New Rental Syndication Advertising Service Saves Property Managers Time and Money

By Erika Schnitzer, Associate EditorGrover Beach, Calif.—RentShout has launched an online rental marketing service that allows property managers to create advertisements for their listings that are syndicated across the Web to rental sites and search directories.“Over 70 percent of renters start their searches online,” Misty Lackie, CEO of Go Smart Solutions LLC, the company that created RentShout and that provides self-serve advertising solutions, tells MHN. “The process it takes to enter listings in multiple directories is very time-consuming and cost-ineffective.” With RentShout, Lackie explains, property managers only have to enter their listing information into one database, which is then pushed out to various rental directories, search engines, social networks and video portals, including Rent.com, SimpleRent.com, Yahoo Real Estate, Hotpads.com and Google Base, among many others. Each rental ad also comes with Craigslist-friendly HTML.RentShout has a system in place for bulk uploads—which is particularly useful for managers who may need to list several hundred units at once—that is updated synchronically with the larger entities’ data systems, which may be updated as listings are added to the site, explains Patrick Thomas, director of business relations for Go Smart Solutions.RentShout offers three plans—Basic, Pro and Plus—and property managers are charged one fee per 30-day listing.At RentShout.com, property managers are guided through a listing creation process of uploading photos, filling in property and neighborhood information, and providing contact details. Managers can also choose from several different templates and colors. Listings also include one-click social network sharing and bookmarking, a click-to-call button, a virtual tour, a direct rental application download and lead-capture and tracking reports. A tracking tool allows managers to see where leads are coming from, and a renter lead-capture report shows which leads have made contact though email or click-to call, and a rental tracking report shows the source of Web traffic to ads.Lackie notes that RentShout is a perfect solution for today’s difficult economic times, as managers can pay the same price to list on multiple sites that they would otherwise be paying to list on only one site.RentShout members can list apartments, condos, single-family homes and vacation rentals.