Imagine you are a community manager and just found out that urgent testing is about to begin on all fire alarms and you have 163 residents who have no clue and you have only minutes to get a notice out.

Obviously you cannot call them all in only a few minutes and even if you could, what percent would pick up the phone and if you left a message, what percent would listen to it right then and there? The thought of posting flyers doesn’t even cross your mind because you have to get on the computer, design it, print it, fold them and after all that run around the property like crazy only to realize you forgot the tape back at the office. It’s currently 11:30 AM and pushing a message through your resident portal will only be effective for those logged in currently. So you do what conventional wisdom would tell you to do – you send out an email. Whew that was close – now I can rest easy! Really? The average open rate in Q4 of 2012 for email was 27.4%. How do you rest easy knowing that on average only 27.4% of residents opened your communication about the fire alarm testing?

So are there other options? Yes, yes there are. Typically thought only for personal use, text messaging with a 98% READ RATE (yes you read that right – 98%), is a great tool for communicating with your residents for a wide variety of topics including short notice fire alarm testing.