With increased numbers of university students looking for accommodation, you might be interested in re-engaging accommodation providers who haven't been active for a while and inviting them to list again.

There are two new methods to do this. 

With mailouts

The first method is by sending an email campaign (if you have the Mailouts feature enabled on your plan) to providers who have been inactive for a certain amount of time. You can do this by choosing one of the "Inactive" filters when selecting the provider segment to send the email to.

This method allows you to contact a large cohort of inactive providers all at once, on demand.

You can learn more about how Mailouts work here.

With automated emails

The second method is to automatically email providers when they have been inactive for a certain duration. This lets you send a steady trickle of emails to re-engage providers as they reach a threshold of inactivity that you chose, such as six months.

This kind of email has to be enabled explicitly, and you can do this from Admin > Settings > Providers.

You can choose the duration to wait before trying to re-engage providers and the subject line to use when emailing them.

Once you have enabled this email, you will probably want to customise the email template as well. You can find this email template at Admin > Settings > Email templates under Providers > Re-engagement.

Until now, listing categories have commonly been used to indicate whether providers will lodge their bond with their state authority such as NSW Fair Trading or the Residential Tenancies Authority in Queensland.

We now have a more streamlined way to do this, with a new option under Admin > Settings > Listings to require bond lodgement for all listings where a bond is required.

This setting allows for customising the name of the authority (e.g. "The RTBA" for Victorian universities).

When this option is enabled, providers won't be able to enter a bond unless they commit to lodging it with the authority.

Trying to submit a listing for a vacant property without ticking this box will result in an error, e.g:

For rooms in shared houses, a similar validation error is used if any of the rooms listed require a bond.

Students can now leave accommodation reviews with a rating and comment.

To enable this feature, you will need to go to Admin > Settings > Listings and tick the "Enable reviews" box.

How it works

The administration process for new reviews

Accommodation providers sometimes neglect to close their listings once they've been rented out. This can lead to wasted time for students who enquire about listings that aren't available.

One way to avoid this is to remind providers to close their listings with a Listing Availability Check. A reminder email can be sent out part-way through the listing to ask providers if the listing is still available and prompt them to close it otherwise.

We try to make this as painless as possible, with a button in the email that lets the provider close their listing quickly without needing to login.

Configuring the Listing Availability Check

To enable the Listing Availability Check, go to Admin > Settings > Listings and tick the box to "Check availability via email".

You can configure when the email will be sent based on how long the listing is active. We recommend checking availability about half way through the listing.

Click "Save" to save these changes.

Once the availability check is enabled, you can adjust the email that will be sent out. You can find the email template under Admin > Settings > Email templates > Listings > Check availability.

All the variables in [brackets] will be automatically replaced with the relevant information when these emails are sent.

The emails are sent with the subject "Is your listing still available?", and you will be able to see what was sent when viewing the "Sent emails" for a provider.

Students can now see where properties are in relation to your institution and the surrounding area. We hope this will be helpful for students who might be moving to a new city to study.

Students can also see and do much more on the search page, in way that is easy and pleasant to use (we hope).

This update reflects our commitment to ensure you, our customers, have the best technology to support the amazing and valuable service you provide for students.

There have been many subtle improvements in this update, but I've outlined some of the biggest highlights below.

An interactive map
Students can see where listings are on the map without leaving the search page. Listing markers will highlight as you roll over the listing details, and students can click a map marker to bring up the listing details in place. Students can also pan and zoom the map and then redo the search in the new area.

More photo thumbnails
Students can quickly browse through every photo for each listing from the search page, without needing to open the listing. Photos are loaded dynamically — clicking to the next photo loads it just in time. This is especially beneficial for students using mobile data because we don't load photos they won't see, and it means the pages load more quickly, even on a desktop.

Quicker page loads
One of the more subtle improvements is that going to the next search page, or adjusting the search filters, or searching in a new map search location all happen quickly without reloading the entire page.

Matches your branding
We've taken the time to make sure the map search page includes colours and styling to match your institution's branding.

I hope you and your students enjoy using the new map search. Happy Easter!