Meet Mary Herrold, the VP of Marketing and Business Development at JVM Realty Corporation in Oak Brook, Illinois. Mary started her career in multifamily over 20 years ago when she was hired as a listing updater while signing the lease for her first apartment in Chicago. Throughout her years in the industry, she has found that placing equal value on performance and customer service is the key to building a superior management company.

Here's what Mary had to say about what it takes to achieve marketing success.

Zillow: Early in your career, you worked with a tight marketing budget and supported communities with reputation problems. How did that shape your management style today?
Mary: I've observed that management companies are judged by the beauty of their properties and not the excellence of their operations, kind of like a beauty contest; pretty property must mean a good management company. For me, management companies should be judged by how well they maximize value and how well they deliver a superior customer experience. Even with the most obsolete, unattractive communities, you can still provide top quality service, clean surroundings and efficient operations. Now, at JVM we have beautiful properties and we maximize value while consistently delivering a superior customer experience.

Zillow: In your opinion, what metrics lend themselves to a 'best in class' marketing department? What performance metrics do you look at?
Mary: To start with, you need to measure and manage your lease expirations and understand your move-outs. Those metrics drive everything. They drive what we spend on turning units, how much traffic is needed, and how many leads are required to increase revenue. The other metrics I rely on are all related to acquiring leads, converting leads to customers and retaining customers. "Get 'em, close 'em, keep 'em" are the three metric categories I concentrate on, followed by people, product, price and promotion metrics. There are several peripheral metrics involved with what I measure to ensure I am creating maximized value, but everything I look at falls into one of those three main "buckets" and the marketing "P's."

Zillow: Which factors do you consider when deciding where to allocate your online marketing budget?
Mary: Our strategy is simple. If it is a pay-for-performance model, and the channel delivers a professional product, we always do it. We concentrate on referrals, and anything that allows us to manage our own message such as our website, SEM and social media. When deciding on paid advertising such as an ILS, we look at where the ILS placement is in our markets and what they're doing to drive traffic to their site. I personally shop each ILS and judge the value of the content and user experience as if I were looking for an apartment. If the ILS passes the SEO/SEM test, and is genuinely helpful to me as a renter, then we ask them to comply with our inbound linking strategy. Once we partner with an ILS, I measure the performance based on cost per move-in. If the source is above my cost threshold, I tweak it. If performance doesn't improve, I eliminate it.

Zillow: What steps are you taking to make lease attribution as accurate as possible? 
Mary: One of them is lead tracking software; we use Lead to Lease. Since the advent of online leasing, we have compartmentalized our source list and pared down the list of source choices so the customer drop-down menu is limited to 10-15 options instead of a dizzying 50. I've yet to see a perfectly accurate lead tracking solution, but ours is pretty darn close. For those not using software, I suggest they look at the big lead numbers with a grain of salt. High activity doesn't mean high accomplishment.

Zillow: Can you shed some light on why you chose Zillow to be in your budget, and what makes Zillow an appealing marketing partner?
Mary: First of all, mobile. Zillow has a great mobile user experience. I used Zillow when I looked for a home, and I use it for apartment homes too. I like the app because of the quality of images and because the listings I want come to me - I don't need to search. Second, I like the pay-for-performance model. The Zillow model cuts out a lot of noise. Like I said before, there's a big difference between activity and accomplishment; Zillow eliminates fruitless activity and delivers accomplishment. We anticipate counting on Zillow to deliver qualified contacts. If not, I don't pay. It's a clean, fair exchange.

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