Stay In Touch cold and lost lead re-engagement program

Re-Engage Cold Senior Living Leads with Our Stay in Touch Program

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When it comes to the senior living leads in your database, does any of this sound familiar?

  • You have a CRM filled with hundreds of leads that fizzled and went cold—and you don’t know what to do with them.
  • Your sales team has strategies for nurturing leads that come in now—but no strategies for nurturing leads that are eighteen, twelve, or even six months old.
  • You don’t have the people-power to manually call or email all your colds leads, yet you know that you’re missing out on good opportunities.

If you were nodding your head YES as you read through the above, you’re not alone. Your senior living CRM is likely home to many old/cold leads—leads that never received any follow up.

Why didn’t they receive any follow up?

Well, as you know, prospects inquire at various stages of readiness, but sales people can only work 10 – 12 active leads at a time, so they focus on leads closest to decision. Providers know this is a problem. But most don’t have a strategy for addressing it. So, what do they do? They just keep buying new leads.

This isn’t a SMART approach.

And that’s precisely why we created our “Stay in Touch” program-to help busy sales and marketing teams re-engage cold senior living leads through a SMART marketing automation solution.

All you have to do is provide the list of cold leads, and we take it from there. Sounds great, right?

Below are some FAQs about the program.

How does the Stay in Touch program help re-engage cold senior living leads?

We’ve already created a series of surveys, offers, and emails that have proven to re-engage colder senior living leads. This content will help score and segment the leads according to their level of interest.

  • Leads with good potential get served up to your sales team.
  • Cooler leads continue through the various lead nurturing paths until they’re closer to decision and ready to talk to sales.

Why should my community use the Stay in Touch program?

We’ve done the heavy lifting for you! We’ve thought through the messaging that will most likely resonate, the offers that will entice people to take action, and the branching “logic” for the workflows.

We customize all pieces according to your community’s branding guidelines, set up everything (from emails to landing pages), and schedule emails at a rate that makes sense. Once it’s set up, it works on its own. (That’s the power and beauty of marketing automation!)

What will my community “get” from the Stay in Touch program?

The benefits are many. You’ll get . . .

    • A turnkey solution to engage cold leads and turn some of them into warm and hot leads that convert into tours and move-ins
    • More accurate views of your sales pipeline
    • A cleaner, nimbler database/CRM
    • Buy-in from marketing and sales regarding marketing automation
    • And did we mention cold leads that actually CONVERT?

I want the Stay in Touch program. What should I do next?

Let’s set up a 30-minute brainstorming session. There’s no cost for this session (and no obligation, of course). It’s simply an opportunity for you to get to know us and for us to get to know more about your community (or communities) and how you manage your senior living leads. We can also walk you through how the various elements of the Stay in Touch program work.

YES, I WANT TO SETUP MY BRAINSTORMING SESSION NOW!

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Senior Living Sales Strategies: Why Personalization Matters

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Today, we’re going to give you a simple, yet powerful tool to add to your senior living sales strategies: personalization.

When we say personalization, we mean exactly that: using a person’s first name, specifically in emails.

Why?

Well, as humans, we’re wired to respond positively when we hear and read our first names. It’s all about this concept called “implicit egotism.”

Marketers and advertisers for big companies already know this. It’s why you’ll often see your name in the subject lines of emails from your favorite brands. Subconsciously, we see our name, and our brains think “This was written for me.”

Of course, smart marketers don’t include names simply to stroke people’s egos. We do it because of the results: more opens and clicks. In fact, Campaign Monitor reports personalization increases open rates by 26%.

If you haven’t been using personalization in your prospect emails, it’s time to spruce up your senior living sales strategies with a little first-name magic.

Here’s how to add in personalization when communicating with your senior living leads:

Email subject lines

Good marketing automation software (and even email marketing software, like Mailchimp and Constant Contact) makes personalization super easy through the use of personalization tokens.

Typically, when you enter the text for your subject line, you’d enter a series of characters that would indicate to the software to automatically add the person’s first name.

For example, the string of characters might look something like this *|FNAME|*

Or some marketing automation software, like HubSpot, includes a button that says “Personalization” and you can choose how you want to personalize the subject line.

When you’re done, the subject line box of the email might look something like this:

*|FNAME|*, do you have questions about financing senior living?

When the email is sent, the marketing automation software will insert the person’s first name. So, this is what the person would see in her email inbox:

Mary, do you have questions about financing senior living?

Note: In order to personalize using a prospect’s first name, you need to make sure you’re GETTING this info on your online forms. This is why you should have separate FIRST NAME and LAST NAME fields on any online forms, rather than one generic NAME field.

Email body copy

With good automation software, you can do the same thing with your email copy and include the person’s first name.

A caveat: ONLY DO IT IF IT SOUNDS NATURAL.

So, for example, maybe you’ve just described what a lovely Saturday night might be like in your community, with wine on the patio, a scrumptious dinner, and then dancing in the pub. After the description, you might write:

Sounds great, doesn’t it, *|FNAME|*?

When the email is delivered to the recipient, they would see their name in the copy like this:

Sounds great, doesn’t it, Mary?

In the above example, the line sounds natural.

Don’t overdo it! We don’t recommend adding personalization more than one time in the body of the email. And again, ONLY do it if it sounds natural.

Need assistance adding personalization to the emails you deliver to your senior living leads?

We’d be happy to help! Connect with us and let’s talk about your marketing needs.

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strategies and best practices to generate leads via website opt-ins

How To Get More Senior Living Leads via Website Opt-Ins

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Your senior living website serves several purposes. First, it should welcome site visitors and clearly direct them to the information they’re seeking. Second, it should provide a good user experience, thanks to easy navigation and a nice design. Finally, it should provide numerous ways to convert anonymous site visitors into senior living leads.

Today, we’re going to discuss the latter. Below are several strategies for getting more senior living leads via website opt-ins.

1. Use compelling calls-to-action (CTAs).

Your CTAs should entice people to take action. Consider the following examples:

  • Book a tour now.
  • Download our free guide.
  • Request pricing.

Your CTAs should follow best practices, as well.

  • Be specific, and be clear
  • Design your CTAs for visual appeal.
  • Don’t clutter them with too many words.
  • Experiment with placement. For example, if you normally end blog posts with a visual CTA, try using a sliding CTA in the middle of the blog post.
  • Always test your CTAs and monitor results.

Remember, A/B testing CTAs is an excellent way to determine which one drives more conversions. Follow the basic principle of A/B testing: test only one thing at a time.

For example, your first CTA might say, “Download our free guide.” The second CTA might say, “Get our free guide.” All the other elements in the CTA should remain the same. See which one results in more clicks. Good marketing automation software, like HubSpot, bakes CTA testing into its platform.

Another important point: CTAs don’t have to be visual, either. You can have text-based CTAs as well, such as “Schedule a tour now.” (This line would link to the tour landing page.) Your site should have a good mix of both visual CTAs and text-based CTAs.

Need assistance creating a highly optimized website that converts anonymous visitors into senior living leads?

We’re a digital marketing agency focused solely on the senior living agency. Let us help.

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2. Make sure your live chat captures email addresses.

Live chat is an easy way to get a person’s basic info. In fact, one of the first questions the live chat host should ask is this: “Can I get your email, just in case we get disconnected?”

Be thoughtful in how you use the emails you gather. In fact, you’ll want to carefully think through the lead nurturing workflow you enter these senior living leads into. Design a workflow specifically for people who come in via live chat.

3. Make it easy for people to subscribe to updates.

If you offer a blog subscription, make it super easy for people to subscribe. In addition to having a basic subscription box on the main blog page, consider adding lead-form “pop-ups” at the bottom of blog articles. It can say something like this: “Like what you just read? Get more articles like this. Just enter your email address.”

Do the same with monthly newsletters, podcasts, and any other type of content you regularly publish. Make it easy for people to sign up.

4. Provide different types of gated content.

People absorb information in different ways. Some folks want to sit and read a long-form piece of content, like a guide or e-book. Others prefer visuals, like an infographic. By offering multiples types of premium content, you will appeal to a wider audience.

When it comes to creating content, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, either. Repurpose one piece of content and redistribute it via different media.

For example, turn the content from a longer blog post into…

  • A nicely designed guide
  • An infographic
  • A registration-only webinar

5. Don’t skimp on your landing pages.

If you invest in awesome content and compelling CTAs, don’t let everything fizzle with a poor landing page experience. Your landing pages are the ultimate conversion point on your senior living website.

So, for example, if people are clicking on your CTA buttons, but they’re not filling out the form on the corresponding landing page, you know something isn’t working.

Like CTAs, good landing pages follow best practices. Make sure yours include:

  • Compelling copy that explains what people get in exchange for providing their contact info
  • Social “proof,” such as a testimonial or video (if applicable)*
  • Short forms with clear form fields
  • No navigation – this forces people to stay on the page
  • Visually-pleasing design that responds to mobile devices

*Regarding “social proof,” here’s what we mean. Let’s say someone clicks on a CTA that brings them to a landing page where they can request a brochure about your senior living community. Or maybe they click on CTA about scheduling a tour. Either way, including a video on the landing page of a resident talking about her experience living in your community could make the difference between someone submitting the form and someone hitting the back button.

Note: You should A/B test landing pages, just like you do CTAs.

6. Make sure all of your website forms work.

Testing forms should be a no-brainer. Sadly, we’ve encountered many funky forms in our travels.
Test all of your forms, and make sure…

  • The forms go through properly
  • People’s names are being recorded in your contacts database (and scored appropriately)
  • The person enters the correct lead nurturing workflow, if applicable
  • Anyone who submits a form receives some sort of indication the form went through successfully

Not only should you make sure all your forms work, you should also make sure the work for your audience. As in, the information you’re asking people to provide should make sense to them.

BONUS: Don’t forget old-school methods.

When people come in for a tour or some other senior living marketing event, make sure you get everyone’s contact info. For example, if a husband and wife come in for a tour, get both of their email addresses. If their adult children accompany them, get the kids’ email addresses as well.

As always, if we can be of any help, please don’t hesitate to reach out!

superhero delivering effective lead nurturing automated senior living email

Senior Living Lead Generation: Create Better Lead Nurturing Emails

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Congratulations! Your senior living lead generation is WORKING! You’ve enticed anonymous websites to give you their contact info, thanks to compelling content offers.

Now what?

Make sure you’ve set up your website forms to support a strong senior living lead generation program.

Any form on your senior living website should gather basic info: first name, last name, email, and state. But it should also ask two required questions that will provide further valuable insights.

First, ask something like this: “Are you gathering this info for yourself or a loved one?”

A drop-down would appear with these choices:

  • I’m looking for myself.
  • I am an adult child looking for a parent.
  • Other

You’re keeping the options simple here, because you don’t want to overwhelm people with questions. And you don’t want to create overly complicated lead nurturing paths, either. (More on this in a moment.)

Second, ask something along these lines: “What’s your timeline for making a decision about senior living?”

A drop-down would appear with these choices:

  • ASAP
  • 3-6 months
  • 6-12 months
  • 12-24 months
  • No timeline—just researching

Again, you’d don’t want to overwhelm visitors with too many choices. And you don’t want to complicate the lead nurturing paths you set up.

Now that you’ve set up proper lead forms, you can think about the next steps.

Lead nurturing best practices: Turbocharge your senior living lead generation program.

1. Score and segment your senior living leads.

See? Everything we recommended earlier with the website forms serves a purpose. By allowing your prospects to self-identify who they are and where they are in their journey, you can score and segment your senior living leads accordingly: marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) and sales-qualified leads (SQLs).

For example, an adult child who is looking to make a decision for her mother ASAP should be funneled directly to the sales team for immediate follow up. This is a classic SQL.

But you can place anyone who chooses one of the other timelines into a longer-term lead nurturing workflow. This way, you can nurture these “not ready yet” leads, or MQLs. The goal involves staying in front of them so that when they ARE ready, they will think of your community first.

Depending on your internal resources at the outset, you can drill down deep into the lead nurturing “logic.”

So, let’s consider someone who is researching senior living for herself. If she is making her decision ASAP, she will become an SQL and go to sales. But if she chooses one of the following timelines, she’ll be considered an MQL primed for nurturing:

  • 3-6 months
  • 6-12 months
  • 12-24 months

Now, here’s the thing: You’ll need to create a separate set of lead nurturing emails for each timeframe.

For example, if the person conducting her own research enters the 3- to 6-month workflow, she would receive one set of emails. Another person entering the 6- to 12-month workflow would receive a different set. And so forth.

Yes, some of the emails in each set might be similar—or even identical.

Remember, you want to personalize the emails so that they match where the person is in their buying journey. An adult child researching options for her dad to move in 18 months is in a very different place from an eighty-year-old woman needing to move by the end of the year and researching for herself.

If you’ve been thinking, “Gee, that sounds like a lot of emails we need to write and set up,” you’re correct!

But, again: some emails will work in all of your lead nurturing campaigns. And others might only require a few tweaks. Plus, once you do the initial set-up, it becomes an extremely easy program to manage and even tweak, provided you use marketing automation, which brings us to our next best practice . . .

2. Use marketing automation for your senior living lead generation.

Your senior living sales and marketing teams don’t need to manually score leads, segment them, and send the emails. Marketing automation takes care of it. This way, the sales and marketing teams can focus on the RESULTS, specifically the analytics, so they can respond accordingly.

And it goes without saying, but most leads should change from MQL to SQL over time. At least, that’s the goal.

For example, let’s say a prospect in the “I’m an adult child researching for a parent in the next 6-12 months” category is opening your emails, downloading content, and spending more time on the site. You can change the lead score from marketing qualified to sales qualified. (And if you have a robust marketing automation system, you can program it to automatically make this change based on the lead behavior). Now, the sales team can follow up directly with the lead since the person appears to be super interested.

Bottom line: A good lead nurturing program helps salespeople focus on the best opportunities. And it helps the marketing team understand which types of emails and content drive conversions. Armed with this information, the marketing team can focus on creating more content like it.

Need help right away?

At Senior Living SMART, we love helping senior living sales and marketing teams shine.
Reach out and let’s talk!

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3. Follow email marketing best practices.

Like everything else, email marketing best practices evolve. But certain evergreen practices will always remain true:

  • Pay attention to grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Nothing yells amateur like careless mistakes.
  • Shorter is almost always better. First, leave long-form copy to your guides and e-books. Second, keep emails short and highly skimmable.
  • Make your emails mobile responsive. More and more people are reading emails on smaller devices like tablets and phones. (Yes, this includes older adults.) Test your emails on a variety of devices. Some marketing software, like HubSpot, bakes this feature into its platform.
  • Keep subject lines succinct. MailChimp recommends no more than nine words or 60 characters.
  • Send the email from a real person. You don’t want to make it look auto-generated by having a [email protected] email.

Remember, make it about the buyer. Don’t lead by talking about your community. Think about the pain points the person might be experiencing. How can you solve for these pain points? Offering a piece of helpful content is a great place to start.

As for current email marketing trends, here are some to consider testing:

  1. Personalization. Emails that include a person’s name in the subject line have a 29% higher unique open rate and 41% more unique click-through rates.
  2. Experiment with emojis (but still use sparingly). Emojis are a popular trend right now, and mileage varies widely. But you could test subject lines with one emoji.

For example, if one of the emails in your lead nurturing set includes inviting someone to have lunch at your community, your subject line could be something playful: Lunch on us! WE HAVE CAKE! (Then, include a cake emoji 🍰).

Test and see if the subject line with the emoji improves open rates, but also keep in mind that open rates are just ONE metric. Conversions are what matter most. In other words, do you get more people requesting lunch when you use a subject line with an emoji? THAT is what you need to pay attention to.

4. Don’t set it and forget it.

Marketing automation makes life easier because it reduces the manual labor. But you still have to use your noggin and regularly review the analytics and make smart decisions based on what the numbers are telling you.

You also need to make adjustments to lead nurturing emails when something unexpected happens. For example, if you run any lead nurturing campaigns right now, you’d be remiss if you didn’t acknowledge the pandemic.

5. Seek help with your senior living lead generation when you need it.

Setting up a well-designed senior living lead generation program doesn’t just happen. And not every marketing or sales team has the requisite skill sets. Working with a reputable senior living marketing agency that has experience in lead generation can save you time and money.

Need help right away?

At Senior Living SMART, we love helping senior living sales and marketing teams shine.
Reach out and let’s talk!

Let's Talk

Mom’s House Helps Seniors Move-In Faster

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A panel of senior living marketing professionals will share strategies and tactics for lead generation, nurturing and conversions given current restrictions regarding tours, events and community visits.

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How to Get More Repeat Visitors to Your Senior Living Website

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Most prospects visit a senior living website an average of seven to eight times before contacting someone from sales. So getting prospects to come back often throughout their journey is important.

How do you do this?

By giving them a reason to come back.

Here are five strategies for doing exactly that.

1. Lure them through compelling subscription-based content (like a blog or newsletter).

If you have a senior living blog, encourage people to subscribe so that they automatically get notified when a new post goes live. When it comes to newsletters, make sure the sign-up for your prospect-facing newsletter is available on every page of your site. The footer is a great location for this. Fill each newsletter with content that gets prospects to click back to the site—it could be a link to a blog post or piece of premium content or an alert about an event, like an open house.

2. Charm them on social media.

As senior living website visitors travel through your site, make it easy for them to follow your senior living community on social media. Include social media icons on every page of the site, ideally in the header and footer. Then, make sure you have a good social media strategy in place where you regularly post helpful, interesting, engaging content that inspires people to click through and/or to go back to your site on their own.

3. Convey targeted messages with lead nurturing campaigns.

Different from newsletters, lead nurturing emails are just that—a series of simple, short, text-based emails that speak to the prospect and where they are on their journey.

So an adult daughter searching various options for her aging mom might be in one series of lead nurturing emails. And the links in these emails will point to pages on the senior living site that will be most beneficial to her. Another set of emails might be for a husband looking for options for his spouse who needs memory care. You get the idea.

Each email should have a specific message based on where the person is in their buying journey. Someone in the research phase might be sent to blog posts to deepen their knowledge base, while someone who is farther down the so-called sales funnel might receive an email about floor plans.

Again, the goal is to get people to click back to the site and engage with your content even more.

4. Make them never lose sight of you, thanks to retargeting ads.

Have you ever been looking at a product online, and the next thing you know, you start seeing ads EVERYWHERE for the product? All over Facebook and other websites you visit, such as media sites?

This is by design, not chance. Known as retargeting, this type of advertising allows you to “follow” someone as they leave your site so that you can serve up ads enticing these folks to return to your site—or at the very least, these ads will hopefully keep your senior living community top of mind.

Note: retargeting ads are a great way to focus on anonymous senior living website visitors. So if someone comes to your site, but they don’t download any content, you might think you have no way of staying in front of them because you don’t have any info on them, like a name or email. Retargeting helps bridge this gap.

5. Surprise senior living website visitors with unexpected “old school” methods of engagement.

Radio or TV spots with big companies aren’t always within budget, but for smaller, local stations, you might get a budget-friendly ad buy and the target audience you’re looking for since many seniors still listen to the radio and watch TV. Same goes with print ads, since older demographics are big readers of physical publications like daily and weekly newspapers.

But how does this get people to come back to your website? Simple: Because you’ve included the website URL in all print and radio ads. You could even create special web pages so you can track activity from each promotion: www.YourCommunityName.com/radio.

We talk a lot about digital marketing and inbound marketing, and plenty of marketers will tell you to only focus on those methods. But we think there’s still a place for some old school methods (also known as outbound marketing).

Get Started NOW!

You can use a variety of ways to re-engage people and entice them back to your senior living community’s website. Getting started can be the toughest part, however.  WE CAN HELP.

Take advantage of our experience in the senior living trenches.

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Expand Beyond Zoom: Bigger, Better Ways to Use Video

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A panel of senior living marketing professionals will share strategies and tactics for lead generation, nurturing and conversions given current restrictions regarding tours, events and community visits.

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How to Turn Senior Living Website Traffic into Leads

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Someone visited your senior living website. Great, right? It is, except for one problem: the person who visited your site is anonymous. You don’t know who they are or whether they’re truly a good prospect for your senior living community.

What to do?

Simple: optimize your senior living website so that it encourages anonymous traffic to convert into leads.

Here’s how . . .

1. Gate your content.

Gated content is exactly how it sounds—premium content (like white papers, checklists, and infographics) that you keep hidden behind a gate.

In order for website visitors to access said content, they must offer up some info about themselves, like first name, last name, email, location, and where they are in their journey. (More on these form “fields” in a moment.)

It’s a fair exchange—they get great content, for free, and you get some valuable intelligence on your website’s visitors.

2. Make sure you have engaging calls-to-action (CTAs) throughout the site.

These CTAs will naturally lead people to places where they can easily convert from anonymous visitor to a name and face: landing page for gated content, contact us page, schedule a tour page. You get the idea.

3. Provide interactive elements, like Live Chat and other self-qualifying tools.

Live chat is a great way to turn anonymous visitors into real leads. One of the first questions your chat can ask for is a name, in a friendly, natural way. Like, “Hi, there. My name is Rebecca. Got any questions?” If someone types a question, Rebecca can respond by saying, “Hey, great question. Before I answer, can you quickly tell me your name and give me an email address, just in case we get disconnected. Then, I can follow up.” (Hint: SiteStaff is one of our favorite Live Chats for the senior living industry.)

With self-qualifying tools, like interactive surveys and other prospect decision tools, the anonymous website visitor can answer a series of questions to help them better understand the options for their specific situation. Many of these tools only require the person to submit an email to get the results (no phone number for a sales person to hound). But an email is all you need to continue to nurture and grow the relationship. (Hint: Roobrik is one of our favorite prospect decision tools.)

4. Provide easy ways for people to subscribe to blogs and newsletters.

If someone’s reading a blog post, you can have a slide-in subscription box that says: “Get more helpful articles like this. Subscribe to our blog.” Same with a newsletter.

Experiment with what works for your audience. A lightbox pop-up form (that box that suddenly “takes over” a website page) can be annoying to some visitors but a great way to convert others. You need to see what works for your specific audience (website analytics will be your guide regarding this).

5. Use progressive fields in forms to capture better info.

For that first point of contact you make with an anonymous senior living website visitor, you want to ask for the least amount of info, but at the same time, you need SOMETHING to help inform how to score the lead appropriately (more on scoring leads below).

At the very least, for that first contact, you should get first name, last name, email, state, and a dropdown that might ask: Which bests describes you?

And then the dropdown would offer three options:

  • Actively looking for a senior living solution for myself
  • Actively looking for a senior living solution for someone else
  • Not actively looking, just researching for now

If the person downloads only one piece of gated content from your site, you’ll have enough info to know at least something about this lead—and what to do with them next.

But here’s the beauty of smart forms these days: you can use what’s known as progressive fields on forms. This means every time a person fills out another form on your site, the form automatically adjusts for that particular prospect and requests NEW information in NEW fields.

So you won’t make them repeat what they’ve already entered (except for what would make sense to the prospect—like their name and email). But on the second form they fill out, you could ask for their full address and phone number and depending on HOW they answer the initial drop-down question we mention above, you could ask an appropriate follow up.

For example, if on the first form the person indicates they are actively looking for a senior living solution for someone else, perhaps you ask this question on the next form they fill out: Which best describes your situation? “I’m actively looking for a senior living community for my…”

  • Mother
  • Father
  • Spouse
  • Other family member (aunt/uncle, sibling)
  • Friend

And then this: Which best describes your timetable? I’m looking to make a decision in…

  • 60 days.
  • 3-6 months.
  • Within a year.
  • 18-24 months.

Now you have even further intelligence, which will help marketing and sales teams follow up appropriately.

Note: you’ll need good marketing automation, like HubSpot, to set up progressive fields on forms. And we won’t lie—this does take some time to think through, but once you get it set up and working, this will result in excellent information to inform your next steps.

Which brings us to the following . . .

Once you have senior living leads, what happens next?

Now that you’ve turned anonymous website visitors into leads, here’s what should happen next:

Score leads appropriately.

Remember what we said about the form fields above? How they provide important insights? You’ll use the information people share in these form fields to help score each lead appropriately.

For example, someone who is looking to make a move for a parent within 60 days is in a very different situation than someone who sees the move happening in the next 12-18 months. The former would be considered a sales-qualified lead (SQL). These folks are ready to talk to sales since they’ve indicated they’re making a decision soon.

The latter would be a marketing-qualified lead (MQL). They’ve engaged with your content, so you’ve gotten their interest, but they’re in an earlier stage in the buying journey. You want to stay in front of them and continue engaging them, but it would be a waste of everyone’s time if sales followed up at this point.

How you score the leads will depend on your senior living community’s approach to sales, including how you’ve set up your CRM. (Hint: Are you new to the concept of lead scoring? We can help set up yours based on our decades of experience working in senior living sales.)

Nurture marketing-qualified leads (MQLs).

Like everything else in marketing and sales, the concept of lead nurturing has evolved. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Yes, you’ll likely want to set up a series of follow-up emails that automatically go out to MQLs, but it’s incredibly easy for this process to become overwhelming from a backend perspective when you consider the “logic” behind the workflows.

For example, if someone downloads Guide A and B, but not Guide C, then they’d go into campaign #1, but if someone downloads Guides A, B, and C, they go into campaign #2, but if they only download Guides B and C, they go into campaign #2.

See?

If you have dozens of guides and “rules” based on downloads or personal attributes (e.g., adult daughter vs. adult son vs. husband looking on behalf of wife), it can get incredibly unwieldy. And you’d absolutely need quality marketing automation, like HubSpot, to make it all work.

For communities with a full-time marketing department and dozens of locations nationwide, this complex approach is feasible. For smaller operators, it’s OK to take a more streamlined approach. The goal is to simply stay in front of people who’ve expressed interest and engaged with you. A combination of high-level emails and even a direct mail piece could be a good program. Or maybe you just do emails. Or perhaps you use some sort of text campaign.

Bottom line: do something.

(Psst: Got some older MQLs that were never nurtured? We’ve developed an effective turnkey program you can use to re-engage some of these leads. Contact us and ask about it.)

Have a follow-up plan for sales-qualified leads (SQLs).

How your sales team follows up with SQLs will very much depend on the sales culture and structure of your department (including your CRM). With SQLs, a more direct approach can work, like phone calls (hint: Marchex is an excellent automated phone solution).

Texting is something you’ll likely need to consider as we go through this next decade. For one thing, people are much more likely to respond to a text than a phone call or email. So you might reach out initially via text to say “Let’s schedule a tour.” Second, as more and more of the younger generations (like millennials and Gen Z) get involved with decisions for their aging loved ones, you’ll need to communicate using methods they prefer—like texting.

Overwhelmed by scoring senior living leads?

Don’t worry—that’s why we’re here! We can help you set up programs that work for your senior living community.

Learn More
Turning the corner on COVID-19

Senior Living Marketing: How to Position Your Community Post-COVID

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If there’s one thing COVID taught us, it’s this: the senior living industry still has a lot to do when it comes to effectively marketing itself.  How many times did the media and consumers use the words “senior living” and “nursing homes” interchangeably?

The answer: TOO OFTEN.

Collectively, we all need to do a better job communicating the differences between these terms. We also need to get better at communicating the many benefits the senior lifestyle provides in general, and especially during a pandemic).

So, as you plan your content and senior living marketing for the next 6-12 months, remember the following key messages. Adjust, as needed, for your senior living community.

Important Senior Living Marketing Messages to Promote:

Message #1: Senior living is a great lifestyle.

Capture and share the “great lifestyle” aspect of your community through pictures and videos and share, share, share.

Some ideas:

  • Residents working out in the fitness center or partaking in a class, like yoga
  • Seniors enjoying the pool
  • Residents enjoying happy hour at the pub
  • Seniors enjoying the comfort of their spacious apartment/residence—show them reading, doing a puzzle, reading, knitting

Message #2: A senior living community is very different from a nursing home.

You need to contrast senior living with nursing homes. Keep it straightforward and high level. Plus, focus on the key differences that matter most to people.

Here’s some copy to work from…

Senior living is an enriching lifestyle for older adults. The lifestyle encompasses the following:

  • Active lifestyle communities
  • 55+ communities
  • Independent living
  • Retirement communities (and all of its synonyms)
  • Assisted living (sometimes with or without a Memory Care “neighborhood”)

Nursing homes, on the other hand, provide skilled 24/7 nursing care in a residential setting for elderly or disabled people. Senior living communities don’t provide 24/7 skilled nursing care.

While senior living communities weren’t spared from COVID-19, the incidence in senior living communities was typically much lower than in nursing homes. The main reason for this? Nursing home residents often live in tighter quarters with roommates. Plus, nearly half are 85 or older.

Message #3: “My senior living community made me feel safe during the pandemic.”

Gather testimonials from residents, their family members, and your staff about what daily life was like during the pandemic.

Make sure your testimonials cover the following themes, specifically how…

  • Residents always had plenty of food/healthy meals
  • No one had to worry about prescription refills/pickups
  • The community’s industrial supply chain was strong—no shortage of toilet paper or cleaning supplies!
  • Family members could rest easy knowing that mom or dad was safe and taken care of
  • The staff felt supported, cared for, and valued by the community’s leadership and residents

Message #4: Here’s what COVID-19 taught our senior living community.

You can’t shy away from this issue, so use this opportunity to transparently share how your community dealt with COVID-19.

No one is expecting perfection. In fact, many people would be rightfully skeptical if they heard such a message. If you had some cases, or even an outbreak, talk about it. (Remember, nothing is legally prohibiting you from talking about raw numbers in a general way.)

If your numbers were low, you can promote that fact, but don’t get cocky and gloat. If you had higher numbers than you would have liked, stress what your community learned from this reality. Talk about improvements. Discuss the protocol if there’s a second wave.

Most importantly, keep your COVID-19 resource center easily accessible on your website for the next 12-18 months. Keep it updated. You should have an FAQ section or page. Regularly add answers to the most common questions you hear. Listen closely to residents, families, prospects, and staff—ask them what questions they have.

Share these key messages regularly across various channels, including…

  • Social media
  • Key website pages (home, contact, COVID-19 resource page, schedule a tour landing page)
  • Blog posts
  • Local newspaper ads
  • Quick guides/brochures (e.g., “X Reasons Why Our Senior Living Community is a GREAT Lifestyle Choice—Even During a Global Pandemic”)

Need help fine tuning your senior living community’s messaging—especially as you emerge from lockdown? Let’s talk.

As a senior living marketing agency, we focus only on the senior living industry. We have decades of experience working in the industry as well, on the operator side. We know your struggles  and what keeps you up at night. And we also know your “buyers” and how to effectively communicate with them, even during a pandemic.

Let us Help!
How COVID-19 Can Help Make Your Senior Living Sales Process Better

How COVID-19 Can Help Make Your Senior Living Sales Process Better

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Editor’s note: The following senior living sales content was inspired by discussions during our COVID-19 Webinar, which you can access for free here.

COVID-19 has forced all of us to change many aspects of our personal and professional lives, and this is especially true for senior living sales pros.

But here’s the good news: The adjustments you make to your sales process right now can serve you well over the long haul. Below are just some of the adjustments to consider:

1. Senior living sales tips: Stop selling. Start helping.

You’ve likely heard this advice before, especially if you’re a regular reader of our blog and newsletter. This isn’t a new strategy, by any stretch. But now is a great time to try it, especially if you’ve been skeptical of the concept.

So what do we mean by “stop selling, start helping“? No one likes being sold to (and definitely not during a global pandemic). But people do tend to be grateful for genuine help and concern.

Whenever you speak to a “prospect,” particularly during these uncertain times, forget the word “prospect.” Don’t think “how can I move this person to the next stage in the journey?” Instead, think of the word “human” and think about how you can help this fellow human.

Begin by asking questions…

  • How are you and your family adjusting to social-distancing measures?
  • What sort of activities are you doing?
  • What do you miss most?
  • Have you watched or read anything good lately?
  • What do you need help with?
  • What supplies are your running low on?
  • How can I help/be of service to you right now?

Listen to their answers. Share your experiences as well. And if they need help with something, help them—get them answers to their questions, follow up in a meaningful way, drop off a care package at their door.

And guess what? If you build stronger relationships by making a real connection and demonstrating genuine empathy, you will naturally move people closer to a purchase decision when the time comes. And when the pandemic is over, you’ll find that most of the prospects will see you in a very different (and more positive) light. You’ll have created a much stronger and enduring bond than you ever could have done when you were in constant selling mode.

A final note on this strategy: Yes, these sorts of conversations with prospects will take longer. But you’ve got the time, right? And here’s an important tip: try having these conversations face-to-face via virtual methods.

Which brings us to our next point . . .

2. Senior living sales tips: Make an effort to move from voice-to-voice contact to (virtual) face-to-face.

In the “old” days of just a few months ago, making follow-up phone calls to prospects was the norm. And it worked fine. A phone call was more personal than an email—hearing someone’s voice and all that. But given social distancing and the isolation we’ve all found ourselves in, we’re all craving VISUAL contact right now.

You already know that seeing someone’s face (and being able to read nonverbal gestures) can be critical to the sales process. You now have the opportunity to make visual contact a regular part of your sales follow-up process.

Use apps like Zoom or Facetime to connect with prospects. This visual contact better enables you to develop a relationship with a person, rather than a prospect. It also allows the person to see YOU as a human being rather than merely a sales rep trying to sell them something.

Suggesting video calls right now isn’t a hard sell, either. People around the globe are using these modes of communication to keep in touch with family and friends, so they are poised to accept this sort of communication from businesses as well.

In fact, Axios reports that this year’s Easter and Passover celebrations forced many older Americans to take the plunge and try video conferencing, like Zoom, for the first time. And Axios also wisely notes, “Older generations are usually slow to adopt new technologies, but history shows that when they finally do learn, they’re hooked.”

3. Senior living sales tips: Include more virtual events in your overall event planning.

Why have more virtual events, especially once things have improved? Well, COVID-19 has taught all of us that how we interact with brands and companies—including how we buy from them—can and will continue to evolve.

Not every sale—even for big-ticket items, like new living quarters—has to be done in person, thanks to technology. This is true, even for senior living communities. Some of our clients are reporting to us that they’re still making sales and move-ins during this time, albeit creatively and with much less in-person contact.

And now that consumers are seeing that they don’t need as much in-person time with sales people in order to successfully purchase something, demand for virtual sales processes will likely increase.

As a result, senior living sales and marketing teams will need to get creative and offer more virtual ways to engage prospects. This will be especially true for so-called “bottom of the funnel” events, like in-person tours, open houses, and lunches.

An important caveat: We don’t think virtual events are going to replace in-person events. But including virtual events in your offerings gives people (aka, your prospects) more choices—and ultimately more control.

4. Senior living sales tips: Clean up/update your CRM—and keep it updated.

No more excuses. You have the time to clean up your CRM, so do it.

Of course, the real problem isn’t the cleanup, though; it’s maintaining a clean database by getting in the habit of logging all details after every call on a go-forward basis

Again, you have the time right now. So after every call—even the long ones—get in the habit of immediately updating the contact record in your database with notes, info on the follow-up call, and any relevant tasks. For example, if you were talking to someone who was unsure about senior hours at the area grocery stores, assign yourself a task to get a list to the person ASAP. This goes back to the “stop selling, start helping” point above.

Note: Don’t have a CRM? (Or maybe you’re thinking of making a switch?) Here are six crucial elements to consider when choosing the right CRM.

5. Senior living sales tips: Focus less on lead volume and more on conversions.

Listen, we get it. You’re in sales. You live and die by the numbers. But consider this: would you rather have a ton of leads that never convert or a smaller amount of leads with a high conversion rate?

Lead volumes are down across the board due to the pandemic—some of our clients are reporting by more than half. But our most successful clients are working the leads they have in a sensitive and empathetic manner (see point #1 above) and seeing an increase in conversions as a result.

Think about that, because it’s a powerful point. Nurture leads in a more authentic, real way, and possibly convert more of the leads you already have. That’s not a bad approach right now—or in the future when we’re (hopefully) back to normal.

Need help thinking through your sales process post COVID—and aligning it better with marketing?

We can help. We’ve been in your shoes. We understand the enormous pressures you’re facing! Let’s chat.

MORE HELPFUL TOPICS:

What Can Sales People Do If They Cannot Sell?

Tips for Creating Virtual Sales Experiences in Senior Living

Senior Living Sales Tips: Characteristics of Super Star Sales Talent