, such as incorporating text-based call-to-actions on community websites.
Maximizing Automation to Reduce Bottlenecks and Boost Performance
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AI’s ability to automate repetitive tasks for marketing teams as the potential to completely reinvent the traditional marketing playbook. Today, it can be hard to tell if a promotion or marketing campaign is falling short because of issues with the community, targeting for the advertisements, or one of a variety of other factors because of inconsistent lead management. Without a baseline response time and standardized lead management strategy, isolating and measuring the impact of any other factors, like specials or ad performance, can become difficult. By standardizing follow-up processes and eliminating lead leakage AI ensures that no leads fall through the cracks, giving marketing teams the baseline they need to evaluate the rest of their efforts off of. With AI handling initial responses and follow-ups, marketers can run measurable experiments to capture more leads and ensure they maximize the value of their marketing spend.
EliseAI clients tend to see a substantive impact on their marketing performance, with Peakmade achieving a 20% increase in lead capture rates after implementing AI. This improvement translates to a lower cost per lead, enabling marketing leaders to spend their budget more efficiently. Additionally, Peakmade also highlighted the importance of AI-driven consistency in follow-ups in helping them isolate lead source performance as the sole variable, making it easier for their marketing team to identify which channels are driving high conversion rates and which ones may require optimization.
AI isn’t a “set it and forget it tool.” AI requires intervention and information updates in the early going in order to ensure the technology learns and improves over time. Jacob and Andrew like to use the “new hire” framework for AI, conceptualizing your AI assistant as a smart and eager, but inexperienced, employee fresh out of college. The more time you spend helping them get up to speed early by managing handoffs and adding new knowledge into your AI’s knowledge base, the better your automation rates and handoff rates to human agents will be over time.
Improving Customer Experience with AI-Driven Reputation Management
As every multifamily marketer knows, a handful of Google reviews can make or break your ability to get prospects to sign leases. Today, 98% of renters consider reviews before choosing a community, making reputation management an essential aspect of any marketing strategy. AI has a significant role to play in both collecting and responding to reviews, leveraging automation to manage and improve a community’s online reputation.
Having conversational AI products to detect positive sentiment during interactions and automatically prompt residents to leave reviews is a quickly becoming an important tool in the modern marketing toolbox. After a work order is closed EliseAI’s solutions automatically follow up with the resident to ensure they’re happy with the work while also requesting a review if the feedback is positive. This timely, context-driven approach increases the likelihood of receiving positive reviews compared to delayed or generic follow-up requests, significantly enhancing your reputation management strategy.
Deploying AI to respond to reviews online with thoughtful, helpful messages is equally important. Studies show that communities that respond to reviews are perceived more positively by potential customers, humanizing their online presence and making it clear that resident needs are taken seriously. AI can help overworked marketing managers stay on top of their reputation management strategies, ensuring that feedback is acknowledged and addressed promptly while giving actionable insights to onsite teams.
Looking to The Future of AI in Multifamily Marketing
AI's continued development also opens up new opportunities for marketing teams to enhance their lead nurturing strategies and performance tracking. One exciting development is enabling AI to ask more open-ended questions during lead interactions, creating a conversational leasing experience that ensures prospects’ preferences are taken into account. This feature, currently in beta testing at EliseAI, allows our suite of conversational AI products to gather deeper insights into a prospect’s preferences and motivations, mimicking the rapport-building tactics of the best human leasing agents.
AI-powered call scoring is another innovation poised to change the way marketers develop and train their leasing agents. By automatically scoring every phone call in real time based on predetermined rubrics, AI eliminates the need for traditional mystery shopping and gives you data-driven insights for performance improvement and training. Looks like the future has arrived quickly—AI-powered call scoring is already live in the EliseAI product and usable today.
Improving Your Lead Nurturing with AI
By automating repetitive tasks, optimizing lead conversion strategies, and enhancing customer interactions, AI solutions can help marketing teams achieve measurable improvements in performance and ROI on tech spend. For marketing leaders looking to stay ahead, the key takeaway is clear: AI is not just another “nice to have” tool, but a strategic force multiplier that can redefine how teams manage leads, allocate marketing spend, and drive high occupancy rates. Looking to get started with AI to improve your marketing strategy and performance? EliseAI offers personalized consultations to help teams optimize their AI-powered marketing efforts—get in touch with us today to learn more.