Communciation Tools in Pilera to Guide Your Efforts This Winter

As we continue to weather the snow during the winter season, it is important to stay in touch with your residents.  Letting your residents know about mandatory car removals for snowplows, blocked areas or streets, or emergency evacuations is critical to maintaining the safety of the neighborhood during inclimate weather.  In this month’s manager toolkit, we discuss 6 important communication tools you can leverage in Pilera to confidently keep in touch with residents during the winter season.

Automated report of invalid emails and text messages

Ensuring that resident data is correct is vital when it comes to connecting with them about important information.  When sending mass messages, it’s difficult to keep track of resident contact changes manually. Pilera provides automated monthly reports on invalid email addresses and text numbers.  You can then reach out to residents through alternative means so that they provide you with their updated contact information or have them update it themselves via their resident portal.

Allow residents to manage contact information

Allowing residents to manage contact information gives them control over how they want to hear from management and who in their household can receive messages. Residents can select contact and language preferences for themselves. This is especially important during inclimate weather and emergencies for residents to receive messages in a way that is convenient for them. Residents can opt to receive phone calls, text messages, and/or emails. Pilera provides email and text translation to up to 103 languages and can make phone calls in Spanish. Additionally, residents can manage occupant information for their home, condo, or apartment such as other occupants or tenants. These occupants can then log into the portal to update their contact preferences and receive communications about the community.

Send Automated Communication to your community

In Pilera, managers can send announcements to the entire community, a specific building, unit, or floor to ensure that the message is sent to the relevant recipients. Through the send message functionality, you can send messages to specific recipients only. If there are messages that you send on a regular basis, you can convert that content into a template for future use.

Send email communication to your entire portfolio at once

Pilera now provides the ability for managers to send email announcements to select communities or to their entire portfolio at once.  The email can be segmented by the type of user, so managers can even send messages to just their board members or residents across all their communities.  This is especially helpful when managers need to relay important company policies or communication plans to all of their board members.  Furthermore, managers are able to keep their message consistent across all communities while reaching board members or residents quickly.

Reverse 911 for emergencies

There are times when you need to alert residents of a mandatory evacuation or other incidents that occur. Managers can utilize the Reverse 911 feature to make emergency calls. This feature will override the resident’s preference in the case of an emergency and will make phone calls to all the residents that have a phone number in the system.

Measure the effectiveness of your communication with the Message Center

When managers send out messages, it is critical for them to know that it was delivered. In addition to message delivery, the message center in Pilera will also capture if a phone call was answered to sent to voicemail, a text message was received, or if an email was replied to by the resident, opened, clicked, or if the email bounced.

*This blog post was updated on November 16, 2020, to provide new information on how Pilera’s communication tool can help communities formulate their emergency communication plans. 

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About Pilera

Pilera Software is the premier community and property management suite that has helped thousands of community managers and back-office personnel enhance communications, improve customer service, and manage compliance and operations. May we help your community achieve these success stories? Book a demo to see how Pilera’s community management suite can help your company.