Meet Beverly, she was so excited to win $10,000. Watch her amazing surprise reaction and what she has to say about RentPayment!

It’s also interesting because she pays rent online for her daughter who is a college student and living at a student housing community.   More student housing communities should communicate directly with parents about rent payment options.  Having parents pay the rent online (rather then sending the money to their child and relying on them to bring in a paper check) is a great way to collect more on-time payments.

Enjoy!

In the 5 month promotional period, the RentPayment Sweepstakes had:

• close to 1,000,000 entries
• over 300,000 eligible renters!
• 1,000 loyal renters who made a payment each month

How do you get this kind of response without advertising?  You let your renters speak for you!

To help spread the word about the Sweepstakes, we relied heavily on the voice of our renters.   Very little communication went out directly to residents from RentPayment, but rather, we provided residents with the tools to share the sweepstakes amongst each other virally through email and social media.  Through our website, web banner reminders were placed. Also, Property Manger resources were sent out via email so they were able to get the ball rolling for their renters.

Besides seeing the power of social media sharing and renter communication first hand, we were also able to learn more about which channels our renters are using and which are the best marketing vehicles to communicate with residents in the multifamily industry.

Residents were able to share the Sweepstakes through Email, Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace with neighbors, roommates and friends.  The chart above shows the percentage of “shares” (emails, messages, status updates or tweets) that were sent among various channels. The highest percentage of shares via email (about 2,000 emails) proves that email is still an extremely powerful marketing tool for communication with renters.  As expected, I’d like to point out that Facebook is the most popular of the social networking sites among our renters for sharing information.

Property Managers should take advantage of this communication channel for prospecting, operational efficiencies and to distribute promotional offers (like the RentPayment Sweepstakes!) to build renter satisfaction.

We also looked at the ability of these four social channels to actually draw traffic our site.    These results show that as a communication tool email had the greatest call-to-action, accounting for 98% of the total website traffic from all sources combined.  Out of the three pure social networking sites, Facebook generated 91% of the total traffic and Twitter generated the other 9% showing that Facebook sharing the most valuable traffic source, and MySpace sharing has next to no value.

More about the Sweepstakes:  To be entered, renters of participating properties just needed to pay their rent through RentPayment!  Renters could pay online at RentPayment.com or pay rent by the phone with RentPayment’s many mobile payment options.    RentPayment’s mobile payment options include:  Paying rent over the phone, RentByText, and RentPayment’s new iPhone app- RentPayment Mobile.  For more info, visit: http://blog.rentpayment.com/2010/08/05/sweepstakes/.  To meet our $10,000 Grand Prize winner, visit: http://blog.rentpayment.com/2011/01/28/watch-the-video-rentpayment-awards-10000-sweepstakes-grand-prize-winner/.

Beverly has consistently paid her daughter Megan’s rent on time through RentPayment since Megan began living in her college apartment near San Diego State University. Beverly appreciates how much easier it is to pay online, adding “I don’t have to worry about sending her [Megan] a check, her taking it to the office, and then waiting the 2,3,4,5 days for it to clear.  This way [with RentPayment.com] we go on and in 2-3 minutes, the rent’s paid! ”

The options and flexibility of the system are what attracted Beverly to RentPayment.  “When I go on, I have options.  I can use a credit card, a debit card, or I can use our checking account to pay rent, it’s so convenient,” Beverly tells us.  She also is a recent adopter of RentByText, noting “Texting is such a big part of society today, I remember when I first started texting my kids.  Sometimes I use RentByText, but a lot of times I’ll use it just as a reminder to go online and send my eCheck in via the internet.”

How did hear about RentPayment?

Beverly first found out about RentPayment through an informational packet move-in packet given by American Campus Communities to all its new renters.  “In that packet was all the information we needed, including RentPayment.com [flyer] and how we could easily sign up,” says Beverly.  For student housing communities, this highlights the importance of getting parents involved.  A lot of student renters still rely on help from parents or guardians, but do not communicate all payment alternatives to them. These are the ones who often benefit most from having an electronic payment option.

Beverly was so excited to win $10,000 and truly a joy to meet.   To her, RentPayment is just another one of the modern conveniences she uses in her daily life.  Thanks for your support, Beverly, and congratulations!

RentPayment would like to thank everyone who participated in the first ever RentPayment $10,000 Sweepstakes.  During the RentPayment Sweepstakes we got the chance to connect with and reward several renters across the country for using our service.   During the 5 month long sweepstakes we awarded $100 Gift Cards to 10 lucky renters each month just for using RentPayment and now we’ve selected our Grand Prize winner for the $10,000 prize!

We would like to announce the grand prize winner:
BEVERLY & MEGAN ALLAIRE
Aztec Corner Apts | American Campus Communities | San Diego, CA

In it’s 5 month period, the sweepstakes received over 900,000 entries from over 300,000 renters! Residents also had the opportunity to submit multiple entries for each time they made a payment and we had over 1,000 loyal renters make payments during every single month of the sweepstakes.

>>> Read the Press Release

The RentPayment Rewards Club!

We’d like to feature some of our 2010 Sweepstakes winners from around the country.  Each of these renters won a $100 MasterCard Gift Card in a monthly drawing for the RentPayment Sweepstakes between August 1st and December 31st, 2010.   Thanks to you all for participating and congratulations!

We asked these renters: Why do you use RentPayment?

“I absolutely love how quick and easy it is to pay your rent using RentPayment on my Blackberry. The whole process makes life a lot less complicated for people stressing about bills.”

-Cami Fazio, Apache Station, Asset Campus

“I almost got evicted once for forgetting to pay my rent on time and using RentPayment has made it so that hasn’t happened again.”

-Marissa Wolfson,  Vista Del Sol,  American Campus Communities

“[The] Pay by Phone system is easy to use and convenient… all rental info is passed along quickly to my property management.”

-Jason Walker,  The Bennington,  Bell Partners

“It’s very easy and convenient to pay your rent.  I like that you all have an app for iPhones as well.”
-Kristen Fisher,  Woodlands of Tuscaloosa,  The Dovetail Companies

August Sweepstakes Winners

Meet some of our RentPayment Sweepstakes winners from our monthly drawing for August, each of these renters received a $100 MasterCard Gift Card!

We asked these renters: Why do you use RentPayment?

“I love the convenience that RentPayment allows you when paying rent. It is critical for paying your rent on time when you can’t go to the office to pay your rent until after the office is closed.”
- Gregory Ballard, Fayetteville, NC

“I really like the convenience of having rent automatically deducted from my checking account every month. It’s convenient that I don’t have to worry about late charges because it is automatically paid for me.”
- Terry Albright, Robinson Township, PA

“RentPayment has made it easy for me to pay my rent on time each month. I really enjoy the 5 day reminder email that is sent to me before my rent is due each month so I can make sure there is money in my account.”
- Jennifer Bosl, Durham, NC

More about the RentPayment Sweepstakes:

RentPayment is giving away $100 Gift Cards to TEN lucky renters every month for the rest of the year and a $10,000 grand prize to one lucky renter at the end of the year, just for paying rent with RentPayment!

For more information: www.RentPayment.com/sweepstakes

RentPayment: Where Paying Rent Pays you Back!

RentPayment has hosted more promotions this year than ever and awarded several renters with cash, gift cards and even a month of free rent.  We will be ending 2010 with our biggest and best, and would like to announce the RentPayment Sweepstakes which will run for the remainder of 2010.  This exciting offer will help Property Managers get the most value out of their service by boosting RentPayment awareness and providing an incentive to convert to electronic payments.

Each month from August 1 to December 31, 2010, 10 renters that pay their rent using RentPayment will be awarded a $100 gift card and at the conclusion of  the Sweepstakes, one renter will win the $10,000 Grand Prize!   In all, RentPayment will award $15,000 in prize money over the remainder of 2010.

“It’s exciting to reward our customers for their loyalty to our service,” said Matt Golis,  CEO. “We’ve experienced tremendous growth in electronic rent payments in 2010 and look forward to continuing to provide the highest quality of  service to our customers in the future.”  The RentPayment Sweepstakes runs from August 1, 2010 to December 31, 2010 and is  open to ALL individuals mte social media oaking a payment during that time period. Payments can be made online, over the phone, in-person, and via mobile devices including our exclusive RentByText technology.  Each payment is recorded as one entry towards the Grand Prize, giving users a maximum of 5 entries towards the $10,000 Grand Prize. The sweepstakes will also incorporautlets such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more.

Full details of the Sweepstakes are available at:
http://www.rentpayment.com/sweepstakes