Marketing your senior living facility needs some smart approaches to interest seniors when making a major life decision. Hosting events and promoting them through direct mail can be an effective way of getting potential residents on-site at your community. Although digital marketing for assisted living facilities is becoming more and more popular offline marketing isn't dead. And when done correctly direct mail promoting your events can be an effective method of senior care marketing.
For attracting seniors to your facility, direct mail can still be very effective in this day and age. Not everyone is going to expect a marketing piece in the mail, simply because they don't expect it in the digital age.
Unlike marketing to the adult children of seniors many seniors may not spend a lot of time online or use much email. When promoting an event at your facility to attract seniors, what approaches should you use in direct mail to bring a successful response?
Here's five direct mail tips to increase attendance at events to help your senior facility fill its quota for the year.
1. Digging Deep into Your Targeted List
Perhaps you already have a direct mail list, though want to do a little more to personalize your mailings this time. It pays to work with data providers so they can dig deep into the demographic you're targeting.
However, you can do some of this on your own through research, or by creating customer personas. Taking your existing list of seniors, you need to scope out their interests, hobbies, and other life interests so you can personalize the direct mail message. The more you know about the seniors you're sending to, the more you'll tap into their pain points.
2. An Enticing Invitation to Attend Your Event
Now that you've personalized your direct mail piece to seniors, what should you say to introduce yourself? Identifying a senior concern in the main headline is always an eye-catcher. This should become something short and simple to understand about typical (or maybe unique) senior issues.
Then you have to prove what the value is behind this invitation. What will the senior attendee learn when they attend your event?
*This LeadingAge Study from 2015 still show direct mail as the largest area of marketing budget spend.
3. State What You'll Offer at the Event
Can you outline what your event entails in short sentences? If you have any experience writing advertising copy in the past, you know being short and compelling is the key.
Maybe hiring a copywriter can help whittle this down fo
r you. Be sure to state what you'll offer at your event, including any free gifts for attending. The more you help the attendee envision what they'll experience in a few words, the more they'll realize it's worth the time to attend.
If you're competing with similar senior facilities, differentiate as much as possible so you stand out from the typical mailers that your prospects receive.
4. Holding Your Event in the Right Location
In your direct mail piece, indicate clearly where and where you're holding the event. Even include a detailed and colorful map helps seniors visiting for the first time.
It helps to hold your event in a local area near where your targeted demographic lives. Some seniors can't always travel far, so the closer you can make it to their neighborhood, the more likely the turnout will be good.
5. Find the Right Mailing Piece
Evidence consistently shows direct mail connects with people on a more emotional level. A lot of this has to do with what the direct mail piece looks like. A postcard, for instance, usually receives a strong response. However, a personally addressed letter always brings a more personal touch that insinuates more importance. There are ways to actually add your own handwriting as a font into Microsoft word! This is an excellent tactic to make your letter appear handwritten and personalized. Checkout http://www.myscriptfont.com/ to add your writing as a font.
In your demographic analysis, find out what type of mailing piece they'd prefer so you can provide the right presentation. As always, an impressive graphics display is going to play a big part, and a glossy finish from a quality piece stands out in a mail stack.
