Driving Engagement: The Top 5 Marketing Automation Tools for Senior Living
In our journey to support and uplift seniors and their families, senior living communities must embrace tools that streamline marketing efforts and prioritize empathy and understanding. Marketing automation tools for senior living offer a pathway to foster deeper connections and provide compassionate support to those seeking options. This is why senior living communities must have an effective marketing strategy in place. Here are our top 5 recommended features senior living communities should implement from their marketing automation platform to get the best results quickly:
1. Call Tracking: Connect, Monitor, Identify Customers, and Coach Your Sales Team
Every call represents a unique individual seeking guidance and reassurance. By implementing call tracking, senior living communities can ensure that each inquiry is met with empathy and professionalism, while also benefiting from the ability to support and coach the sales team, make them accountable, and truly track the quality of leads coming in. Tracking calls allows you to understand the concerns and needs of your callers better, enabling you to offer personalized support and guidance every step of the way. Here are suggestions we recommend for using call tracking to its highest potential:
 | Use call tracking to monitor incoming and outgoing calls, ensure customer service is responsive, and evaluate the performance of customer service agents against key performance indicators (KPIs). |
 | Record calls to review and improve communication, train staff and ensure quality control. |
 | Gather geographic data on prospects to identify which marketing strategies are effective. |
2. Dashboards & Reporting: Centralized Senior Living Insights from All Connected Systems
Behind every data point lies a story of someone searching for the right community to call home. You can listen to these stories and respond compassionately with comprehensive dashboards and reporting tools. These tools enable you to track the effectiveness of your outreach efforts, ensuring that you allocate resources where they’re needed most and continuously improve your ability to serve seniors and their families.
With the decline of third-party cookies, the ability to track and understand customer behavior has become more challenging yet increasingly vital for senior living communities. A unified view of the customer is crucial for effective marketing in a cookieless world. We recommend tools integrating data from various sources providing a complete view of the customer journey. This integration allows for more targeted and personalized marketing strategies, driving better engagement and results. Reliable data enables:
- Enhanced Personalization
- Improved Customer Insights
- Data-Driven Decision Making
- Agility and Responsiveness
- Privacy Compliance and Trust
- Seamless Cross-Channel Marketing
3. Chat: Providing Immediate Support for Seniors and Families
Sometimes, all it takes is a listening ear to ease someone’s worries. Chat functionality on your website provides an immediate connection for those seeking information about senior living options. Whether it’s a live chat with a member of your team or the comforting presence of an intuitive chatbot, aim to create a space where individuals feel heard and understood, paving the way for meaningful conversations and supportive relationships. Here are our suggestions when it comes to using an AI sales assistant/ chat solution for senior living:
 | Enhance customer service, provide 24/7 answers, and assist with customer inquiries in real-time. |
 | Leverage AI to triage initial service requests or provide automated yet personalized customer interaction. |
 | Improve customer satisfaction by providing detailed information to clients or their families on the spot. |
 | Be sure live chat is HIPAA compliant. |
 | Plan strategically to ensure the technology aligns with customer expectations and organizational needs. |
 | Use a chat solution to differentiate in the market, improve customer interaction, and potentially increase sales. |
4. Identity Resolution & Dynamic Content: Crafting Personalized Experiences for Every Senior
Each person visiting your website is on a unique journey, with their preferences and concerns. Through customer data management and dynamic content, you can strive to meet them where they are, offering personalized resources and information that resonate with their individual needs. Understanding and respecting their identities can foster trust and build lasting connections built on empathy and understanding.
For example, tailored marketing campaigns can be crafted by segmenting audiences according to unique needs, preferences, and behaviors. Utilizing customer data management tools, such as email and phone number validation, ensures that data remains accurate and up-to-date. This commitment to data cleanliness fosters trust, enhances engagement, and improves campaign outcomes. By leveraging validated contact information, senior living communities can confidently reach out to prospects, delivering personalized messages that resonate with each individual or family.
Here are examples of email campaigns we recommend enabling in each new account to swiftly set you up for success:
- Tour Booking Automation: Implementing automated tour booking confirmations is highly beneficial for senior living communities, ensuring a seamless and professional experience for prospective residents. By promptly sending personalized emails with tour details and directions, communities enhance prospect confidence and commitment to the visit, while also simplifying operations and reinforcing trust.
- Confirmation Email: Upon booking a tour, send an automated confirmation email to the prospect. This email should include details such as the date, time, and location of the tour, along with directions and any special instructions.
- Reminder Email: Send a reminder email a day or two before the scheduled tour to ensure the prospect doesn’t forget. This email can also include a brief overview of what to expect during the tour and emphasize the benefits of visiting the community in person.
- Follow-Up Email: After the tour has been attended, send a follow-up email to thank the prospect for visiting and provide additional information about the community. This could include highlights from the tour, testimonials from current residents, and answers to frequently asked questions.
- Post-Tour Content Engagement: By automating personalized content delivery based on tour attendance, communities effortlessly maintain consistent communication, saving time and resources for marketers. Automation also allows for customized content, enhancing relevance and engagement, ultimately streamlining the follow-up process and increasing the likelihood of converting prospects into residents.
- Automated Content Article: Following the tour, send an automated email containing relevant content articles or resources that align with the prospect’s interests or concerns. This could include articles on retirement planning, senior health and wellness, or tips for downsizing.
- Tour Feedback Survey: Implementing an automated tour feedback survey system is crucial for senior living communities to gather valuable insights into prospect experiences efficiently. Automating the survey process saves time and resources for community staff while ensuring feedback is systematically collected and analyzed. Additionally, prompt follow-up and issue resolution demonstrate a commitment to exceptional customer service, enhancing resident satisfaction.
- Automated Survey Email: Shortly after the tour, send an automated email containing a survey to gather feedback from the prospect about their experience. This could include questions about their impressions of the community, the tour process, and any specific features or amenities that stood out to them. Gathering this feedback can help identify areas for improvement and tailor future interactions with the prospect.
5. Senior Living Contact Relationship Model: Cultivate Trust and Connection at Every Touchpoint
Choosing the right senior care often includes adult children, spouses, and caregivers, which makes the process emotionally charged and multifaceted. Also, more seniors are proactively researching online and educating themselves on care options across different marketing channels. Today’s marketing strategies need an accurate understanding of the emotional and relational dynamics of everyone involved in choosing the right community, to build trust, credibility, and personalized connections with seniors and their families.
Effectively managing those dynamics means your marketing automation platform requires a contact relationship model that tracks the relationships between family members and stakeholders and accurately attributes the right touchpoints and engagement data to individuals. Knowing who is involved in the ‘collective’ buyer’s journey from initial outreach to their role in the final move-in decision has a big impact on:
- Understanding what brought prospects to your community and how they engaged
- Providing timely, personalized, and targeted communication to each individual and
- Building trust and credibility with those who are entrusting the well-being and care of their loved ones to your community.
So there you have it – our recommendations for the top 5 marketing automation features for senior living you should implement today. Marketing automation tools are not just about efficiency—they’re about creating meaningful connections and supporting seniors and their families during a time of transition. By embracing tools that prioritize connection, empathy, efficiency, and understanding, senior living communities can foster deeper connections, provide compassionate support, and ultimately, make a positive difference in the lives of their residents and families.
To learn more about these feature toolsets in ActiveDEMAND and how marketing automation facilitates more connections and move-ins, please visit our customer support page.
