Email people actually open
I ran the company's email to tenants and owners: monthly bulletins, closure notices, maintenance and weather updates, and feature launches. Year after year, our emails were opened at two to three times the industry average, because people learned that an email from us was worth reading.
The problem
A property manager has to reach people about things that actually matter to them: an office closure, a storm, a new way to pay rent. If those emails get ignored, the message doesn't land and the team ends up answering the same question by phone.
Constraints
No dedicated marketer
Email was one part of my role, so it had to be efficient to write and send.
Two very different readers
Tenants want to know what affects their home. Owners want to know what affects their investment.
Some emails can't be missed
Closure and weather notices only work if people open them on time.
Keep it on brand
Every email had to look like the company, before and after the 2026 brand refresh.
Key decisions
Write for each audience separately.
Tenants and owners get their own lists and their own emails, so nobody receives news that isn't for them.
Make every email recognisable.
Since 2022 every subject line has used the same prefix, so people know at a glance that it's from us and what kind of email it is.
A steady rhythm plus timely notices.
About 29 monthly bulletins, 32 closure notices and 18 maintenance and weather emails, with launches and owner notices in between.
Carry the brand into the templates.
After the 2026 refresh I carried the new brand into the Mailchimp templates, so emails matched everything else.
Outcome
| Year | Campaigns | Average open | Average click |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 (from Nov) | 9 | 67.6% | 20.4% |
| 2023 | 25 | 78.1% | 17.8% |
| 2024 | 30 | 67.9% | 19.1% |
| 2025 | 23 | 59.6% | 16.9% |
| 2026 | 24 | 53.8% | 7.7% |
- Open rates stayed between 54% and 78% every year, two to three times the benchmark.
- Tenant emails regularly drew 28–44% clicks, and the Rent Reporting launch in 2023 drew 43.5%.
What I'd do differently
- Separate informational notices from campaigns in reporting. The 2026 click rate looks low mostly because many of that year's emails had no link to click, which makes the number hard to compare.