Senior Living Marketing Tech Stacks: The Ultimate Guide

When it comes to adopting the right marketing technology (a.k.a. “martech” or “tech stack”), senior living marketing and sales teams can’t afford to fall behind the curve.

You must have a reliable tech stack that effectively supports your marketing strategy so you can grow and maintain occupancy.

So, what should your community have in its tech stack?

Keep reading to find out.

Martech essentials for senior living marketing

Marketing automation

Marketing automation empowers you to send the right message to the right prospect at the right time. (That’s a simplified definition.) Marketing automation is a must-have if you want your community to remain competitive.

PRO TIP: We’ve written many helpful articles about marketing automation. Dive in!

CRM

The most important point we need to drive home is this: Your senior living CRM shouldn’t live by itself in a silo. Why? Well, if your martech platform isn’t connected bilaterally to your CRM, you’ll end up with two systems that are blind to each other.

One system will house initial source attribution (and possibly prospect behavior before people convert, depending on how sophisticated your system is). However, once the leads go to the sales team, the marketing team will be out of the loop since sales will use the CRM that doesn’t pass info back to the first system.

Instead, you should choose a CRM that integrates with your marketing automation platform to capture data from social, paid, organic, Google Analytics 4 (GA4), event registrations, etc. This centralized marketing portal should allow you to create custom dashboard reports that you can easily filter by location, portfolio, region, and investor group.

PRO TIP: Check out our podcast where we discuss WelcomeHome Software, a CRM platform designed specifically for the senior living space.

Data and analytics

Google Analytics 4 is a must (and it’s free). Keep in mind that GA4 is COMPLEX. You’ll want to make sure everything is working properly from a back-end perspective and that you have someone who can correctly interpret what the data is saying.

Marketing automation software (like HubSpot) also offers robust analytics. Again, the challenge is making sure someone knowledgeable in statistics interprets the data.

PRO TIP: Knowledge is power. Learn more about Google Analytics. Google has a free Analytics Academy here.

Website platform

Avoid templated websites (also called “websites in a box”). Unfortunately, promises of rock-bottom prices and so-called ease of use can lure people in. But like so many things in life, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Templated websites offer little to no flexibility, break easily, are too generic, are rarely built with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind, offer barebones customer service, and become more expensive in the long run.

Instead, invest in a custom website that reflects your brand and is designed for your prospect personas.

PRO TIP: If you put the work and money into your website, make sure you OWN it. Using older, closed, or proprietary platforms will limit your ability to own your strategy, decisions, and results. How can you tell if your website is yours? If you can’t get into the backend or you have to submit a ticket to make changes, you don’t own it. Ditto if your marketing agency manages your website hosting, Google Analytics account, or Google AdWords account. Don’t settle for this! Everything should belong to your community.

Website accessibility

Have you heard of the Website Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)? In a nutshell, WCAG’s ultimate goal is to make web content accessible to everyone, particularly people with disabilities.

Making your senior living website accessible to all visitors doesn’t just happen. You must be thoughtful in your approach—and aware of the latest WCAG requirements.

Working with an accessibility compliance partner to help make sure your site is always up to snuff should be another item in your tech stack. (Remember, accessibility will remain ongoing, given how quickly technology evolves.)

PRO TIP: At Senior Living SMART, we use UserWay to help our clients’ websites remain compliant and accessible.

Call tracking

You can’t know what you don’t measure. Unlike other industries, the phone is still a popular way for prospects to contact senior living communities. (More on this topic below.) But you must effectively track and link those calls to their corresponding marketing campaigns.

PRO TIP: Read why we love Call Rail and HubSpot.

Call center

No, we’re not talking about your grandma’s call center (or even your mother’s). Good call centers today are much more sophisticated—and can serve as an excellent way to manage leads. (See further down in this article for a deeper discussion about this topic.)

PRO TIP: Read more about our senior living call center solution: LeadGenie.

Interactive website tools

Tools like live chat, chatbots, interactive surveys, 3D floor plan renderings, and the like make for a “sticky” website where visitors spend more time engaging with different elements and soaking up info about your community.

PRO TIP: Check out one of our favorites: Roobrik.

SMS/Text

People read and respond to texts faster than email or phone calls, so it’s not surprising that more and more businesses are adding text messaging into the marketing mix.

Integrate text message marketing into your lead nurturing processes by triggering text messages to prospects based on their online behaviors.

PRO TIP: We recommend Salesmsg to keep communications cohesive across all platforms and devices.

Should an old-fashioned telephone be part of your martech stack?

Phone calls are still relevant, but you need a modern way to manage them.

Too often, communities rely on a front desk greeter or receptionist to field calls from people who want to know more about the community. The problem is that they are not trained in sales.

But expecting your sales reps to be available to take sales inquiry calls as they come in is also unrealistic. Your reps will be busy doing tours, meeting with families, and networking.

A better solution is to contract with a call center to manage all inbound inquiries. A good call center can qualify, score, and segment leads appropriately. Sales-qualified leads (SQLs) will go to the sales team (along with helpful notes). Marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) can go into relevant nurturing campaigns. You won’t have to worry about leads falling through the cracks.

The key is finding a call center with expertise in handling senior living inquiries and that trains its employees on your community’s specific workflows. Not all call centers are created equal, so make sure you work with one that helps your sales process, not hurts it.

PRO TIP: At Senior Living SMART, we’ve developed an answer to the above problem: LeadGenie. LeadGenie acts as a virtual welcome center for prospects. It can also cover vacant sales positions, do pipeline work to warm up older or colder leads, manage events, and handle crisis communication. It’s not just a call center—it’s a total lead management solution.

Bottom line: The right tech stack can make or break your senior living marketing and sales efforts.

Get in the habit of auditing your tech stack every year (at least). Many technologies renew automatically whether you’re using them or not. Cancel subscriptions for software and tools that no longer serve you, stay current on software updates, and be open to new products that can improve workflows and results.

And if you need help figuring out any of the above, give us a shout. We can audit your existing tech stack, review contracts for big-ticket items, and give you our honest opinion.