Replying to and Tracking Tenant Leads From Craigslist

Craigslist is the only large rental listing website that does not work with property management software companies. For this reason, many owners and managers list their rentals through the Zillow Group, Apartments.com, ApartmentList, and similar platforms.

Industry leaders often avoid Craigslist because it lacks integration with their software systems and is prone to scams, such as other users copying a listing and re-advertising it at a lower rent. Craigslist has been losing market share for these reasons.

At Hemlane, we understand many of our users still want to advertise through Craigslist. While we cannot automatically track or manage leads from Craigslist, we make it easier to create your advertisement by providing HTML code for it.

Step 1: Create Your Listing Within Hemlane

Creating your listing in Hemlane makes your Craigslist ad look much more professional. You can find the code for posting to Craigslist at the bottom of the Advertising section in your Marketing tab.

Step 2: Create an Email Autoresponder for Your Craigslist Ad

After you have posted your rental on Craigslist, we recommend setting up an automatic responder for Craigslist replies. FlashIssue provides an article on how to do this in Gmail.

Step 3: Create Your Canned Response

For your auto-response to Craigslist emails, send the prospective tenant to your Hemlane listing page, where they can view more details about your property as well as your showing schedule. They can schedule a showing or apply, which will record the tenant lead in Hemlane.

Here is an example of a canned response you can set up in your email:

Hi,

Thanks for your interest in our property at [ADDRESS]. We really look forward to finding a time to meet with you and/or have you apply. 

If you are interested in viewing or applying to our property, then we recommend scheduling a showing here:

If you have additional questions that are not answered in the ad or would like to view the property at another time (not specified in the showing calendar), then please send an email to [EMAIL ADDRESS @ DOMAIN DOT COM]

Thanks!