The Best Senior Living Email Marketing Strategies

Email marketing has been around since 1978, when the first ever email blast was sent. Though rumors have circulated that claim email is an outdated form of communication, we have reason to believe otherwise. Did you know the number of daily email users is expected to climb from 4 billion to 4.6 billion users by 2025? Additionally, 74% of Baby Boomers consider email to be the most personal channel of communication.

Needless to say, email is anything but an outdated form of communication.
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How to Level Up Your Email Marketing Efforts

For senior living communities, email marketing strategy is used to market your community and nurture relationships in the most human and helpful way possible. Email plays a unique role in your overall marketing strategy, as it allows you to have a personal conversation with your contacts, build their trust and continue to be top of mind of your prospects.

Whether your community is active adult, IL, AL, MC, or a combination of product types, email strategies are an essential part of marketing in addition to website presence, social media, and video content.

Here are some tips to help you construct an effective senior living email marketing strategy.
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Be Conversational

Your marketing email interactions should be used as conversations between you and your leads. These conversations should also match where a lead is in your marketing funnel. In email marketing, it is crucial that you send the right message to the right person at the right time. Otherwise, your efforts may come across as impersonal.

Additionally, tone matters. You likely don’t come across as “salesy” when conversing with your friends and family. With email marketing, things are no different. Yes, you may be sending marketing emails to your leads, but you don’t want it to come across as a sales pitch. You want them to feel heard and understood, so avoid making them feel like they are just another prospect or contact by using the right tone. 

‍See what Solinity Marketing is capable of!
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Know Your Lead

In this high-touch, human-focused industry of senior living, you must know each lead similar to the way you know your close friends and acquaintances. Creating content for a mass audience just doesn’t cut it in this industry anymore. Even within the walls of the senior living industry, the senior audience is diverse and ever-changing, so do not assume that all residents and families will think the same way.

Imagine sending multiple emails to a family member who has inquired about assisted living for a loved one, but none of your emails have anything to do with assisted living. You’ve just lost their trust and missed out on a potential new resident. The details matter when communicating via email marketing.

Ask yourself these questions: Do you know if the lead is the adult child or friend of a prospective resident, or are they looking for a community for themselves? Do you know what level of care they are interested in and need?

You can collect this type of information from a website contact form and use it to generate segmented lists and create personalized content for each list of segmented contacts. Nurture emails can be automated, yet still personalized with customized content for each lead.
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Use Personalization

Personalization is a key part of your email marketing strategy. Or at least it should be!

Adding a personal touch to your marketing emails is a surefire way to make them stand out in your lead’s inboxes and increase engagement.

‍Don’t believe us?

• According to reports, personalized emails are responsible for 27% higher unique click rates and 11% higher open rates than emails without personalization tags.
• 46% of Baby Boomers say they are more willing to share personal information with brands that send personalized offers.
• 90% of consumers prefer personalized marketing messages.

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When adding a personalization field, consider starting the message with a greeting and the recipient’s first name (e.g. Good morning, FIRSTNAME). You can also use additional data you collected in your contact form to personalize content even further. A good example of this would be to send your current residents an annual ‘Happy Birthday’ greeting based on their birthdate information. The goal of personalization is to create a contextualized and individualized experience for each contact using the information you have at your disposal.

Nurture Your Relationships

Your emails look great, your tone is just right, and your contact lists keep growing as new qualified leads are coming in. So, what’s next? Now, it’s time to set up nurture campaigns so that you can follow up with your leads.

A well-thought-out nurture campaign allows leads, no matter where they are in the marketing funnel, to have frequent touch points from you so that your community remains top-of-mind when and if the decision to move in takes place. For example, if someone downloads your eBook about memory care, you will want to set up a sequence that will send that person content that is exclusive to memory care.

When crafting your lead nurturing campaign, keep in mind that there is a person on the other side of every email. Your nurture emails need to be brief, relevant, and conversational. Then, see how your lead interacts with your follow-up emails and plan accordingly.
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Get Help with Your Senior Living Email Marketing Strategy

There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to senior living email marketing.

Understanding the nuances of the industry is critical and must be taken into account prior to developing a marketing strategy. At Solinity Marketing, we have the knowledge and experience to help senior living communities succeed in this industry.

Whether your community is active adult, independent living, assisted living, memory care, or CCRC, your email marketing strategy has a key part to play in your community’s success.

To learn more about senior living email marketing, visit SolinityMarketing.com.