How the most effective multifamily marketing teams use data to drive higher performance

Yolanda Muchnik:
All right, Erina, welcome to the show.

Erina Malarkey:
Thank you, happy to be here.

Yolanda Muchnik:
As a fellow marketer, I'm so excited to have you on, to discuss marketing, data and the multifamily industry.

Erina Malarkey:
Wow, we marketers have to stick together.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Yeah. You have an incredibly rich background in marketing. And so, I'd love to start off by hearing a little bit more about your experience as a marketer and how you came into the multifamily industry.

Erina Malarkey:
For sure. Yeah, so I spent really, my whole career in real estate marketing analytics. But, it began as the head of in-house marketing for a Seattle-based owner operator. And I was leading the marketing team and we kept producing great outcomes. The buildings kept getting leased up more quickly than anybody thought, the building would get sold more quickly and for more money than anyone thought. So, we kept having these out-sized outcomes and I knew that the marketing and the marketing team had to have a huge influence in that, but there wasn't any way to quantify what marketing was doing and how to really prove it. And so, correspondingly, we were thought of as the logo girls, or the party planners. And that was where it all began, was really sitting here and saying, "Wait a minute, I love marketing, I love storytelling. I love bringing people together. I love the idea of thinking about how you drive business, how you create outcomes." But, there wasn't a great way to close the loop.

So, that was where it all began. And then, that was really how it came full circle into what Remarkably is, which is the industry's first ever multifamily marketing business intelligence solution, was to say, "Okay, we know marketing produces outcomes. We know marketing is a core component of the business. How can we now actually create a tool and a platform to be able to measure that, prove that, and give marketers the ability to really understand themselves, what's working and what isn't?" Because, that wasn't something I had in my early days of the career.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Right. I love that you touched on the misconceptions of marketing. I certainly, have encountered that in my own career as well. So, you're a little bit of a hero to me for tackling it.

Erina Malarkey:
Someone said to me the other day, and I told her, I was like, "I am going to say this again." So, she hit the nail in the head. She said, "Marketing is the first to get blamed and the last to get credit." And I think, that's unfortunately really true in our industry. Marketing is seen as this unaccountable cost center, this place that you just pump dollars into and really don't know what you're getting out of it. And if you look at US multifamily, it's a $3 trillion industry. Conservatively, the industry spends about $10 billion a year, on just advertising hard costs. So, we're just talking about the money that's going to apartments.com and Facebook and Instagram and Zillow, that doesn't even account for all of the headcount. And so, when we sit here and say, "Okay, gosh, we have a $3 trillion industry, a $10 billion spend, and marketers are the one that everyone's often says, "Well, what did marketing do wrong?" But, seldom recognizes, "Wait a minute, this is actually the outcome marketing produced."" So-

Yolanda Muchnik:
Mmm-hmm.

Erina Malarkey:
It's a big hill. We're pushing the rock up, but we're excited about it.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Awesome. You touched on Remarkably, I'm not sure if there's anything more you can add, but I'm curious to dig in a little bit further into the circumstances that you and your co-founder were facing, that ultimately inspired you to create the company. Is there anything out there that really made you have that 'aha' moment?

Erina Malarkey:
Yeah, I think, when you talk to founders, everybody does. And of course, invariably it's a series of moments along the way, and then usually, there are those milestones. So, my very first job, before I went to the real estate company, it was where I actually met my co-founder. I have an amazing co-founder, Anna-Lea Dieringer. And so, we met at a little startup under Pike Place Market in Seattle almost 20 years ago. I was her direct report, I was a terrible direct report. I wanted to promotion and a raise every five minutes, absolute, absolute nightmare. But, fortunately she forgave me, we became good friends and went on to work together at the startup. Each went off to our next roles. I went to the real estate company and we kept getting the band back together. So, we kept finding ways to work with each other.

And one of those was at a asset management firm. So, of course, you think about, "What's the only possible bigger laggard than real estate?" Well, financial services. And so, we were working on these projects on the real estate side, on the financial services side, and decided to create our own company together called VMO, which was Virtual Marketing Office. And the whole notion was outsourced CMO services. We were doing predominantly work on the real estate side, but also financial services work. And found that everybody had the same question, which was, "Well, what am I getting for the marketing that you're doing for me? What's working? What isn't? Where should I spend more? Where could I spend less?" And all focused on, "I want this outcome. I want my building to be 95% leased by October 15th. How do I get there? And what is the most strategic way to build that plan?"

And so, we were running this marketing agency, we took through financial services best practices of campaign planning, campaign measurement, campaign frameworks, and we built our garage version of Remarkably on Tableau. So, beginning with data visualization and doing campaign plans. And people kept pulling us aside and saying, "This is the big idea. Forget your agency. Yes, you guys are good at it and it was very successful, but this is the big idea. You should start a tech company." And literally, we had one more conversation with Michael Beckerman, who actually heads up CREtech, he was one of those influential conversations that pushed us over the edge, a conversation with a senior executive at Greystar. So, in very short order, there was these series of a few conversations that really said to us, "Okay, maybe this is the big idea and let's indeed take this wild leap away from this thing we knew very well, which was how do you run a marketing agency? And let's actually try and solve the problem that we're facing with technology. Let's try and solve how you measure and manage marketing in multifamily."

Yolanda Muchnik:
I love that. What a great story.

Erina Malarkey:
It's been a wild ride.

Yolanda Muchnik:
I have no doubt.

Erina Malarkey:
Yes.

Yolanda Muchnik:
So, before we dive into the main topic of our discussion, I'm curious to know how you as a marketer define two terms. The first being, Resident Experience. And then, the second being Resident Experience Management.

Erina Malarkey:
Okay. So, that's a really good question and I think it's a little bit of a blurry line, honestly. So, as a marketing business intelligence company, as a marketing analytics company, we're most focused on the prospect experience, what precedes them becoming a resident. And so, that's going to be everything from, where do they first hear about you? How do you have reputation building? How do you have brand awareness? How do you have demand generation? And I think, your question puts a really good spotlight on this notion of, "When do they move from prospect to resident?" Is it the first time that they tour your building and they imagine actually living here? Is it the moment when they take their one step forward and do a lease application and say, "No, I'm putting one foot in and are you going to meet me here?"

Is it the day that they move in? So, I think, it's a blurry line. But, I think it's a good one to really think about, "Okay, when does the resident experience begin? And what does that look like? In my mind, what does it feel like to have this be your home and where you're going to live, work and play? Of course, as we increasingly do so in this Covid era. And then, resident experience management, how do you facilitate that? And that's going to be all the obvious things, right? How do you throw the best happy hour in the lobby? How do you have the coolest gym? How do you have the best units? But, I think it also comes into, how do you recognize what these residents lives look like as consumers and every other facet of their life? And how do you bring that into the apartment experience?

And then, of course, it's interesting, because again, if we go back to this idea of marketers being these unsung heroes, the industry average is a 50% retention rate. So, half the building moves out every year. So, marketers are faced with just this onslaught of churn. And so, I think to your point, again, people would be really wise to think probably a bit more about the resident experience, because of course, if half your building moves out every year, if you could minimize that by even 10 points, the amount of reduced cost, reduced staffing, reduced wear and tear in the building that could be implemented obviously becomes key. So, that's a little bit of a murky answer to your question, but I think it's a good one for us all to be thinking about. What is the prospect journey? When does the prospect journey turn into that resident journey and correspondingly the resident experience? And what does it look like to really manage, and by proxy of course, and enhance that?

Yolanda Muchnik:
Yeah, I think, that's so well put and it really gets to the heart of what we're trying to do at Zego, is-

Erina Malarkey:
Yeah.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Answer those big questions and solve that problem. Help property management companies retain their residents, so that they can avoid those big turnover costs, which are rising every year.

Erina Malarkey:
100%. And how can they think about, "Okay, what does the resident experience look like when they're a consumer?" They expect to be able to... They can order dinner at the click of a button, they can buy an airline ticket. I mean, all these things that have now been digitized and productized and can be done so easily. So, I think, what you all are doing, is really interesting in terms of, "Okay, how does that then, translate to what the technology and the management and the administration of their experience looks like? And how can we solve for that better?"

Yolanda Muchnik:
Awesome. Okay. So, going back to when you started to develop Remarkably, can you expand on those top pain points? You mentioned them briefly earlier, but I'd love for you to expand on them a bit more-

Erina Malarkey:
Mm.

Yolanda Muchnik:
And I'd love to hear how you guys are aiming to address them today.

Erina Malarkey:
For sure. So, it's interesting, because we had really deep knowledge from the industry, from being in-house. And then, we had deep knowledge from the industry, from an agency perspective, from a consulting firm perspective. And then, we said, "Okay, how can we solve this with technology?" And that created a whole new opportunity to learn, because what is very scalable for one, or 10, or a hundred buildings, is not scalable when you start talking about thousands and thousands and thousands of buildings. So, things that we could solve as a consultant, we needed to think about, "How do you productize that?" So, the challenges that people had, and it's funny, because we had 100s of conversations to really identify, "What are your core pain points? And where are you looking for a pain killer, to solve those pain points?" One of our board members talks about the evolution from vitamin to pain killer.

And that being that notion when, as a startup, you find that product market fit, you become this thing that really solves a problem. So, we had 100s of conversations and as we started to articulate them, we knew we were hitting the nail on the head, when people would literally be saying to us, "Have you bugged my boardroom?" Or, "We were just talking about this yesterday. Okay, you're freaking me out here." Or, we'd list through, "Which of these pain points resonate?" They'd literally raise their hand and say, "All of them." So, the first one that people always laugh and smile about, is people's just frustration with not actually knowing where their leads and leases are coming from. So, we've dubbed the term, The Property Website Black Hole, which is where you spend $10 billion on advertising. And all of the historic reporting just tells you that everyone is coming from your property website, because that is the access of which they schedule a tour, they reach out.

So, you can imagine being an owner and saying, "Okay, I'm spending 250,000, $500,000 on this property and what the reporting is telling me, is that everyone is just magically appearing on my property website." So, that's definitely been the number one frustration, is where are my leads, and then, of course, by extension, leases, actually coming from? They don't just appear on my property website, marketers aren't just all sitting around, eating bon-bons, they are driving traffic strategically. So, the first problem is saying, "Okay, where's our traffic even coming from?" And being able to stitch together that whole prospect experience. "Where do they hear about you? What drives them to the website? Quantifying, who are those people? What does that actually look like? All the way through, to what unit did they sign? How long did they sign it for? How valuable is it?"

So, that was the first one. The second big pain point, and this was related, because of course, this was people's attempt to solve problem one, was people were having to do a massive amount of manual data aggregation and reporting across the different systems. So, across their property management software, like Yardi, across their CRM, across their Google analytics. So, what everyone was doing, is exporting all of these reports, dumping them all into Excel, running manual analysis, finding out halfway through the year, there was a typo in their Excel formula and realizing like, "Oh, my gosh, all my reporting has been wrong." So, step one was, "I'm not getting good answers." Step two, was to try and get even moderate answers, is just this massive time consuming, painful, error-prone, manual work. The third piece, was that people wanted to be able to answer, at the click of a button, "How much am I spending on each lead? How much am I spending on each lease?"

And even more importantly, "What is the return on investment for my dollars spent?" This is the fundamental of closed-loop marketing. "We did this, we got that." Because, people love to talk about impressions and click-through rates, I don't care. I mean, you can drive a million people to my website and if nothing actually, ultimately translates, in terms of leases, it doesn't matter to me, necessarily. So, step one, "Let's get away from that Property Website Black Hole." Step two, "Get me out of manual reporting data aggregation. Let me then be able to generate better insights. What is my return on investment?"

And then, lastly was really digging into, "Where is our qualified traffic coming from?" And being able to analyze things such as, "Okay, I have all of these studios that are coming up in my rent roll. What channel's going to be best for them? Is it going to be Zillow, is it going to be Instagram? Is it going to be apartments.com?" So, those were some of the questions people were asking, which is just, "Okay, I've got all this data, how do I put it in one place? How do I understand it? How do we then start to be able to actually extract value from it?" All, of course, driving to, "How can I make better decisions? And get better outcomes?" Being the goal for that.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Got it, got it. Yeah, data attribution, manual reporting, quantifying impact, all challenges I think, marketers face in every industry, but certainly in multifamily.

Erina Malarkey:
Yeah, it's 100%. And there are a lot of data sets, sometimes the data is dirty, it's a winding road. So, to then try and be able to instantly say, "Okay, well we're getting our most qualified traffic and here's how we should we quantify it. Here's how we define that." What does that even mean? Or, people will say, "Well, this is our best source." What does best mean to you? Does best mean it generates the highest volume? Does best mean that it is the best converting? Does best mean it's the least expensive? Well, maybe best means that you get the highest return on investment from it. So, even just being able to give marketers the ability to ask and answer those questions is key.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Got it. Okay. So, you were recently on the podcast, Proptech today, and I really loved a phrase you used, "More data, more problems."

Erina Malarkey:
Yes.

Yolanda Muchnik:
So, what challenges are you seeing multifamily marketers encounter when it comes to gathering and using data?

Erina Malarkey:
Yeah, so I do love... Yeah, it always rings in my head as some rap song, or something, right? The more data, more problems. So, I think, it used to be that people thought real estate didn't have data. That is just something over the past. I mean, when Remarkably began, Proptech was just becoming a thing. And now, it's just totally... Everyone knows that everyone's talking about it. So, I think it used to be, "Okay, well do we even have the data?" Yes, we have the data. So, now I think, the challenge becomes, "How can you harness the data? And what is the quality?" And we talk a lot about data integrity at Remarkably. So, you have to trust the data that you have, to be able to have any business intelligence solution have value. So, that's been something we've taken head on, which is to say one, "Okay, let's ensure that our integrations are spot on and we really dig into that."

Okay, if he already says this, Remarkably needs to be saying this and this needs to be one to one. Same thing with Google Analytics, same thing with your marketing budget. So, I think first was just, marketers have had to get better integrity and quality of data. And then, I think also it's the industry understanding the importance of data. So, sometimes there will be a discrepancy between two reports and the team will dig into it. And I don't know if I say nine out of 10 times, maybe eight out of 10 times, there's some human error component to it. There was a leasing agent who got swamped over the weekend and they had 20 leases get signed, but they didn't actually enter them until Wednesday. But, they're back dating all of the data, as a for instance. So, I think, the challenge has been, "Okay, we've been swimming in this sea of data, we're now able to start harnessing the data."

And so, then the next frontier became, "Okay, how can we keep improving the quality of the data? How can we make sure the integrations are good? How can we make sure we're doing clean, above-board APIs that everybody really trusts? And how can we make sure when there is a human component that, that data is accurate and timely?" Because, all of that is then going to impact your ability to analyze, "What of my marketing channels are working, and what aren't?" And if you're seeing that only 10 leases came from a certain channel, but really it should have been 20, because someone's not accurately connecting the buttons, or connecting the wires, that is a challenge. So, that's something we take head on, in terms of, what does our user acceptance testing look like? Making sure our data matches all the other various sources of data. And then, just understanding, what is the workflow on site that is also going to influence that data?

Yolanda Muchnik:
So, I would say across the board, the multifamily industry has been slower than others to adopt technology and property marketers, they've been no exception.

Erina Malarkey:
Yup.

Yolanda Muchnik:
But, there's a little bit of a dichotomy here for me, because most marketers as professionals, and certainly, the ones I know, regardless of what industry they're in, they're typically really proactive about staying on top of and following the latest trends and best practices. And so, I'm curious, what do you think has been the main barrier to implementing modern MarTech solutions within multifamily? And then, also being able to enable marketers to effectively use the data available by those technologies?

Erina Malarkey:
Yeah, so I think you hit the nail in the head and I would definitely not disagree, right? That step one was like, "Okay, is there a problem here?" As a startup you say, "Okay, question one, is there a problem to be solved? Yes, okay. Step two, have we solved the problem in terms of the technology? Yes." And then, the step three becomes, what does that adoption and usage look like? And multifamily marketing has been a little bit slower to adopt it. So, I think it begins with just unbelievably challenging competing priorities. So, marketers are overseeing 50, 60, 100 properties. And historically, they haven't had the tool set that they needed. So, they're navigating all these different priorities of, "Well, these are my lease ups, these are my value-add repositions, these are my stabilized properties. This owner maybe, is the squeaky wheel."

So, the first piece was just, how do we create a space where they actually can have the bandwidth to tackle this? But, I think, that then moves into, and something you said really resonated, which is, how can we shift the paradigm of what multifamily marketers look like? So, most multifamily marketers would say, "Gosh, I feel like I'm just constantly in this firefighting mode. I am always in this super reactive, versus proactive stance. I'm only brought in once a property is underperforming, once things are too late." So, to say, "Okay, how can we shift the paradigm of getting marketers out of this triage firefighting mode, into something that's really proactive?" I think, part and parcel with that, how do we shift this paradigm? And how will this increase adoption throughout the industry, is really changing the perception of marketing as this cost-center into a revenue driver.

Because, I guarantee you could tell any asset manager, or any owner, "Okay, well what if we had a solution where you give me $10 and it produces $100." People are going to do that all day long. But, there hasn't been that way to quantify it, to prove it. And then, I think lastly, it really does come down to how do we... And this is something I'm just personally super passionate about, because this is where it began for me 20 years ago, in the early days of my career, of feeling like the logo girls and the event squad and saying, "We need to elevate the role of marketing in the industry. It needs to have a seat at the adults table." And really, I think about that as saying, people need to look at marketing and saying, "Okay, this is a strategic, revenue-producing, predictable lever in our asset management function.

And when you have that there, now you aren't going to have people navigating lower priority competing, the urgent, versus the important. You aren't going to have marketers having to defend why they need access to the data, why they need tools like Remarkably. And being able to then, let them have the ability to be proactive, instead of reactive. It's hard to do good work, when you're constantly in this chaos, firefighting mode and you're just always dealing with whatever is the biggest problem. So, I think that's been a big piece of it, is we need to fundamentally change how marketing is perceived in this industry and give it its due course and credit. And within that, then give it the tools, give it the space, give it the access that it needs to produce the outcomes that it can and does. But, we haven't been able to really quantify for the last 20, 30 years.

Yolanda Muchnik:
I like that, so well-put.

Erina Malarkey:
Thank you. I really do think it is, it's just something we're super, super passionate about, which is, "Okay, no more looking at marketing and saying, "Well, what do they really do? Well, it's an art not a science. Well, it's so hard to quantify. Well, the market just picked up. Well, we just built the best building."" No, I mean you look at all these other industries-

Yolanda Muchnik:
It's the intention behind it. Yeah.

Erina Malarkey:
And you look at all these other industries and they aren't doing it for fun-

Yolanda Muchnik:
Yeah.

Erina Malarkey:
They're doing it, because it works. And I think, our industry still hasn't fully embraced that. And so, marketers have a lot of headwind.

Yolanda Muchnik:
A two part question here for you. So first, how do you define marketing data? And then, when it comes to that data itself, have you found specific data sets, or data points to be critical components of analysis in multifamily?

Erina Malarkey:
Yeah. Okay. So, okay, step one, how do you define marketing data? So, at it's most macro term, I would think about it as basically, the marketing funnel. Which, is going to be every step of the way. So, you have new website visitors, people coming to your site. And of course, even before that happens, it's like, "Well, where did they come from?" So, Google Analytics would call that a referral source. So, it's like, "Where does the traffic come from?" Then, it comes to your website. Then, people take some action, they call, email, text, walk-in, chat, for instance, they become a lead. A subset of those, is going to come tour your building, that could now be in-person, that could be virtual. A subset of those are going to become lease applications. A portion of those will be approved. Of course, then a continuing funnel of those become new leases, and then ultimately move-ins.

So, that's your marketing funnel. Within each of these funnel stages, are different data points, related to volumes. Well, how many tours did we have? Conversion rates. Well, of the people that come to our website, or those tours, how many convert into lease applications? You need to be analyzing data surrounding cost per... "How much am I spending for each person, that comes to my website? How much am I spending for each person who calls emails, texts?" And then, you want to be able to easily analyze the revenue. "What is the revenue being produced? Well, they signed unit 232, which is $1,200 a month, they signed a 15 month lease. This is the amount of revenue that's correspondingly been generated. This is what it cost me to acquire them. And so, correspondingly, this is the return on investment."

And then, lastly, being able to start tethering, "How does all of that data, how does every step of the funnel and all of those various filters, correlate to what inventory is available? What's best for my two bedrooms, versus my one bedrooms? What's best for my $4 a foot, versus my $6 a foot?" So, there's a huge amount of data and obviously, that's just a subset of it. And then, of course within all of that are the various channels, right? "Well, how many tours am I getting from apartments.com, versus Zillow?" I always love to pick on A to Z. So, that's just a for instance, of all of the various sets of data, all the various lenses and levers. And then, your second part was, "Okay, and when it comes to this data, what's most critical?" And that's of course, a question everyone wants to ask. "Well, what should I really be paying attention to?"

And unfortunately, the answer is that it isn't auto-magic. All of the data is important, pending on the goal of the property and the challenge you're trying to solve. So, the goal of the property may be, "We're trying to get leased up as quickly as possible." The goal may be, "We're trying to juice cash flow, because we have an upcoming re-fi." The goal may be, "We're trying to reduce costs, because we're trying to focus on our NOI." So, step one is to say, "Okay, what is the goal we're trying to achieve of the property?" And then, step two would be, "What is the problem we're trying to solve?" When we're trying to get least up as quickly, the problem, when we analyze the data, is that we aren't generating enough traffic, top of funnel. So, in that case, for instance, I would be very keen to look at top-of-funnel, new website visitors and leads.

And I would be very keen to look at an analysis of all of my channels and what's producing the best volumes. And I would look at a conversion analysis of all those channels. What new website visitor to lead is the best? So, that's a for instance, versus if you're saying, "Well gosh, we're just trying to reduce our costs." And then, in that case you might be digging into revenue and ROI. Where you say, "Okay, where are we getting the most bang for the buck?" Or, "Where is our conversion rate the best?" Because, then we don't have to burn a bunch of calories, generating high volume that doesn't convert. So, unfortunately it is a multi-layered landscape, which I think is what's historically made it so challenging. There's a ton of data, within all the data, there's a ton of sub-layers. And then, all of that data produces new data and you need to then understand, what is the problem we're trying to solve? And what is the goal of the property itself? Does that answer your question?

Yolanda Muchnik:
Yeah, yeah. And speaking of layers, let's peel back the onion on-

Erina Malarkey:
Okay.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Something you just said, a little bit further. And so, when you're doing a marketing data analysis, obviously gathering the data itself, which is what you just described, is the essential first step. But, now I'd love to hear a little bit more about, what are some of the key components of an impactful marketing data analysis? What do you need to do, to know, in order to be able to use that data effectively?

Erina Malarkey:
Yeah, perfect. Okay, that makes total sense. So, you hit the nail on the head and I've always historically thought about this as the fundamentals of a data pyramid, right? So one, you have to aggregate the data, you need to put it all in place. But, then more data, more problems. You have to visualize the data. Help me actually even be able to make sense of it. From there, is when you then need to be able to go into insight generation. "How can I actually learn something from this data?" Okay, well, being able to take all the data, put it in one place, make it actionable, make me to be able to generate insights, is where you can now start to see, "Well gosh, I'm getting twice as high a cancellation and denial rate from this channel, as I am from that channel. Is this channel producing qualified traffic?"

Maybe, it's not. Or, "Well, this is interesting, we're spending $40,000 a year on this advertising campaign. It's not actually doing anything for us." Which happens all the time.
Yolanda Muchnik:
Mm.

And people have historically been like, "Well, we just think we have to do everything. It's like, "Well, why?" It has just been this crazy spray and pray. We throw a bunch of things at the wall and if we get the outcome that we wanted, we're like, "Good enough." Well, what if you could cut your marketing budget in half and still get that outcome? So, I think, take the data, visualize it, be able to generate insights off it. And then, the next step, to your question of, what makes for a critical analysis? Is how can you then move into recommended actions? What should we do? "Well, let's cancel the $40,000 a year marketing campaign that isn't doing anything."

And then, being able to implement what were the measured results? How can you actually measure change? Okay, well, through our analysis we identified that this channel has an incredibly low return on investment. We're pumping a bunch of money into it, it's not producing an outcome. We've gone ahead and removed that channel, or turned down the knot on the channel. We've taken our $40,000 spend and cut it to 20. What is then, the outcome? And being able to start saying, "Well, gosh, my cost per lead, has gone from $1,200 to $600, because I stopped spending all this money that isn't working." Well, that sounds like a pretty great outcome. So, being able to say, "Okay, how can we aggregate the data, visualize the data, have insight generation off the data, and then move up into the upper spheres of the advanced analytics, which is what are those recommended actions? What are we going to do? And then, what are the outcomes of that?"

Yolanda Muchnik:
So, when it comes to data analysis, I'm curious what, if anything, there may not be anything. But, if anything, what do you think multifamily marketers have been missing?

Erina Malarkey:
Well, I think unfortunately, they've been missing a lot. And that was honestly the catalyst for Remarkably was to say, "Okay, wait a minute. Enough people are starting to ask this question, there is no way to solve for it currently, outside of super-complex, robust spreadsheets, that take a ton of time, are dependent on a human, have a bunch of errors in them invariably. So, initially one of the big... What marketers were missing, was just being able to get all the data, just being able to have all the data in one place and they don't have to go log into 10 different systems, and then pump it into a spreadsheet, and then try and figure it out. Now, that we've solved for that, in terms of how you get the data, I think where we're seeing of hunger and interest and appetite now, is learning how to understand data, learning how to read the analysis, generate insights, and really how do we just increase now what is the data literacy in multifamily? And how do we bring through what we would call basically, closed-loop marketing best practices?

How do we now start looking? I know you had a previous podcast on, what we should learn from the hospitality industry. I think, that's such a great example, right? Because, same thing, you wouldn't go to Hilton and say, "Well gosh, do you guys actually know what's generating traffic? Well, do you know how many nights people booked? The value of the rooms? And if someone said no, right? They would be fired on the spot. So, I think it is now saying, "Okay, what are other industries able to answer and expect to answer? And how can we start making sure that now that we have the tools to be able to do it, that the leaders and members of multifamily marketing learn how to do that themselves. Because, they haven't been able to prior.

Yolanda Muchnik:
So, I'd love to learn a little bit more about your clients at Remarkably. And so, for this next question, I'm hoping you can expand on some ways you've seen Remarkably customers using data analysis to drive performance. Are there any standout use cases, or other commonalities that you've encountered within your customer base?

Erina Malarkey:
Yeah. So, in terms of how people have leveraged the data to drive performance, we see typically that there's some different ways that they extract value. So, the first is going to be, "How can I just get better outcomes? Right? How can I have more successful marketing that, by proxy, improves what is my property performance?" The building gets leased up more quickly. We take a struggling asset that had been in the high 80s occupancy and we get it to 95% occupancy. So, that's step one. Another way people quantify is to say, "How have we been able to reduce our cost per lead and cost per lease?" Okay, our company industry average... And it's amazing, because oftentimes people don't even know this. You're like, "Okay, well what are you guys spending as a company, on your average cost per lease?" And everyone's like, "Ooh". So, one being able to say, "Okay, well what is that? And then, how do we reduce it by 25%?"

And then, a third is definitely, in terms of just time savings. Owners are rightfully so, increasingly demanding in terms of the caliber and cadence of reporting that they're looking for. And saying, "Okay, how can we really help you strengthen reporting to give better, more accurate, more actionable reporting?" And how to just be able to do it much more quickly. Because, we're doing it, but what would take them 20 hours, can now literally be done at the click of a button. So, those are the different ways that people leverage data to get better performance. To say, "Okay, how can we get better outcomes of our portfolio? How can we lower our cost per lead, cost per lease by a more efficient marketing? How can we save time and have better outcomes?" And then, I think your second part of your question was, what are standouts, or commonalities?

What's been really interesting are our ICP, our Ideal Customer Profile has a fair bit of variability in terms of portfolio size. You're all the way from the NMHC top 50, top 10, down to smaller disruptors, typically in that 5,000+ unit range. But, the core focus of all of them has been twofold. One has either been people who are coming in from out of industry, so people who are coming in from hospitality, coming in from sports and entertainment and are sitting here being like, "Wait a minute, of course we need this data. Of course, we need these answers." So, it's either been at a user level, people either who are out of industry, or those leaders in the industry who have been looking around the table and saying, "There has got to be a better way to do my job. This is [inaudible]."

The fact that it can answer these questions, or what's required to answer these questions, is absolute madness. So, that's definitely been those commonalities, is either you have people from out of industry who are like, "Guys, come on in to the 21st century, the water's fine." Or, people who are here and who are helping saying, "We're going to raise the bar, we're going to change this industry, we're going to make it better and we're going to really elevate it." So, that's been pretty fun to see and to get to collaborate with both those groups, because both have tremendous value to offer. People saying, "This is how I did it over on the hospitality side." And then, someone saying, "Actually my whole career in multifamily, I know the ins and outs of it. Here are the challenges, here are the opportunities." And the collaboration of all of that, coupled with Anna-lee, my co-founder who leads product and engineering, we have an amazing product and engineering team.

So, being able to say, "Okay, let's take the veterans problems, the disruptors problems, take this team's ability to solve for them and really create something that really is changing how people do their job in corresponding to the outcomes those jobs can produce."

Yolanda Muchnik:
Absolutely. Okay, almost final question for you.

Erina Malarkey:
Yeah.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Do you have any plans, or thoughts on the horizon around expanding your integrations to other property management systems beyond Yardi? And in general, what's next for Remarkably?

Erina Malarkey:
Yeah. Yeah, 100%. So, we are just getting started. So, we tackled Yardi first, it's about 50% of the market share. But, absolutely we have additional integrations on the way. So, there's three categories that we're looking at. So, one is expanding those PMS Integrations, as you alluded to. The second is, what are those secondary integrations that people have? Where else are people still having to go log in? For instance, reputation management software, being able to start integrating all of that. And then, also more of those vertical integrations, being able to go even deeper for instance, into, "Okay, now I can not only understand my overall funnel, my overall campaign, but actually being able to start digging into the specifics of, "How is an ad performing? How is the ad with the girl on the bike, versus the guy with the beer performing? And what's best for my one bedrooms, versus my two bedrooms? And what produces the best return on investment."

So, we're definitely just getting started. And then, if you think about that data pyramid and moving into the advanced analytics, we're also doing really interesting work on the predictive side, as well as the prescriptive. So, predictive, what's going to happen. We have machine learning powered forecasting that we've already built. And then, as well as prescriptive, what should you do? So, the platform is analyzing a huge amount of data. Is your contract a fixed, or a variable contract? You can get out of it? Or, you're stuck in it for another 120 day? Is the dollar amount you spend every month, something that you can turn up, or turn down? Or, is it flat? Are there variable pay for performances?"

So, we're tracking all of that and working on the ability to make insights and recommendations, such as, "This is your lowest performing return on investment source, your contract expires on November 1st. Here are specific changes that you can make." So, continuing to just take more and more, get marketers farther and farther down the field, in terms of the information we can give them, such the marketers can then really focus on, what is the highest profile and highest value work that they can do? Which, is often more strategic, more creative, versus wrangling data.

Yolanda Muchnik:
So, to cast things off, we love to ask all of our guests the final question, because fantastic people know other fantastic people. And so, I'm wondering if you have any recommendations on two, or three people who you think would make an amazing next guest on a future podcast episode of the Resident Experience Podcast?

Erina Malarkey:
This is such a hard one. So, we've been really lucky. We are part of just an amazing startup community at Remarkably. We are women-founded, women-led. That puts us in a pretty small group. Because, if you think about women in business, women in PropTech, only 2% of VC funding goes to women-owned businesses. If you expand that to women and minorities, there's a $3 trillion blind spot, between what goes to serve more traditional and business leaders, versus more underrepresented groups. So, we're lucky to be part of this really amazing community. It's honestly even more on the Proptech and the commercial side, than it has been on the multifamily side. I think, there are groups doing some really interesting things, on the in-house side. So, I think, you have some of those NMHC top 10, who are really leading the change. And then, you also have some pretty cool vendors out there. So... Oh, this is such a hard one.

Yolanda Muchnik:
I'm not trying to stump you.

Erina Malarkey:
I know. Out of all these questions, this is the one I'm like, "Gosh." There are definitely some... There's some amazing companies out. There are too many to list. But, actually you know who would be a great person to chat with? So, Laurel Zacher at Security Properties, I think, she really is one of the best out there, in terms of bringing people together, helping facilitate conversation, helping raise the bar. I think, she's doing really, really interesting things. On the Proptech side, Stake is doing some really cool things. And then, I would also be keeping an eye on groups that aren't yet into multifamily, but that could have some additional interesting applicability. And then, of course on multifamily, the other folks you should chat with are LeaseLock. So, we love those guys as well, so...

Yolanda Muchnik:
Thank you. Thank you so much.

Erina Malarkey:
Yeah.

Yolanda Muchnik:
We'll look into all of those.

Erina Malarkey:
Yes, yes. And I'll send you some more, because it is definitely, we're in this sea change, I think. So, people are starting to say, "Okay, the status quo is no longer acceptable. I no longer am willing to accept it." And I think, that's creating an interesting shift.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Awesome. So Erina, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today- [inaudible 00:43:52].

Erina Malarkey:
Conversation. Yeah, thank you. These were great questions and as you can tell, we're a nerdy bunch, but we're excited about it, so... [inaudible 00:44:00].

Yolanda Muchnik:
I loved it. I loved diving into all things marketing and data with you, and we'll be sure that our listeners can connect with you and Remarkably on our podcast page. Thank you so much again for coming on.

Erina Malarkey:
Yeah, thank you for having me, it was really fun. Take care.