Leasing smarts for affordable housing.

It’s a huge time saver and gives us much more insight into marketing apartments.

Engrain’s SightMap has not only created a higher caliber self-service experience for our customers, but it has also helped us gain a much deeper understanding of our properties, premium locations and the overall layout.

Our relationship with Engrain goes back several years. Fast-forward to 2019, and Engrain’s interactive SightMap was exactly what we were seeking. It provided a cost-effective and easy-to-implement solution to help improve the online floor-plan search experience for our tech-savvy prospects.

SightMap gives renters all the information they need to make a buying decision. They get to choose which method is best for them – if they want to look by unit, floor plan, or see a visual map of where the home is located within the community.

We knew we needed this type of technology to facilitate more of the self-service experiences our customers were looking for and make selecting a storage unit and navigating properties as seamless and intuitive as possible. It’s also a much easier way to visualize our properties and understand vacancy, premium unit locations and how our properties are laid out.

These are unique properties and we don’t have standard layouts and sometimes it’s very confusing how we number our units. Giving people a navigable point of reference where they can get from a gate, an office or a kiosk to their unit is the primary enhanced experience.

These technologies are really about the customer and providing a more seamless and visually rich apartment leasing and touring experience. That consistency is really important to our brand and Engrain helped us establish that to create a better experience for each potential resident.

That was my first interaction with Engrain and I was blown away with the technology. It made a lot of sense to integrate interactive mapping technology with the 55-inch touch screens we use during the touring experience, and even for hosting on our websites. SightMap really helps prospects visualize what their experience would be like upon move-in and paints a more complete picture.

The wayfinding really enhances the customer journey because they’re getting a more comprehensive tour of the community. Not only can they navigate the property on their own, but they can see where their potential apartment might be, how far it is from parking and other key details they’ll want to know before applying.”

Our leasing teams also love the map as a tool to use while communicating with prospects both virtually and in the leasing office. The new Blue Dot location feature within the interactive SightMap is something that many of our teams are excited about, as it proves an especially useful feature for sites that are offering self-guided tours.

It really is a novel and invaluable tool for us. Many Extra Space properties have thousands of units. We can now let customers know where their unit is located and give them a better idea of whether or not their truck can get down a particular aisle, or if they need to take an elevator or go up a flight of stairs and around three corners with a couch.

For one, it’s a great enhancement for older or templated sites where the floor plan search experience isn’t reflective of best practices. And two, it provides additional opportunity for engagement on newer sites, extending the time on site with an easy-to-use, visual search tool.

Overall, Engrain has proved a valued and progressive partner to Bozzuto over the past several years. They have offered innovative solutions and strong customer service.”

People want specific things and SightMap really streamlines that process by narrowing their apartment search through embedded SightMap filters based on what they're interested in and what's important to them. People are inherently visual. Instead of telling a prospect that an apartment faces the pool, actualy showing them the exact location and view on a map is a far better customer experience. It allows customers to really dial in to what they want.

They can pull SightMap up right from their desks, and it’s nice because it highlights the vacants. They can show exactly where in the community each available home is located, and they can also zoom out and show how close we are to schools or bus stops. We get a lot of questions like that, and SightMap provides a great visual.

The leasing teams love SightMap because they’re able to pull it up and walk through a community with a prospect and know exactly which units they can show while giving an exact price and move-in date.

We want to make informed decisions when it comes to pricing and really understand the nuances of the apartments. It’s critical to identify why some are more expensive than others and if there are any patterns for apartments that are taking longer to lease so we can market all our homes effectively.

Data can be difficult to read or understand. But showing rather than telling actually says a million words. SightMap really fills that gap.”

Maps are a commodity feature in most software applications in the storage space, but the key feature we were missing was the interactive component. The self-storage industry has used static map files that need to be updated by the vendor and they’re very limited in how customers or teams can interact with them.

It’s much quicker to pull up a property map on SightMap and visualize the green boxes where there is vacancy and which units meet the particular criteria a customer is looking for.

They’ve worked with us a lot to review the data behind TouchTour and SightMap and help us reimagine our processes with the technology features and upgrades.

The Engrain team came out to our office and we could tell they were very passionate about what they were doing, willing to work with us and could implement our suggestions very quickly.

Once prospects can view these spaces on a map, it adds more value. Our journey orchestration is much more powerful with visuals. We can see customer feedback in our surveys, so we know the interactive maps are not only advantageous, but differentiating.

SightMap has that ‘wow factor.’ It’s beautiful to look at, intuitive and a fun, productive resource. One of Venterra’s biggest goals is to create a really great customer experience.

When a prospect finishes a tour, we refer them back to our website so that they can finish the process online if they didn’t leave a deposit. They can still see what’s available, what’s been taken, and go apply.

It can be challenging to take data and make it visually impactful and productive. Data can be difficult to read or understand. But showing rather than telling actually says a million words. SightMap really fills that gap.

For our websites, we wanted that real-time availability for prospects. SightMap definitely has the real-time availability, and the fact that it integrates with our software is huge.”

We use Engrain’s TouchTour and SightMap at all of our communities and wanted to enhance the interactive maps so customers on self-guided tours had the ability to seamlessly navigate communities on their own.

We look at Engrain’s SightMap as a critical component for how we enhance both the user experience and the employee experience at all of our locations. It’s now a permanent extension of how Extra Space does business.

Based on Griffis' data, customers spend 20.7% more time engaging with the SightMap when they are searching for a new apartment.

Griffis’ company motto is, ‘it’s about you,’ and both SightMap and TouchTour align with our company goals and support that vision.

For the onsite team, it just makes it so much easier to narrow down the units that they're going to show.

SightMap was really concise and efficient compared to some of the other interactive maps we looked at that seemed clunky and already outdated. The interactive property map provided easily digestible information that gave our leasing team pricing insight and our prospects a better understanding of exactly what they’re getting.

The beauty of SightMap is that we can distinctly show photos attached to exact apartment homes, so that customers can look at the photos and 3D tours of the specific home they’re interested in.

The dynamic pricing allows customers to select their lease length and move-in date with an exact price. Our customers know exactly what they’re getting and that alone really enhances the customer journey and overall resident experience.

Bozzuto was able to seamlessly integrate the SightMap platform to its community site to offer prospects a more granular and interactive floor plan search. For instance, if a prospect wanted to view all one-bedroom homes on the ground floor or all two bedroom homes with a balcony, they could do so.

We see customer feedback in our surveys, so we know the interactive maps are not only advantageous, but differentiating.

People want specific things and SightMap really streamlines that process by narrowing their apartment search through embedded SightMap filters based on what they’re interested in and what’s important to them.

We are empowered to make informed decisions with a flexible, innovative tool that’s intuitive and user friendly,” she added, “Engrain had just the solution we needed and the team has been wonderful to work with and extremely helpful.

It’s a huge time saver and gives us much more insight into marketing apartments. We never have to wonder or second guess our pricing decisions and when to push concessions if we need to.

You can turn the map around to the customer and show them what’s available to see what will work best for them. It changes not just the rental journey, but also the reporting, walk-through tasks and lock checks that the site managers are required to do as well.

SightMap gets prospects further along the journey than they normally would be without visuals prior to a property tour.

I've really noticed the burden of uncertainty lifted from prospects and an added confidence to apply.

The interactivity of a map, real-time occupancy and vacancy data and pricing affect the journey in a way we’ve never implemented before at Extra Space. It really is a novel and invaluable tool for us.

The wayfinding really enhances the customer journey because they’re getting a more comprehensive tour of the community. Not only can they navigate the property on their own, but they can see where their potential apartment might be, how far it is from parking and other key details they’ll want to know before applying.

Whenever a new product or software feature is released at Engrain, the Engrain team always meets with Griffis to demo the product and let us try it out. I’ve always been very impressed not only with Engrain’s technology, but also their customer service.