Social media and email, in-house
MöDE Hillcrest
Turning a luxury apartment community’s quiet Instagram into real reach, plus emails people actually opened.
- Client
- MöDE Hillcrest, a luxury apartment community in Hillcrest, San Diego
- My role
- Marketing Specialist, in-house
- When
- June 2025 to May 2026
- Services
- Social media, Reels, research, email, reviews and events
7,900
Instagram views in 30 days, up from about 1,900
~70%
of views came from people who didn’t follow yet
31.5%
email open rate across about 20,000 sends
The challenge
MöDE is a luxury community in Hillcrest with a two-person leasing office. Its Instagram was getting about 1,900 views a month, and every post had to meet a corporate standard for professionalism.
The team also needed emails that would fill tours for specials like “8 Weeks Free Base Rent.”
What I did
- Filmed and edited Reels myself in CapCut, featuring the neighborhood’s cafés, restaurants and gyms as well as the community’s amenities
- Posted three times a week, all planned in a monthly content calendar
- Reviewed what competing communities were doing on social media and in their marketing
- Audited all of the community’s marketing channels every month
- Wrote monthly email campaigns sent to about 20,000 prospects, plus a reusable content bank for the 8 Weeks Free special
- Monitored and answered reviews on Google, Yelp and Apartments.com
- Ran monthly resident events on a $200 budget and reached out to local businesses
- Reported results to my manager every month
What happened
- Instagram views in 30 days grew from about 1,900 to 7,900, all organic
- About 70% of views came from people who didn’t follow the account yet
- Followers up 22% and engagement up 26%
- The property’s first reported inquiry that came in through social media
- 31.5% email open rate across about 20,000 sends
- Helped raise the resident satisfaction score from 777 to 839
What this means for your business
The Reels that featured local cafés, restaurants and gyms are the same kind of content I make for small businesses: real places and real people, made to be shared.
Two of the email campaigns I sent
