Surveys play a major role in resident satisfaction and retention, providing your teams with the knowledge to access everything your residents are thinking about in their decision making process (to move or not to move). You can use the data you receive from your surveys to assist you in better understanding where and how to improve your community, both minimally and on a large scale, to decrease turnover rates and costs.
Similarly to how many communities send out engaging and creative communication regarding renewal and resident events, you can use those same tools and ideas to spread the word about your surveys. Higher completion rates = more knowledge for your teams.
Annual Surveys
Annual surveys are sent out once a year. That means your teams have approximately 3 weeks to communicate with your residents about the surveys, make sure you have their correct contact email, and assist them with any issues they may be experiencing in receiving/completing them. This is your time to shine!
Below are a variety of opportunities to help improve annual survey completion rates:
- Complete an annual email audit. Use annual surveys as a yearly reminder to pull email reports, highlight residents that are missing an email, and call and/or visit them in person to secure their current email address.
- Use your Resident Portal.
- Email blast residents at least twice prior to surveys coming out reminding them of the dates to look for the survey.
- Add an announcement during rent week so that all residents who login to pay rent will see the reminder to complete (or be on the lookout for) the survey.
- Use a Facebook group if you have one, to message residents and let them know when the survey is coming out, and to mention any raffles being offered for survey completion.
- Offer a raffle for a gift card, rent credit, or exciting home goods gift to motivate residents to fill out their survey.
- **We don’t recommend incentivizing for online reviews, as those are public facing and can impact potential buying decisions. However, raffle drawings for internal surveys for the purpose of community improvement do not go against FTC guidelines.
- Send creative reminder door hangers to residents’ doors with special treats.
- Reserve the business center for residents completing surveys for 2 hours one or two evenings to help them if they don’t have WiFi or need a faster connection. You could even provide snacks for them to munch on!
- Take advantage of our email recruitment reminders as well as postcard reminders.
Insite Surveys
Insite surveys are touchpoint surveys sent out to prospects and residents regularly based on an event trigger at your community, such as: unclosed traffic prospect surveys, new move-in surveys, work order completion surveys, and pre-renewal surveys. Having consistent messaging about your resident satisfaction surveys will help remind your residents about your surveys and assist in achieving higher completion rates.
Below are a variety of opportunities to help improve insite survey completion rates:
- Maintenance teams should always carry cards or door hangers notifying residents when a work order is complete. Use those cards to include a reminder that they will be receiving a survey and letting them know how much feedback is valued in your community.
- Make sure your community has auto-generated emails set up in your CRM to let a resident know when their work order has been completed and in case they have any questions. Make sure to mention they will receive a survey and let them know how much feedback (good or bad) is valued in your community.
- Host a monthly or quarterly random drawing for a prize to include residents who have completed any of the insite surveys. Send out a monthly or quarterly newsletter and make sure there is a section reminding residents to complete their surveys to be entered into the drawing.
- Include a business card or note with your renewal and new move-in paperwork letting the resident know they will be receiving an email survey and how much feedback is valued in your community.
- Auto-generated or personalized emails to prospects who have toured the community should always be sent along with follow up phone calls. Use those follow up touchpoints to let prospective residents know that they will receive an emailed survey and let them know how much feedback (good or bad) is valued at your community.
Some people have extra security settings in place on their email platform and may receive the survey email in their spam/junk folder. Others may receive it, but be unaware that it pertains to their community. Offering these additional reminders through your CRM, follow up phone call, or business card/door hanger, etc., are great opportunities to help ensure that your residents both receive their surveys AND understand the importance of their survey response for your community.
Show them their value and then show them results.
