How a Leading Senior Living Provider Used HubSpot Marketing Hub to Reduce Time-to-Move-In by 89 Days
WesleyLife, a senior living provider in Iowa with 10 healthy living communities and robust home-based services, leveraged SmartBug’s expertise for HubSpot Marketing Hub implementation across the entire customer lifecycle. With a focus on nurturing long-buy-cycle leads, shortening sales cycles, and driving digital conversions in a highly nuanced industry, the partnership has yielded impressive results.
The Problem
Struggling with Inadequate Marketing Tools
WesleyLife was in a pickle, facing a dual challenge: The senior living giant was relying on outdated marketing tools that hindered its ability to nurture leads effectively, resulting in longer sales cycles and missed opportunities. Without automated nurturing or centralized workflows, the organization struggled to continuously engage prospects over the 6–12 month decision cycle typical in senior living.
WesleyLife wanted to streamline the processes holding it back from integrating marketing across service lines, shortening sales cycles, and expanding its at-home services. So the organization turned to SmartBug to update its website and implement marketing best practices to improve lead generation and nurturing.
Let’s just say our marketing stack had some... vintage charm. We've come a long way since! We’ve become an innovative, forward-thinking senior living organization in how we manage our data and digital marketing efforts.
Our Solution
Driving Qualified Leads, Boosting Conversions, and Accelerating the Sales Cycle
- HubSpot Workflows to support community-based, post-tour emails triggered by lead status in WelcomeHome
- Lead Scoring with custom properties and behavioral scoring for recruiting
- Smart Content with nurture emails that include dynamically populated modules based on lead attributes
- HubSpot Lists and Forms that incorporate segmentation to tailor content by location, care type, and family status
SmartBug implemented HubSpot Marketing Hub to address WesleyLife’s outdated tools, establishing a modern, automated marketing foundation. With this infrastructure in place, we developed targeted post-tour nurture workflows to keep prospects engaged throughout the long decision cycle typical of senior living. We also created nurturing sequences to maintain long-term engagement with soft-disqualified leads, scheduling outreach for about a year later.
WesleyLife’s content touched two key personas—active seniors and caregivers—with workflows incorporating a variety of emails to keep prospects engaged and informed:
- Review requests
- Testimonials
- Floor plan options
- Community evaluation guides
SmartBug set up tracking to monitor leads through different lifecycle stages—moving each as needed from SQL to post-tour follow-up, all the way to opportunity/reservation and resident. All activities were seamlessly integrated with the WelcomeHome CRM, enabling clear visibility into each prospect’s journey.
The Results
Tailoring the Marketing Journey and Accelerating Conversions
With a modernized marketing foundation and tailored nurturing strategies, WesleyLife achieved impressive results. The new digital marketing infrastructure increased digital lead capture by 55% and organic web traffic by 60%.
Marketing & Digital Infrastructure Improvements
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Modernized marketing foundation with tailored nurturing strategies.
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Digital lead capture increased by 55%.
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Organic web traffic increased by 60%.
SmartBug Initiatives Implemented
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Cross-service line lead nurturing.
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Strengthened WesleyLife’s thought leadership positioning.
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Deployed targeted post-tour nurturing strategies.
Email & Engagement Results
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Email open rates improved by 38%.
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Click-through rates boosted by 26%.
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SQL-to-Opportunity conversion increased by 5.79%.
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Average time to conversion reduced by 11 days.
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Tour-to-move-in timeline shortened by 25 days.
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Content personalized by:
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Location
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Care needs
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Timeline
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Improved personalization increased trust and user experience.
HubSpot & Internal Utilization Enhancements
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Improved sales team adoption of HubSpot Marketing Hub.
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Enhanced lead management processes.
Nurture Campaign Impact
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In the first 12 months:
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Lead-to-resident close reduced by 89+ days.
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Conversion rate increased by ~1%.
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All these little things that SmartBug kicked off ultimately drive leads and conversions. That's what matters.But we've also been given so many great educational tools that never existed before. And I can feel a shift in our market, especially in terms of how people view us as a thought leader.
