If you often find the need to send messages to your committees or residents from different locations within the community, you can now do so in Pilera.  Our new distribution groups give you greater control over who you want to send messages to so you can deliver a stronger community experience. Additionally, distribution groups will save you a lot of time since you can reuse the list any time you need to and the groups maintain themselves.

In this blog article, we’ll explore important steps on how to get started with distribution groups and examples you can easily implement for your communities.

Getting started with Distribution Groups

Step #1: Create distribution groups based on locations and people within a community

Through the new distribution groups, you can select any combination of streets, buildings, floors, units, and people to send a message to.  The power of distribution groups is that you can send a message to multiple streets instead of just one street. This saves you a lot of time as you no longer have to send a separate message for each street especially if the content is the same.  Once you’ve configured your groups, you can send a message through the Send Announcement or Send Document area. As an additional bonus, any location-based distribution group that you create maintains itself over time. When a tenant or owner leaves the community and a new one joins, they will automatically be added to the list.

Step #2: Send messages to multiple distribution groups at the same time

Once you’ve created your distribution groups, head over to the Send Announcement or Send Document functionality. Through our communications platform, you can include as many distribution groups as you need to at the same time. Sending a message to multiple distribution groups at the same time will allow you to reach a broader audience. This will save your team a lot of time as you only need to send a common message once!

Step #3: Include phone, email & text in your communications mix!

For communities that have a wide demographic, it’s important to have flexible options to stay in touch with residents. One of the most effective ways to do that is to select the resident’s communication preference when sending an announcement. Alternatively, if a community prefers a specific method of communication instead, you can select either email, phone, or text message.

Step #4: Segment your list further by user type

Once you have selected the distribution groups you want to send your message to, you can further refine the targeting of your message to send to specific user groups only. For example, you can send the message to owners, tenants, other occupants, on-site managers, board members, and/or managers.

Now that you’ve learned how to use distribution groups, let’s put it all together.  Consider these examples you can implement for your community.

Distribution group examples you can implement

1) Send messages quickly in an emergency

If certain areas in your community are expecting more flood than others, managers can send more relevant messages before, during, and after to residents who own or live near waterfront/beachside properties.  When sending an announcement, choose the Force Emergency Call option. This option will ignore the communication preference and send a phone call to your residents and will indicate that it’s an emergency.

2) Notify residents about common area or equipment maintenance repairs

When an HVAC needs repairs, you’ll want to inform your residents.  You can group residents who share a common stack on the northeast side of the building and send them a message whenever you need to. You may not consider this as an emergency, but you still want to inform residents in the most effective way.  When you send an announcement, select the option to notify residents according to their communication preference.  This will send residents your message based on whether they want to receive a phone call, email, or text message.

3) Keep in touch with members of your committee

Your community may have a number of committees that work toward a common goal and need to be informed on a consistent basis. Managers can create distribution groups to keep in touch with their committee members. Simply add people to your group and send them an announcement message or a document. Create distribution groups for your architectural reviews, emergency preparedness, or landscaping committees to keep them in the know of what is happening in the community.

4) Notify all members of your committees at once

Do you find yourself needing to send a message to all members of your committees once in a while? When sending an announcement or a document, you can select multiple distribution groups at once to receive your message.

Conclusion

You can now create groups through a combination of streets, buildings, floors, units, and people – the possibilities are endless! Pilera’s new distribution groups give you greater flexibility over your current targeting capabilities, so you can send more relevant messages while saving you and your team time.

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About Pilera

Pilera Software is the premier community and property management software 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? Contact us to see how Pilera’s community management suite can help your company.