Wouldn’t it be nice if you could press a button and all the prospects in your lead pipeline would automatically receive strategic, engaging and relevant messages from you? We know speaking to prospects, giving them personal tours and motivating them to move in can be fun and rewarding – but to do those things, you first have to get leads on the phone or on your campus. It’s the “staying in front of them until they’re ready to purchase” part that can be frustrating and take you away from prospects who are closer to making a purchase decision.
Fortunately for you, technology has a solution that takes some of the repetitive and time-consuming lead nurturing tasks out of your hands and makes your efforts more successful. It’s called marketing automation.
“Marketing automation refers to software that automates repetitive but critical marketing tasks such as sending relevant and timely emails, posting to social media and performing other web-related actions,” says Sean Ochester, Executive Vice President of Digital & Integrated Strategy at SageAge Strategies. “It’s one of the best tools a sales force can have to drive prospect action and increase lead conversion. In fact, four out of five users increase their number of leads by using automation software, and 77 percent of users see an increase in converting those leads to purchasers.”
Small wonder then that 91 percent of marketing automation users say that the software is “very important” to the success of their online marketing activities.
“When it comes to the senior living space, nearly 90 percent of the leads in your pipeline aren’t ready to make a decision,” says Sean. “But by using marketing automation effectively, you can be quick to respond to new leads and nurture them along their decision-making journey, no matter how long it takes.
According to “5 Steps for Creating Successful Lead Nurturing Campaigns,” there are five points every automated email campaign must hit in order to generate more leads, stay in touch with them on a regular basis and convert more of them into purchasers.
Define Your Audiences
In order to deliver truly relevant messages to your audience, you first have to know to whom you’re speaking. As technology improves and data analytics and tools become ever more targeted, it has become easier and easier to clearly define your audiences and nurture them appropriately.
Yes – we said “audiences.” As a senior living community, you aren’t just targeting one ideal prospect. You’re targeting adult children of seniors, individuals who may be looking for a community in the future, and so on. A good automated email strategy will allow you to easily segment your audiences and send personalized, engaging and relevant messages to each one.
Give Each Touchpoint Specific Objectives and Goals
When a prospect fills out a personal information form on your PPC (Pay-per-Click) landing page, they probably aren’t ready to sign your admissions paperwork just yet. But creating an automated email campaign that helps nurture prospects throughout the sales process will help position you as a trusted expert and advisor while keeping your community top-of-mind. Each touchpoint should be designed to spur an action and move your lead further down the decision-making pipeline.
Set Up an Automation Timeline
Staying in touch with prospects is a little like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, you don’t want to send too many emails or too few emails … you want to send just the right number of emails. By using an automated campaign, your emails will go out to your prospects automatically on a scheduled timeline without you having to do anythingonce it’s set up. This timeliness and sensitivity to not appearing overly eager helps ensure optimum success.
Evaluate on a Regular Basis
There are many benefits to an automated email marketing campaign beyond the “automation” aspect. This type of software comes equipped with analytics capabilities to help you keep track of your campaigns, do A/B testing with subject lines or content, track open and click-through rates and a variety of other critical data points. This allows you to make changes to your campaigns in real time and continually make improvements.
Outsource to an Expert
61% of businesses say that the implementation process of marketing automation is difficult. And let’s face it – creating a lead-nurturing strategy that’s effective, responsive and consistent is hard to do when you’re trying to juggle all your other responsibilities. Which is why nearly 70 percent of companies outsource part or all of their lead generation and nurturing tactics, according to Salesfusion and Ascend2’s State of B2B Lead Generation survey.
Outsourcing your automation campaigns to an expert frees up time for you and your staff to focus on your strengths – providing an excellent community for your residents – without having to learn ever-changing email marketing best practices or taking on the overhead of hiring a full-time staff member to do the work.
“At SageAge, we see the value of automated lead nurturing every day,” says Sean. “Our clients have seen great success by adopting this technology into their integrated marketing campaigns. Through our proprietary software, we’re able to create highly segmented email lists that are automatically updated based on user data, which allows you to more easily engage with potential and existing customers. Our clients have seen increased efficiency and a higher ROI for their campaigns.”
Providing Automated Lead Nurturing and Integrated Marketing Strategies That Generate Results
If your senior living community needs assistance with increasing the quality of your leads and improving your conversion ratio, SageAge Strategies can help. We will develop and implement a customized campaign for your community that will send automated, personalized messages to prospects and influencers. We will continually analyze the data, review and optimize your campaign as needed to increase prospect engagement.
SageAge Strategies: Leaders in Integrated Marketing, Consulting and Lead Generation Solutions for Senior Living
At SageAge Strategies, our marketing team excels in the latest senior living best practices such as integrated marketing and social media strategy that increase quality lead generation and grow your occupancy. If you need assistance in any areas of marketing and integrated growth strategy to improve your business results, we invite you to contact us today to learn more about our proven strategies that have transformed other senior living communities like yours.
SageAge Strategies is a multiple-award-winning, strategic growth, marketing and consulting organization that operates exclusively in the unique senior living marketplace. For more information, please call or email Jason McCloud at 614.795.7373 / [email protected]. You can also visit us on our website at https://www.sageage.com/.
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