Effortless Property Messaging: How Captivate ScreenCenter™ CMS Streamlines Communication

During the fourth quarter of 2022, the demand for multifamily housing plummeted. With more than 469,000 units completed in that year alone, the national vacancy rate is expected to rise another 6 percent by the end of 2023. 

Building owners and property managers are feeling the strain of steadily increasing competition. In response, they’re creating a strong social media presence, scheduling activities to encourage resident engagement, and investing in high-value amenities to attract new tenants and encourage lease renewals.

Nearly 90% of residents in multifamily properties consider how amenities align with their interests before signing (or renewing) a lease. Although fitness centers, contactless package delivery, smart access, and rooftop lounges are popular with tenants, management teams are also investing in ways to ensure their occupants feel valued, informed, and connected to their residential community. Effective communication is essential. With Captivate, your property messages are delivered in a way residents in multifamily buildings appreciate and enjoy while also making it fast and turnkey for your team.

Why Property Managers Are Adding Lobby Digital Signage to Their List of Amenities

Today’s residents want more than an attractive building to come home to—a place to eat and sleep. They expect to have opportunities to socialize with neighbors, enjoy activities with family, and relax. They also expect their property managers to communicate proactively, respond to feedback, and resolve issues in a timely manner. But today’s building owners and property managers have a lot on their plates. When landlords have too little time to cultivate a favorable relationship with their tenants, email notifications and hastily placed reminders can feel cold and impersonal.

To bridge the disconnect, multifamily building owners and property managers are adding digital signage to their list of amenities. They’re placing high-resolution screens in their lobbies, common areas, and elevator banks—the same type of screens you see modernizing shopping centers and office buildings—to ensure their messages connect with residents in an engaging way. 

Related: Rapid Expansion of Captivate Multifamily Housing Portfolio

The concept is so popular that market analysts predict the digital out-of-home market will be valued at more than $58 billion by 2031. But not all companies offering DOOH services are the same. When you choose Captivate, you’ll have all the advantages our content network has to offer, plus the ease of using our ScreenCenter™ content management system (CMS) to streamline communication.

Captivate Lobby Digital Signage Displays Your Messages Alongside Content That Engages Residents

Tenants who feel out of touch or ignored by property managers have little motivation to stay. While mass emails offering renewal incentives and increasing social media interaction can help keep your units leased, most internet users scroll right past sponsored posts, and an alarmingly high percentage of emails are ignored. Captivate-powered screens, on the other hand, relay important messages to your multifamily community while creating a positive environment.  

With Captivate’s turnkey media solution, your property communication is placed alongside the type of expertly curated content residents value and visitors notice: a bite-sized mix of wellness, sports, lifestyle information, business and entertainment news, weather forecasts, up-to-the-minute transit information, and more. In addition to ensuring your own property messaging reaches its intended recipients, you can take advantage of everything Captivate has to offer to provide your residents with a valuable service.

Investing in resident engagement creates a sense of community. Tenants who feel a strong connection to the space they call home often feel they have too much to lose to justify moving. It’s the very reason high-value residential management teams are sponsoring raffles, posting surveys, and hosting events. When you partner with Captivate, our ScreenCenter™ content management system makes it easy to promote your tenant engagement efforts from any computer or smartphone—in minutes.

How (and Why) Captivate ScreenCenter™ CMS Works

Captivate digital screens are capturing the attention of residents in multifamily buildings and student housing facilities from coast to coast. Our technology eliminates the need to invest in a lot of expensive hardware. All you need to get started is an HDMI-compatible screen and our simple Captivate | GO plug-and-play device. With our ScreenCenter™ content management system, you don’t need graphic design experience to create professional-looking, eye-catching messages.

After logging into the Captivate ScreenCenter™portal, choose your favorite design tools to create your message or select one of our pre-built templates. Then, upload your screen to the message library. Once your message is uploaded, choose your display frequency and publish your content. It’s that easy! If you’re intrigued by what you’ve learned so far, you may also want to consider some of the many ways managers in high-value multifamily properties are using Captivate-powered screens nationwide:

Promoting Upcoming Events

One of the easiest ways to encourage the type of socialization that boosts resident engagement is to host events that appeal to a large number of people. As part of their resident appreciation strategy, community managers taking full advantage of their Captivate-powered digital screens are posting invitations to ice cream socials, trivia contests, game nights, outdoor movies, raffles, and mixers. The possibilities are endless. 

Promoting events using our ScreenCenter™ content management system helps ensure an impressive turnout. Property managers are also adding scannable QR codes to their digital screens so participants can easily RSVP to hosted activities, participate in surveys, and acknowledge policy changes right from their phones.

Posting Property Notifications

In today’s increasingly digital environment, a considerable amount of business communication is transmitted electronically. Although tenants require email notifications and access to cloud-hosted payment portals for some elements of their interaction with you, there are plenty of people who give their inboxes little thought day-to-day. 

To ensure important messages reach the right people at the right time, building managers and their staff often devote a considerable amount of time (and expense) to printing notifications and mailing reminders. Management teams using Captivate ScreenCenter™ CMS, find they are saving time and effort by moving away from printed communication. Instead, they’re using Captivate-powered digital signage screens to inform their residents about everything from leasing opportunities and maintenance upgrades to posting policy reminders and announcing new amenities.  

Keeping Residents Safe

For residential multifamily building owners, resident safety is a constant concern. But residents may not always remember what to do in an emergency. To help keep occupants safe, many residential building managers using Captivate-powered digital screens keep a series of safety reminders in rotation. With Captivate screens located in common areas, elevators, and residential lobbies, their tenants have ample opportunity to review evacuation instructions, have access to contact information for after-hours repairs or needs, and know in advance when fire alarm systems are scheduled for testing. Since a new screen can be created in minutes, building managers are also using our ScreenCenter™ CMS to caution residents of inclement weather conditions and potential security threats.

Notifying Tenants of Unexpected Issues

Most large multifamily residential communities have a team of maintenance professionals on staff. But even with routine inspections, pipes can burst, water heaters stop working, and pools need to be closed for repairs. When the unexpected happens, it’s better for residents to learn any unfortunate news directly from management than from their neighbors. 

Related: Millennial Trends | What Makes a High Rise Building a Home?

In residential buildings with Captivate digital signage screens, community managers are keeping their residents informed of maintenance issues and updating the status of each repair as needed. While most tenants understand that unexpected issues happen, they appreciate being kept in the loop. Captivate ScreenCenter™ CMS helps managers maintain transparency by assuring building residents that maintenance issues are being addressed in a timely, professional manner.

Promoting Area Businesses

When you’re using the best multifamily content management system on the market, it’s remarkably easy to promote area merchants. For building managers and local businesses, it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement. You’re not only increasing tenant awareness of restaurants, services, and local entertainment in a way that helps business owners; you’re reminding tenants of the connections they’ve made in your neighborhood. 

You don’t need to create message screens or ads for business owners eager to promote their business on your Captivate screens. We have a separate self-serve solution that makes it easy for business owners to advertise to your residents. They register for a Captivate Create account, choose your property, select their start and end dates, and upload their image or 15-second video. It’s a simple process for both of you.

Could Captivate ScreenCenter™ CMS Be Your Key to Effortless Property Messaging?

Information that isn’t reaching its intended viewer is of little value. At Captivate, we provide the tools today’s multifamily property owners and their management teams need for effortless messaging. If you’re intrigued by the many potential benefits of investing in one of the fastest-growing sectors of engagement technology, visit Captivate to learn more about our ScreenCenter™ content management system.With Captivate, you have the option of investing in new displays with installation support or connecting a Captivate | GO plug-and-play device to your existing HDMI-capable screens. Once you’ve uploaded, scheduled, and published your messages, they’re displayed alongside expertly curated content your residential community will value. An impressive 92% of residents surveyed find Captivate informative, and 83% would be disappointed if the service was no longer available. To get started with Captivate’s ScreenCenter, submit a contact form.