September 2021 - Spike Global

This month’s community engagement blog comes courtesy of our Customer Success Director, Andy Silvers, where he shares what we’ve learned in August and his top tips for driving engagement across your buildings and residents.

What we’ve learned in August

With the holiday season in full swing, we saw a 65% decrease in amenity and event bookings compared to July, with residents opting to make the most out of the warm weather and explore further afield. However, it was positive to see that app usage was up 200% since the beginning of the year, with forum posts remaining consistently high, underlining the role that resident apps like Spike Living are now playing in our daily lives. Furthermore, despite many people returning to their offices for the first time in well over a year, we saw a 50% increase in deliveries being processed through our platforms, showing how accustomed we’ve become to online shopping, with this trend set to continue.

Carrying on from last month, here are some more fun ways to boost engagement and encourage your residents to get to know their neighbours and your in-house team.

Pop up Food Stands

Bring the local community to your residents. We have clients who regularly invite local restaurants and cafes onsite to provide pop up food stands offering residents a mixture of cuisine to try. This is a great way to encourage your residents to get to know their local area, and local businesses may even offer a discount to those who live in the building on future bookings.

Book Club

An oldie but goodie. Even before the pandemic hit, some of our clients had thriving book clubs where residents regularly got together over food and drink to discuss their latest read. When the pandemic hit, these turned into virtual clubs, where meet ups were held over Zoom instead.

Running Club

If you have a communal gym, what better way to increase usage than by forming a running club. Or if your residents prefer to be outside, why not provide them with some suggested running routes where they can then compete for the fastest time, encouraging some friendly competition?

Film Club

If you have screening or cinema rooms onsite, then having a film club is the perfect way to encourage neighbours to bond over their love of films. Why not choose a ‘theme of the week’ and allow you9r residents to become their very own film critics by recommending their own films to watch? We have one of our clients have over 1,000 bookings for their screening rooms last month – showing that nothing can beat being at the movies!

Baking Club

With most people confined to their homes during the pandemic, we saw many residents turn their hands to baking, with a few even leaving their baked goodies in reception for others in their buildings to enjoy. Baking clubs provide the perfect opportunity for residents to share and discuss recipes, and with Bake Off returning to our screens this month, why not create your own mini ‘bake off’ with residents competing to be crowned star baker of the month?

Film Club

If you have screening or cinema rooms onsite, then having a film club is the perfect way to encourage neighbours to bond over their love of films. Why not choose a ‘theme of the week’ and allow your residents’ to become their very own film critics by recommending their own films to watch? We had one of our clients have over 1,000 bookings for their screening rooms last month – showing that nothing can beat being at the movies!

Have your own tips for driving resident engagement or decided to implement some of our suggestions above? Then get in touch, we would love to hear from you.

When new build-to-rent brand The James opens its doors in Liverpool this week, 100 fully-furnished apartments will be filling up with new tenants, all looking to settle in and feel at home – a process that will be much easier thanks to its partnership with Spike Global.

The innovative resident engagement and building management software provider has worked with The James to create a white-labelled version of its revolutionary end-to-end tenancy management software solution Spike Lettings and resident engagement app Spike Living that have been tailored perfectly to the needs of residents at the luxury hotel-style residence in James Street.

Spike Lettings allows prospective tenants to easily browse and find available apartments online, make an initial enquiry, and progress through the reservation stage, all the way through to moving in. Once in, Spike Living provides new tenants with one simple, intuitive app, allowing them to communicate with the management and with each other – making life easier in a multitude of ways. From booking laundry services, reporting a maintenance issue or checking if the concierge has received a parcel, the app makes routine communication quick and easy. Not that it’s just for the practical things in life – The James’ residents’ app also has the potential to help tenants make friends, find activities and get to know their neighbours, whether that’s in the virtual world or the real one.

At The James, apartments will be let for periods of just a few days or weeks, or for the long term, which means that there will be all kinds of residents moving in and out, looking to hit the ground running in terms of their social life. With a set-up that is designed so that tenants can live, work and socialise on site, having a truly localised way of meeting like-minded people will be more important than ever – and Spike Global’s app, Spike Living, is streets ahead of social media options such as Facebook and Nextdoor, which find it hard to keep out spammers and strangers. As The James’ residents’ app will be downloadable solely by residents at The James, it builds a genuinely safe and local community at the same time providing practical help such as being able to easily view tenancy agreements or check when rent payments are due.

We spoke with one of the Founders who explained why they have chosen Spike Global to provide the app for the new venture: “Our brand is very much rooted in stress-free, self-contained luxury living – when people move in with us they have everything they need, right down to crockery and cutlery – so we needed software that would provide a similarly high-quality and comprehensive service.”

“We use the Spike Lettings software to help get our tenants on board, and are confident that the Spike Living app will support them as they settle in. In many ways, renting with us is like living in a five star hotel, with all the amenities available at the touch of a button. We developed The James, which will also be launching in Manchester and Sheffield in the near future, because we wanted to bridge the gap between the tenant and the landlord – a relationship that is often broken and lacking in trust in the traditional rental market. At our properties, The James brand is the landlord – one that is always available and ready to take action thanks to Spike Living.”

Jeremy Heath-Smith, CEO of Spike Global, comments: “The strength of Spike Lettings and Spike Living is the extent to which they can be personalised for every client, providing a building and community-specific experience, tailored exactly to the facilities and options that are available. We not only create a unique platform for our clients, but we also provide dedicated back-up and support every step of the way. We are delighted to be working with The James, and we know it will help tenants there to settle in, liaise with their landlord and find their place in the community with ease.”