Should Your HOA use Text Messaging?
The number of community associations is constantly growing with more residents desiring a sense of community and shared responsibility. To ensure that a community runs smoothly and to improve the resident experience, communication with residents is critical. Residents expect to receive information about HOA dues, meetings, events, policies, maintenance, emergencies, and other important community information at the tip of their fingers. With many businesses using texting/SMS to connect and engage with their customers, should your community start using text messaging too? In this article, we’ll describe the 4 ways text messaging benefits your community.
Cost savings
Traditional communication methods such as postal mail can become expensive over time.?More modern means such as texting can improve operations and staff efficiency. Because text messaging is a lot quicker and easier to implement, it can save communities thousands of dollars each year. With HOA texting solutions, it takes only a few clicks to send a message to a group of residents or your entire community.
Convenience
According to?Pew, 1 in 3 Americans prefers to receive text messages from a business, irrespective of what the message is about.?Studies also suggest that?85% of individuals prefer a text message over a voice call.?A majority of adults own a mobile phone, making text the most preferred way to receive a message.
Highest open rate
Making sure that residents receive your messages on time is vital to your community’s communication efforts.?Postal mailings often take time to reach residents, and even so, residents may not open their mail consistently every day. Sending an email is a very cost-effective way to reach your residents; however, 20-30% of them are opened. Text messages by far have the highest open rate than any other medium of communication. 99% of text messages are opened and read within three minutes of receiving them, making them one of the most effective ways to reach your residents.?
Vital in emergencies
When there’s an emergency or a situation where residents need to be notified at short notice, such as a roadblock or maintenance work, there’s no time to waste.?While email and phone calls are effective methods, there’s nothing as immediate as a text message.?Where it may take days for residents to receive physical mail or a few minutes to send out a voicemail, they’ll receive text messages instantly.?
Conclusion
Although various modes of communication such as postal mail, email, and phone calls all have their own advantages, text messaging is a faster and more direct way to reach residents. It’s a cost-effective alternative to postal mail.?With the highest open rates of any mode of communication, you’ll see increased resident engagement and improved operations.
Our original article is posted at: https://www.pilera.com/2021/10/should-your-hoa-use-text-messaging.html
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2 年As an HOA board member. I have found including texts as an option are quite effective. A policy should be created for specific use and conversely, that homeowners should not use it to text board members unnecessarily. Emails, newsletters, and an updated website are all excellent communication tools we use as well. Thank you for sharing the idea of adding texts as an option.
Manager
2 年I agree that texting is a very useful form of communication for Associations. My Association texts when warning about snow plowings (so we can move our vehicles), for missing packages, or a few other more urgent things. If texting is implemented by a Board, policies should be made on what information will be sent via text especially since some state laws or even Association governing documents may dictate how certain information is communicated. So that should be checked on first. Thanks for sharing this Ashish! The statistics on open rates are eye opening although not surprising.