Where were you back in 2004? Before you take a trip down memory lane to velour tracksuits and streaky highlights — wait, those are still a thing today! — here’s a nostalgic reminder of how far we’ve come since the good ol’ days:
The final episode of the sitcom FRIENDS was airing on NBC after a decade-long run while Mark Zuckerberg was JUST beginning the social network Facebook from his college dorm room. Grubhub and Yelp were ramping up online reviews and Google introduced a free email service called Gmail.
What were we up to back in the day? In April of 2004, we founded a groundbreaking concept in multifamily marketing; a software platform that helps you attract, retain and renew more residents with personalized, ready-made apartment flyers.
Hello Resident celebrates its 17th birthday this month with a look back at our movement to improve homemade, clip-art apartment marketing with a web-based gallery of professional graphic designs. We feel good knowing we were first to market in the housing industry and already primed for where technology is today, offering both digital and print files in a multitude of formats.
In the beginning, only one dozen inaugural templates and one customer in Seattle launched the company at a time when property managers didn’t even have email service. We started by delivering resident retention campaigns on a CD through snail mail (stamps were $0.37!), sometimes even driving across town to meet in person so we could hand over a burned compact disc and a box of goodies. Logging into a website was a new phenomenon that needed a lot of training (where’s the “dot” on the keyboard?) and downloading PDF or JPG files was newfangled technology for folks who listed “Proficient at Microsoft Word” on their resume.
Seventeen years later a lot has changed. The Hello Resident template library has grown to over 2500 pre-designed formats, a gallery of 250+ stock photos and browse-edit-download features that produce instant printable flyers, digital ads and social media content with the click of a button! Although we rebranded several years ago from our beloved Beyond Wine & Cheese name, some things remain the same – Alicia Keys’ “If I Ain’t Got You” is still a favorite on our playlist and we often use the word “peeps” when referring to our members. But our Software-as-a-Service subscription model allows us to quickly evolve, innovate and deliver personalized graphic content through an internet connection to onsite managers and marketing directors across the country.
You probably don’t remember when singer Britney Spears wed her childhood friend Jason Allen Alexander in 2004 because the marriage lasted only 55 hours. Hello Resident, however, has been luckier in love and shares this 17-year anniversary with customer #1 in Seattle who is still an active member today!
Don’t miss out on learning how other multi-family marketing groups are scaling one-to-many marketing campaigns while producing the results they need to increase their bottom line! Ask us today for a gallery tour.