Even though we're months away from the start of the year-end holidays, now is the time to start planning your end-of-year marketing events for your prospects and professional referral sources.
Here are some tips for how the WelcomeHome senior living CRM can help make your year-end marketing events successful, easy, and fun.
Holidays are special in senior living communities
The holidays are the time of year when your senior living community can put its best foot forward. The lobby and common areas are decked out non-stop between early October and the end of the year with decorations for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa. The residents' doors are adorned with handmade crafts. Visits by family and friends are at their peak.
It's also a time when older adults who live alone feel the most lonely, so a vibrant and active senior living community can be especially appealing to them and their loved ones.
Why, then, wouldn't you want to invite professional referral sources, prospective residents, and their loved ones into your community at this time of year?
Benefits of marketing events for senior living prospects
Marketing events are a wonderful way to bring your prospects and their loved ones into your community when everyone is feeling festive and the air is filled with music and delightful scents. Seasonal snacks, appetizers or desserts will show off your cuisine, and be sure to brief the staff who will be there to be prepared to answer questions and give tours.
Benefits of marketing events for professional referral sources
Marketing events are among the best ways to maintain excellent relationships with your professional referral sources. (If you need convincing about why professional referral sources should be a part of your occupancy growth strategy, check out this blog.)
Year-end marketing event ideas
Tis the season to try one of these proven marketing events:
Trunk-or-treat: Most senior living communities have an ample parking lot that's mostly empty in the evenings, so consider hosting a trunk-or-treat event for the children and grandchildren of your referral sources and prospects' families.
Open house: This multipurpose event can really check all the boxes by bringing in prospective residents, families of your current residents, professional referral sources, and your staff and their families.
After-5 mixer: There's no need to limit this to just your professional referral sources. Consider opening it up to the local chamber of commerce or civic groups so their members can get a taste of your community.
Charity collection event: Show your local charities and churches some love by being a collection site for their toy or canned goods drives. Make it festive by turning it into a drive-through with carolers, hot chocolate, and cookies!
Giftwrapping party: Invite your professional referral sources to a Saturday afternoon gift wrapping party to help your residents wrap the crafts they made themselves for their friends and loved ones. Play some favorite holiday movies in the background and serve snacks and refreshments.
2023 holiday dates to remember
Halloween: October 31, 2023
Thanksgiving: November 23, 2023
Hanukkah: December 7 – 15, 2023
Christmas: December 25
Kwanzaa: December 26, 2023 – January 1, 2024
Use the WelcomeHome CRM for marketing event planning
WelcomeHome has some powerful features to help you with planning and executing your next marketing event:
Use WelcomeHome to identify warm and hot prospects easily and professional referral sources to determine who to invite to your event.
Send bulk invitation emails to your prospects and professional referral sources with the Bulk Email function in Bulk Actions.
Send reminder texts to attendees who RSVP'd in the days before the event with WelcomeHome's integrated texting capability.
Use the WelcomeHome Events Portal to automatically track RSVPs and check in the attendees live at the event via the WelcomeHome app.
Tips and best practices for planning a successful marketing event
Check out our blog for tips to pull it all together in time. In it, we cover assigning roles, choosing a theme, planning, budgeting, publicizing, and how to get the most marketing and sales value from the event.
Get your whole community team involved with the CRM to make sure you are inviting all prospects and professional referral sources. (Helpful hint: WelcomeHome lets you have unlimited users!)
Equip your front desk team with WelcomeHome on a computer or mobile device to mark the people who attended.
Don't forget to invite your current and past residents. Anyone in your database can be invited through WelcomeHome if you have good contact information for them.
Follow up each event with an evaluation of what worked and what didn't to help reconcile your hard work and better plan for next year.
Don't forget those prospects who can't attend
There will always be some hot prospects who can't attend for various reasons. Let them know you didn't forget about them by bringing a small token of the event to them. It can be something special from the chef or an ornament or memento made by the residents.
Are you in the market for a new CRM that offers tools for making your marketing events successful in addition to a full suite of sales, marketing, and reporting functionality? WelcomeHome is a game-changing CRM built specifically for the needs of senior living communities. With its intuitive user interface, recommendation engine, and clear workflows, the WelcomeHome CRM is a powerful tool for both users in the community and owner/operators. Experience for yourself what thousands of senior living professionals rely on to make their job easier: request a free demo of WelcomeHome's CRM today.