How Pilera Communications Saves Time & Increases Productivity

Communication is a vital part of managing a community, but it is oftentimes challenging and time-consuming. When sending out messages or notices to your community it’s important to ask questions, such as:

How effective are your current communication tools in saving you and your staff time?

Is your communication tool flexible enough to meet each communitys’ diverse needs?

If you are using outdated technology or processes, it’s likely that your staff are burdened with repetitive tasks that impact their productivity. When management companies leverage a communications platform that is both easy to use and flexible, it makes a manager’s job easier. Pilera’s communication platform offers many ways to manage your community outreach more efficiently. We recently surveyed our clients to learn how they save time with Pilera. In this post, we share these insights with you.

How Pilera’s Communication Platform Saves Time & Increases Productivity

Our clients have seen many improvements to their team’s productivity as they transitioned to digital communications. From our survey, 67% of managers saved 7 hours per week, on average with Pilera’s communication tools. 89% of managers also stated that these time savings freed up their staff to address other important issues or provide additional services for their clients. Let’s dive into the top ways our clients save time with Pilera’s communication tools and how you can as well.

Automate mass communications

Many of our clients shared with us that communicating with residents before using Pilera involved hand-delivering letters or posting notes on doors. Shifting to automated digital communications allows them to save time while reaching residents instantly. By automating phone, email, and text, managers can reduce manual work. Pilera makes 80 phone calls a minute. Let’s say that a manager can make one individual phone call every two minutes. That’s 5.5 hours saved that a manager could dedicate to other important issues!

Mindy Barclay at Axiom Property Management says, “Using Pilera saves on paper and time for someone to post messages on doors. I can send out a message right-a-way to the buildings, the entire property, or to an individual [within short] notice.”

We automatically maintain your recipient lists

Residents frequently move in or move out of a community, which means your recipient list needs to be up to date. Some of our clients previously used an email marketing service like Constant Contact or Outlook to manage their recipient lists. Managers would manually add or remove residents from the list, and then copy/paste the contacts in the BCC field. Pilera’s distribution groups are self-maintaining, which means that when a resident moves in or out, the list is automatically updated.

Segment your lists with distribution groups

Managers often need to only message certain groups of residents, not the entire community. With email BCC or other email platforms, managers needed to either categorize contacts beforehand or individually select contacts that need to receive the message. Pilera’s distribution groups are designed for the property management industry. This makes it easier to send more targeted messages over contact-based email platforms. You can create any combination of location and/or residents to form a message group such as a landscaping committee or homes with a basement. Simply choose the streets, buildings, floors, units, or residents that you want in the group and start messaging them.

Our clients especially like the ease with which they can create these groups and reuse them. Carly Melius from Professional Association Services, Inc. in California, says “I have been able to single out stacks for water shut offs and ease of sending to just certain people within an HOA, or an entire HOA if needed, I am able to duplicate and send out multiple of the same for reminders that has helped for when doing inspections and need access to units.”

Scheduling communications ahead of time

Scheduling messages in advance helps you to stay ahead. Especially if a message needs to go out after-hours or when you’re out of the office. With Pilera, you can schedule messages up to 2 weeks in advance to ensure timely delivery.

Save frequent messages as templates

If you need to communicate important information on a frequent basis such as water shutoffs, templates can come in handy. Our clients like that they can save their email, text, phone, and PDF letter content as a template to reuse when needed. It saves staff time by eliminating the need to copy and paste content from another source every time they need to send the same type of message. Templates also help to keep the message consistent if you have multiple staff handling communications.

Email residents across your entire portfolio

For companies that manage a portfolio of HOA, Condo, or Apartment communities, the Multi-Community Announcement feature is a massive time-saver. You can send out bulk email announcements to your entire portfolio or a handful of communities. To send more targeted messages, you can segment your recipients by type of user. Many of our clients use this feature to send an email blast to board members across their portfolio, but you can email owners and tenants too.

Recap

When your communications platform offloads time-consuming activities such as managing your lists or sending out messages, you can free staff to address other important issues. Pilera’s communication platform enables your staff to improve community outreach and efficiency at the same time. Here’s a recap:

Automated communications – Send out mass email, phone, and text messages to your communities with just a few clicks.
Distribution Groups – Create message groups with any combination of residents and locations that you can reuse when needed. The self-maintaining nature of our distribution groups keeps your list up to date.
Advanced scheduling – Stay ahead of your outreach efforts by scheduling messages up to 2 weeks in advance.
Templates – Create templates for frequent messages you need to send and reuse them when needed.
Multi-community announcements – Send an email blast to your entire portfolio or a handful of communities and segment by the type of user.

Video: Improve Your Community Communications with Pilera

Pilera has helped thousands of communities to increase communications with residents, while also improving staff productivity. If you’d like to learn more about how Pilera can work for you, book a personalized demo, or contact us at [email protected].