Keeping Your Brand Consistent in Multifamily Email Marketing

Email marketing and phone calls still hold value, especially for property management companies. In fact, emails are consistently one of the top ROI-positive marketing channels—when done well. But an email that doesn’t follow brand guidelines (and a phone call with an off-brand response from the front desk) won’t provide the same punch that an on-brand email will. We’ll show you why these channels are important, what to look out for, and how to keep things consistent.

Emails and Calls Still Matter in Multifamily

Emails can feel old school. Chatbots have replaced interactions. Google searches have eliminated the need to “stop in.” That’s from a different era. Phone calls feel even more outdated. But anytime you really want to get answers and get something accomplished, speaking with a human over the phone is the solution.

Emails and calls are still the most important communication channels for your prospects. (Plus you OWN those channels with emails and phone numbers you’ve collected—unlike Instagram or other social media marketing.)

How so?

Email is one of the highest ROI channels for marketing. It can be personalized. It can be segmented to different populations. It goes straight to an inbox to nurture prospects directly. It’s the ideal version of inbound marketing, if people have signed up for your mailing list.

Phone calls are typically the first live interaction someone may have with an apartment brand. Build trust with the first phone call, and the brand experience has a better chance of being a positive one from then on.

According to Flair’s whitepaper analyzing 1100+ secret shops, 79% of properties used email and 41% used phone. The overall average response time was 36 hours. In a “one-click” world, 36 hours falls far below prospects’ expectations for how quickly they expect an answer to their question.

Both phone and email function to build trust—based on your knowledge of the prospect. But a simple email won’t quite cut it. And just answering the phone isn’t enough, either.

The way your team communicates is vital. And it has to align with established brand guidelines.

For example, in an email, the fonts, colors, voice and messaging should reflect your brand. And a call has to sound professional and on-brand as well. If either of these don’t, your credibility is at risk. Loyalty is based on consistency, which is something achieved with your brand guidelines and following them to a “T”.

Added Bonuses of Email Marketing

An email is a way to get right into your prospects’ daily routine. You appear in their inbox, and you’re part of the fabric of their day. When you stay at the top of the inbox, you stay top of mind. And when your competition is all sending out the same templated automated responses, it’s a great way to stand out from the pack.

Another bonus of email marketing in multifamily is the ability to segment and personalize every email sent out. A greeting block that includes the recipient’s first name can be impactful. It’s even better if it acknowledges any leasing preferences they’ve previously shared. Plus, dividing up the email copy based on the type of prospect can be powerful.

Flair’s whitepaper also uncovered a big gap. Just because you’re responding quickly doesn’t necessarily mean you’re moving a prospect forward in your funnel. A shocking number of email follow ups completely ignore the initial question posed in the form.

Prospects asking about pet policy were answered with spray-and-pray blasts advertising the current special, asking them to book a tour.

Email marketing’s best capability (arguably) is to track ROI. You can see who opened it and clicked on what. This can make every email you send after this better—because you’ll know more about what works and what doesn’t. At every step of the leasing funnel (all the way through to move-in and beyond), you can send the email that’s “just right”. You can actually measure your success with email, because there’s a clearer correlation between a link clicked and a lease signed.

One of the easiest ways to track your email marketing is to try Flair’s free secret shopping tool. Here’s how it works:

1. Sign up and create a community
2. Click on “secret shops” and generate a secret shopper
3. Submit the virtual secret shopper info to your community via the website or an ILS
4. Log back in over the next 30 days to see what follow ups were made

Users have called it their “most valuable leasing audit ever” because it tests your team and tech stack at the same time.

Don’t wait—find brand inconsistencies, follow-up issues, and more with a simple shop.

The Impact of Brand Consistency in Apartment Email Marketing

If your brand isn’t consistent, it’s not effective. A consistent brand used in email marketing can build trust, improve response rates, and outshine the competition.

Build Trust With Consistency

As your brand consistency is maintained, you can build up trust with prospects. And trust leads to conversions. More trust → more leads → more leases.

Your brand builds on recognition and expectation. Think of it this way: If you’re used to seeing colors and fonts associated with the brand, and you skim through the email and don’t recognize what you’re seeing or reading, you might feel some kind of dissonance. Or worse: You don’t realize the brand is one you’ve seen before, and is completely unmemorable.

Plus, when your brand builds up trust, you can see increased response rates. Why? Familiarity. The more you expose prospects to your brand, the more used to your brand they become, and the more comfortable they will be to open the email, skim it, respond to it, and take the action you suggest.

The top two issues we saw with our secret shop results were inconsistent brand guidelines and sender domains.

Not only were emails from different tools (i.e. CRM automations vs. AI leasing bots) inconsistent with varying fonts, layouts, and color schemes, but sender domains were all over the place too. We saw emails come from clean domains like [email protected] and then follow ups came from [email protected]. This creates an inconsistent and confusing experience for prospects.

Common Brand Inconsistencies

But what exactly do we mean by consistency? It comes down to a brand crafting a specific brand guideline, and sticking to it. We see some issues with this here and there, but these are the most common (with a few examples to help you visualize it):

Inconsistent visuals – If you have a brand guideline, follow it to the letter—font choices, hierarchy, (exact) colors, logo usage, image style and overall design vibe should all be consistent to develop resident trust.

Unclear brand voice – Make sure your brand voice is well outlined with examples in your brand guidelines—and then put it into every aspect of your communications, especially your emails. Subject lines that stand out are the ones that get opened.

Confused messaging – If you say one thing in one email but it doesn’t align with the messaging on your website, that doesn’t help anyone. It makes the brand look unprofessional, and pushes prospects away.

Tips for Brand Consistency in Multifamily Email Marketing

If you create a process for brand consistency, it will be a lot simpler to maintain momentum, even through email marketing. Here are our best tips:

• Develop email templates that reflect property and/or portfolio branding
• Maintain consistent voice and messaging across all communications
• Refer to your brand guideline to ensure you’re using logos, colors, typography, and imagery the right way
• Adapt your designs to work with email best practices. Emails aren’t as flexible as websites, so you may need to do some testing to get it right

A note on brand guidelines: Templated email designs can help keep you efficient. Just be sure to use them as a starting point, balancing the corporate guidelines with your individual properties in the portfolio.

Focus less on speed-to-lead, and more on speed-to-answer. Speed to lead doesn’t matter if you blatantly ignore a prospect’s question and shove a promotion in their face.

Address their question through any channel as fast as possible, instead of simply logging a follow up to them as quickly as you can.

Implementation Strategies

Along with these tips, sometimes it’s helpful to know exactly how to go about using consistent branding in your email marketing.

First, work towards creating a brand style guide that’s specific to email communications. Dedicate a portion of an existing brand guideline to outline how emails should look. Bonus points if it’s digital and linked to your templates. (Most CRMs have user-friendly email builders, so it should all be much easier on you.)

Second, train your team to use the guidelines how you want them to. Help them to understand the brand standards—not just the what but also the why. And then give them the tools (see the section above) to accomplish these tasks.

Third, review all of your processes to ensure everyone is keeping brand compliance. A single inconsistent email could add confusion to your brand—and limit your recognition.

It’s okay to encourage creativity within the guidelines, and it will help keep things from being boring. But consistency is still the bigger goal.

Finally, find a way to hold your team fully accountable—not by micromanaging, but by using tools that take the guesswork out of the equation for you.

Flair recommends running secret shops quarterly, to ensure your tools all work cohesively together to create a consistent experience for prospects. This ensures you are delivering a “premium” experience and every touch point counts. Also, it’s an opportunity to coach your team on how you expect them to nurture new leads, and hold supplier partners accountable to a high standard for being an extension of your brand.

Take the Next Step

Your prospects are already shopping you—often against several competitors. The real question is: does your brand hold up in those first critical communications?

Don’t leave it to chance, and ensure you have the right data to protect your brand’s reputation and arrive at leasing success.

Ready to ensure your multifamily brand is consistent across every touchpoint? Zipcode Creative specializes in developing comprehensive brand guidelines and email templates that help property management companies build trust and convert more prospects. Let’s talk about creating a brand strategy that works as hard as you do.

Want to see exactly how your team performs when prospects reach out? Try Flair’s free secret shopping tool and get actionable insights into your email marketing effectiveness in just minutes.