Marketing automation can be hard to understand. In the world of senior living, sometimes it’s simplified to “email marketing,” but that doesn’t encompass all the wonderful benefits the product has to offer. 

What Is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation for senior living is a platform integrated with your technology suite (think CRM and website, at minimum) that tracks leads’ digital engagement and activities to:

1. Help the platform segment and target leads with appropriate content based on their digital results.
2. Help the sales team have pointed discussions with leads to advance them through the buyer’s journey. 

There’s typically a lot of focus put on lead generation for senior living, but we’re starting to see as much emphasis put on nurturing leads once they’re in the database. Implementing lead-nurturing tactics is crucial to conversions and closing sales, and marketing automation is one of the channels that allow custom, automated outreach.

Marketing Automation Best Practices for Senior Living

What’s the best way to leverage marketing automation for senior living? Here are 5 best  practices to consider.

Start nurturing leads immediately. 

Just because someone is looking for additional information about a community doesn’t mean they’re ready to connect with a sales counselor directly. They may still need to educate themselves on what they’re looking for – they still don’t know what they don’t know. This is where nurture programs can be so valuable, as they’ll begin educating and self-qualifying leads as sales teams focus efforts on those leads ready to talk. As these leads are digitally engaging with emails and the website, all that activity and behavior is tracked and available for the sales team to leverage once the lead is ready to have a conversation.

Build a marketing automation program based on your community’s goals.

Nurturing leads at the initial consideration phase of the sales cycle is critical, but what’s the best next step? That all depends on community goals. For example, even if a community is fortunate enough to have high occupancy, there’s still a need for nurturing leads, such as consistently communicating  with waitlisters or working to grow your waitlist. Maybe the community typically  has a high volume of new leads, and sales counselors need some additional support with reengaging leads who are getting colder as they focus on Hot and Warm leads. There are always opportunities to nurture until that lead has moved in.

Consider your audience.

In some cases, the senior prospective resident is the audience and the one the sales team will be communicating with on a regular basis. Other times – and this is becoming more common – the audience is a caregiver or family member looking on behalf of their loved one. With that in mind, the voice of the nurturing campaigns should speak to that audience appropriately.

Don’t get caught up in the detailed content in your emails … that’s what your website is for.

It’s common for communities to want to share everything wonderful about their property in every email. What’s more effective, however, is to tease content and then link out to your website to let that tell the story. You’ve already invested in an all-encompassing digital library all about your community, so use it!  And watch all the digital activity build up as leads click, click, click.

Make it a habit to leverage digital engagement data for one-to-one conversations.

Not only do marketing automation platforms collect data for email engagement (opens, clicks and downloads), but they’ll  also track website behavior. When a lead spends time on the Floor Plans  page, specifically the one-bedroom apartments, it may be time to encourage a tour. (As a reminder, never allude to knowing a lead’s digital activity; just use it as a way to have targeted conversations and advance the lead based on their obvious interests.) It’s also smart to leverage all leads’ digital score to help prioritize who should get the attention of sales counselors first. 

In summary, marketing automation helps teams identify who is recently active, and with what content. 

Request a Marketing Automation Demo

Meet the demands of today’s information-seeking consumers. Nurture and guide your leads with marketing automation solutions that effortlessly deliver the right content at the right time, right to their fingertips.  View our Marketing Automation services customized and designed for senior living and request a demo today.