Looking Ahead to 2019
I’m thrilled to have joined APFM in October, taking the mantel to lead the Partner Services team from long time industry veteran Dan Willis.  While I’m new to the Senior Living  industry, with over 20 years’ executive experience in travel ecommerce, I’ve been fortunate to spend most of my career focused on building strong strategic partnerships that drive long term growth and, of course, I hope to do the same with all of you.
What was most compelling to me to join A Place for Mom, is the shared belief across the industry in the noble mission of senior living and the positive outcomes it creates for families.  I saw my parents struggle to find the right community for my grandmother who suffered from Alzheimer and understand how valuable it can be to help families in their time of need.  I look forward to working with all of you to continue to improve how we deliver on this mission.
2018 Year in Review
With a brief look back at 2018, I’m delighted to highlight a few milestones A Place for Mom delivered for our customers and partners that we are proud of:
- Over 11.7M visitors searching for senior living on A Place for Mom with just under 80% unique visitors.
- We referred over 320,000 families to our partners.
- We partnered with over 18,500 communities in the US to take care of seniors in need.
- We conducted 3,900 Secret Shops across 138 organizations to help partners’ evaluate response and conversion with families.
- We successfully piloted Real Time Tour Feedback providing actionable insightful feedback from 732 families to 707 communities… we are expanding this pilot in Q1’19 with full roll out later this year.
We are deeply appreciative of collaborating with our partners on these deliverables and look to raise the bar further in 2019.
2019 Year Ahead
As we hit the ground running in 2019, there are a number of key initiatives we are tackling to deliver more move-ins and improved tools and services that will provide our partners with better insights to help you convert more leads into residents.
Brand Marketing – Memory Care Advertising Goes National
In the US over 8 million families are faced with helping someone with dementia, Alzheimer’s or memory care issues and need some form of support.  In December, we launched a national TV campaign targeting those families with new commercials focusing on the great support our local Senior Living Advisors provide to families searching for Memory Care. The commercial features Joan Lunden telling her own personal story related to her mom and how an Advisor helped her find a long-term care solution. We’ve seen a positive reaction to these commercials with families reaching out for more information. We will continue this advertising campaign throughout 2019 and continue driving high-quality referred lead volumes to you.
See the new Memory Care Commercial.
New Partner Tools & Technology on the Horizon
There are a number of new partner tools we will be launching in 2019 that we are quite excited about.  One of the first ones is a new and dramatically improved Partner Central portal.  In addition to an easier-to-use interface, we are launching a new Community Profile Score, which provides our partners insights into how communities can increase their engagement with families by improving their profile page.  We will share the new and improved Partner Central site and upgrades in the coming months, so stay tuned.
Data Insights an Improved Report Deliver
This coming year, we’re also investing in streamlining current partner reports, and creating new ones that will mine our data across the industry and highlight competitive insights.   As part of the project you will have the opportunity to receive key reports delivered right to you inbox, saving you time.  You won’t need to seek out information, but instead it will be delivered right to you.
Enhanced CRM Integration
In addition, we are expanding our partner web integration capabilities that send leads directly into your CRM.  This includes both enhancing current CRM connections to automatically provide data related to the new contract term as well as adding new CRM integrations to our program.   This work is designed to protect your referrals, streamline workflow between our companies, and save your team valuable time.
These are just a few of the deliverables we will be focused on this year to drive increased business to each of you, in a more efficient manner, with greater insights.  We welcome your feedback as we collaborate together on these initiatives and ensure they hit the mark.
I’m truly looking forward to getting a chance to meet many of you in person and hear directly from you on ways we can strengthen or partnership and provide increased value to each of you.
Here’s to a strong 2019!
Noreen Henry,
SVP of Partner Services