Kimco Realty faced a frustrating inefficiency in the leasing world. The process to fill any single vacancy had to start with a conversation with a one of its leasing reps to hear about the space and get up-to-the minute details. Of course, as leasing goes, a lot of those chats proved quickly that the prospective tenant and the space weren’t a fit. “We saw a clear need to centralize and automate the process,” said senior director of national marketing programs Esther Chung. “We wanted something that was scalable and gave prospective [tenants] very informative information, where they didn’t have to call and reach out to a leasing rep just to get basic information about the space.”

The REIT’s more than 560 open-air, grocery-anchored centers had more than 1,200 vacancies as of January 2024. Leading up to that time, as the volume of inquiries about specific spaces was growing, so too was the need for a modern solution. Thus, Kimco created a dynamic webpage for each vacant space, “dynamic” meaning each page updates automatically based on back-end data. Now, Kimco leasing reps’ conversations are with prospects that are closer matches for the space and that are more informed going into the conversation. The project ultimately won Kimco a Gold in the 2025 ICSC MAXI Awards.

Custom Vacancy Pages Update in Real Time to Save Leasing Reps and Prospects Time

The team wanted something more powerful than static, one-size-fits-all property listings. Instead, it envisioned a custom website landing page for each vacancy, rich in detail and updated multiple times a day. “It was really about bringing leasing to the digital age,” said Chung. “We wanted to curate something that delivered space-specific landing pages with all the different marketing information at their fingertips: copy, virtual tours, architectural drawings, even demographic data.”

Each vacancy page features:

• designation as retail, medical, office or other use
• a description of the space and property
• a site plan
• a floor plan
• a high-definition virtual tour of the space, including photos
• a trade area map and Placer.ai insights
• links to nearby Kimco properties and their distance from the featured property

“We’ve been working alongside the leasing department for years,” Chung explained, “so we know exactly what kind of information is useful and what’s important to include publicly.”

A Cross-Team Effort, Launched Just as Kimco Finalized a Big Merger

Planning began in early 2023. Kimco’s marketing and IT teams worked side by side to wireframe the site, make the content and design elements uniform across for all the available spaces and automate updates across the more than 1,000 listings. “It really was a collaborative project,” said Chung. “Without [IT], I don’t think the automation would’ve been doable and scalable.”

Then came the real test: On Jan. 2, 2024, Kimco finalized its merger with RPT Realty, adding 56 properties to the portfolio. “I will never forget that date,” Chung laughed. The team had to launch the new pages in tandem with the acquisition. “That was the toughest part, but it also proved the automation was scalable. It was a wow moment, seeing everything come to life, including those RPT sites. It was a great New Year’s present for myself.”

Kimco launched a multichannel promotion to support the rollout, including more than 650 email blasts to brokers and prospective tenants on the year to drive traffic to vacancy detail pages; Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn campaigns; and content for internal newsletters to build awareness among other departments. The email blasts garnered a 37.4% open rate, which is 72% higher than average, and a 9.3% clickthrough rate, which is 2.5 times the average. LinkedIn posts alone generated 2,013 engagements. And internally, “it was a hit with all different departments,” Chung said. “Even beyond leasing, it was just much more intuitive and easy to get to, more so than our internal CRM systems.”

First-Year Results Show Massive ROI from Dynamic Leasing Pages

The web development project and marketing added up to just 0.01% of Kimco’s total 2024 marketing spend, and the resulting web traffic, leasing leads and signed deals marked the project a success, especially for a system in its first year:

• more than 88,700 webpage views
• 2,343 leads generated
• 10 confirmed deals tied directly to leads that came from the vacancy webpages
• A 6,566% return on investment, based on first-year rent from those 10 deals
• 42 additional deals traced back to email campaigns promoting the webpages

“Ten confirmed deals doesn’t even capture it,” Chung said. “These kinds of deals take time, but we’re hitting the right audience. I think the numbers are only going to go up.”

Lessons from Kimco’s Leasing Breakthrough: AI, Data and Clear Goals

What made this ambitious project succeed? “The biggest learning was that nothing’s out of reach,” said Chung. “We’re talking about thousands of vacancy pages, and it’s all working dynamically as we speak. It gave us more confidence for future acquisitions and for scaling projects even faster.”

Other takeaways:

• Clear communication across teams is crucial. “You always need to have a mission,” Chung emphasized. “If you’re clear on the end point, then everyone works to that.”
• Artificial intelligence is a serious tool, not just a novelty. “It helped speed up coding, for real,” she said.
• Data governance matters. “Once you have control over your data, especially from multiple systems, it lays the groundwork for everything else.”

“We’re no longer talking about what we wish we could do,” Chung said. “This project proved what we can do.”