Success Story:

About InterRent REIT 

InterRent REIT is a growth-oriented real estate investment trust engaged in increasing Unitholder value through the acquisition, ownership, management, and repositioning of strategically located, income-producing, multi-residential properties. InterRent REIT owns and manages homes for nearly 13,000 households across Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia.

Meet The Director of Investor Relations and Sustainability 

Sandy Rose is the Director of Investor Relations and Sustainability at InterRent REIT. Previously, Sandy was on the buy-side at a REIT specialist investment firm based in Montreal.

Looking for a Platform to Centralize Their IR  Activity 

Before Implementing Irwin, InterRent REIT was using an excel spreadsheet to track investor interactions. “Aside from being an incomplete record of meetings – the CRM aspect of it was non-existent.” Sandy knew she needed a platform that would help better manage her investor interactions. 

“We treat investor relations as relationship management, so having an IRM system and being able to see things fulsomely, like—what has the relationship been over time? What is the investor bringing up in each meeting? This helps us to be proactive in being able to let them know that we remember speaking with them, and we remember what's important to them.” 

Comprehensive IRM 

“Since we started using Irwin over the past five months, we've really focused on making sure that all of our history is in the platform - we had agendas stored on our shared drive and meeting notes captured in notebooks and standalone files.. The IRM assistant and team has been amazing to get all of that history uploaded in there. Now that the uploads are complete, we've got a fulsome view of our relationships, and how they’ve evolved over time.

In preparation for our annual meeting, we reviewed our investor base and planned a targeted engagement strategy. After identifying our top unitholders, we used Irwin to identify the key relationships at those firms based on our activity history, and had quick access to contact details in the IRM. Once our engagement program was complete, the Irwin assistant logged and tagged our interactions so that we can seamlessly continue the conversation during our next interaction.” 

Using Irwin to Manage Roadshows and Prep Executives for Investor Meetings 

“We create an itinerary for every upcoming marketing activity, even if we've got the agenda from a broker, we still put it in Irwin because then we can pull together the tear sheets, and I can send that to my execs when we're prepping the Q&A.

We can also see who we're meeting with, when we first met them, if we've exchanged emails since, and the topic they may want to cover on the call. Just like that, in 30 seconds, our team is prepared for the conversation that’s about to happen. Now, especially in a virtual environment, you've created the ability to make a connection and to show the investor that we take these relationships seriously, and our execs have the tools at their fingertips to engage with our investors about their holdings and investment mandates. 

Afterward, the IRM assistant will help us to log all those activities and get the notes allocated to the right person. We’ve logged tasks to follow up when an investor had sent me a note, so that would pop in my email and say, ‘don't forget to send …’

"It makes everything so much more efficient, and it just takes the organizational burden off me so that I can actually focus on the relationship part of it, which is amazing.”

Irwin has their Client's Best Interest 

When evaluating other IR providers on the market, Sandy felt as though Irwin was very transparent during the sales process, and had her best interest in mind when trying to determine if Irwin was the right solution for her needs. 

“I found that when I was going through the sales process with Irwin they were asking me questions, almost like a needs-based analysis - asking me what I was trying to do, and then figuring out if Irwin can solve that problem or not. I didn't have the impression that the sales rep at Irwin was trying to sell me something just to sell me something.” 

Fast & Personal Customer Support 

“What's amazing and cool about the way that the platform is set up is that there's an option on individual profiles that say ‘suggest an edit’ where I can make suggested edits to the database, for example, if I know this person has changed companies and now they're at CIBC. After I make the suggestion, I’ll get a message back saying we’ve investigated it and we've updated the profile.

IR professionals using the software are using the best version of the truth, which is constantly becoming more accurate, making for an even more effective tool. 

I sent two or three requests on Friday, and by Friday night, they were all done - it was crazy fast. The same with the IRM assistant, when I'm sending emails to be logged or a bunch of notes to be logged, it's just amazing to me how quickly the team turns them around.

I never have to go back to check.  I just know if I've gotten that email saying it's done, it’s done.”

Sandy and her account manager have recurring monthly meetings set up where she can ask questions and get up to speed on the new functionalities. “I’m probably not going to read the new product update emails so this way I just need to wait until my next meeting where my account manager will walk me through it. If I suggest feedback, then I know that she'll take that back to the product team and say, ‘I now have another client who's asking for this’,  and it helps to get things bumped up the development list.”

“It just adds a really nice personal connection when you're dealing with software, which I find often is not the case.”

User Centric 

“The platform is intuitive and user-friendly. It's really user centric, which is I think a word thrown around a lot but not often true. But in this case, it actually is a user centric model, which is amazing.”