Who is Fiona? She’s a predictive marketing platform designed to improve work efficiency, cost-per-lead and resident insights into local markets. Ever since our release of Fiona in April 2018, marketers nationwide are intrigued to learn more about how she can help them better understand their budgets.
Overview & Purpose
Freeman Webb, a private real estate investment firm headquartered in Nashville, TN, manages a portfolio of over 11 million square feet in multifamily, office, and retail property. As the largest private owner/manager of apartments in Nashville, Freeman Webb needed guidance and a solution in how to allocate advertising dollars to maximize ROI and increase occupancy rates. With a plethora of digital marketing platforms, how is the everyday marketer supposed to know where to allocate their money for the best possible results? After running paid media with Digible for about 6 months, Freeman decided to invest in Digible’s proprietary technology, Fiona.
The Approach
Erika Walker, Director of Digital Marketing & Interactive Services at Freeman Webb, decided in November 2018 that it was time to test Fiona. Freeman’s digital marketing approach already included changing budgets every month, but budget adjustments were solely based on past campaign performance. At first, this does not sound like a terrible solution, however, making strategic budgeting changes should ideally incorporate data from cross-channel marketing platforms, account for seasonal and market trends, plus incorporate property-specific needs. Drastically changing budgets month-over-month is not inducive for paid media success. After indexing her infinite and ever-changing database – including but not limited to, over 120,000 apartment communities, a multimillion dollar apartment ad-cooperative, 250 million resident device ids, a number of APIs (i.e. paid Search, SEO and Social), Google Analytics, LMS systems, ILS consortiums, Craigslist postings – Fiona presented a clear solution to Freeman’s budgeting problem.
Digible issued Walker a login for myfiona.com, which she uses to access dashboards for each Freeman Webb property. When logging in, she is greeted with a newsfeed that details daily tips and insights, covering anything from Facebook algorithm updates, new Google Search offerings, to SEO insights. From there, Walker can click into a specific property dashboard. Each property dashboard shows Fiona’s recommended marketing breakout accompanied with Fiona’s explanation: AI generated natural language that details exactly why a certain budget was recommended. For example, if Fiona recommends $1,200 in spend on search advertising, she provides detail about the current search index, mobile search ratio, the 90-day forecast, and other factors in order to clearly outline the data behind the recommendation. The combination of data and explanation gives Walker peace of mind that her budget changes are strategic and sometimes even saves her money where she was overspending.
Fiona generates her initial recommendations from extensive data algorithms, but she also gives users the ability to adjust certain data points to generate custom recommendations. Walker can change a property’s current occupancy, target occupancy and close rate and calculate a new recommendation. Similarly, when it comes to the suggested budget allocation, Fiona gives users the option to toggle platforms on or off and will re-allocate the overall budget based on those choices. Walker can also customize the total budget if Fiona’s recommendation is outside of what she has available to spend, helping her maintain confidence in the strategy regardless of total money allocated. With these data driven features, Fiona helped Walker strategically test new platforms for her portfolio, such as email and display, that she once did not feel confident adding as investments.
The Results
20% of Freeman Webb’s multifamily portfolio is now on Fiona. Since implementing, the properties have seen a 48% overall increase in paid search advertising lead volume and a 5% increase in year-over-year occupancy rates.
On average, Freeman Webb has a 14% higher occupancy rate compared to competitor properties in the same markets. Fiona is a month-to-month subscription, with the option to cancel at anytime. Freeman Webb has a 100% retention rate on Fiona.
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“Fiona provides rare insight, allowing us to strategically utilize our advertising spend and resources to fully optimize our marketing efforts – maximizing our ROI.Erika Walker, Director of Digital Marketing & Interative Services / Freeman Webb
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