By Susan Saldibar

What’s happening out there?

It seems like ever since the pandemic it’s been harder to get a handle on good numbers — leads, tours, conversions. What’s bad/normal/awesome by today’s standards?

Wouldn’t you love to know? 

Now you can.

I got an earful of numbers in the last Marketing Monday with Leigh Ann Hubbard. She spoke with WelcomeHome’s director of marketing, Chris Mohrman, and VP of customer insight, Maggie Seybold. (WelcomeHome is a Foresight partner.)

As it happens, Maggie and the team have accumulated a ton of data. And bear in mind that this is data from over 1,000 communities across the board: assisted living / independent living / memory care. Their 2022 Year in Review report has just dropped. (Cut to the chase and get it here.)

They’ve got what we dearly need these days. Numbers. And they’re talking. 

Just a few …

  • Across-the-board average (assisted living / independent living / memory care)
    • 38 new leads per month, 10 new tours, 3.7 move-ins.
  • Occupancy 
    • By region: Northeast 80%, West and South 79%, and Midwest 70%.
    • By type of community: AL 77%, MC 77%, IL 82%. Interesting about independent living. According to their data, it was easier for these prospects to pull away during the pandemic and easier for them to take fast action afterwards.
  • Lead sources 
    • Over 75% come from aggregators and online sources. (But don’t let that fool you. Read on.)
  • Move-ins 
    • Almost half of all move-ins came from aggregators and online. But …
    • WelcomeHome data shows that it takes much more work to get an online/aggregator lead in the door. And yet their average length of stay is less than one year.
    • The average length of stay coming from a referral is over a year.
  • Length of sales cycle …
    • Data shows that an average of 100 activities are needed per move-in, with an average length of over 150 days. But before you freak out, it’s important to note that WelcomeHome CRMs track a lot more activities than most CRMs. So “activities” include a broad swath of things: calls, texts, tours, emails.

This is just an across-the-board taste of what’s in the report. It contains a lot more details which you can use to gauge your own performance.

A word about planning.

First of all, it’s important. Second of all, it can be tracked! But you have to assign planning activities as “activities” first. Looking across all activities, the report found that less than 1% of them were marked as planning; that is, sitting and spending thoughtful time to plan out the best approach for each prospect.

So tracking planning activities (such as taking time to learn that Mary loves to bake and then adding a kitchen taste test to the room tour) can help identify which are successful so you can replicate them for other prospects.

So, based on the data, what does a successful community look like? 

  • They have more good-quality leads in their funnels.
  • They’re doing more core activities and tracking each one.
  • They are using WelcomeHome’s CRM automation to complete tasks more quickly. (This gives them a faster speed-to-lead.)
  • They’re planning more by putting more thought on the front-end into personalizing each touch point, such as calls and emails.
  • The result is a stronger tour-to-move-in conversion rate.

There’s a lot more where this came from. 

Maggie says there is more coming on lead source data, and they’re digging into the successful operators out there and what they’re doing. So stay tuned.

Better yet, download the report. It goes beneath just the numbers to answer your questions and look at trends.

Get it now, and find out “what’s happening out there!”