How to Manage and Nurture Leads for your Coworking Space

To grow your coworking space, you need a steady stream of interested people to target. In marketing, we call these leads.

The better you are at acquiring and managing these leads, the more effective you’ll be at converting strangers into members of your community. Thankfully, technology can help you do just that.

In our most recent Masterclass session with Jenna Macken, Customer Success Team Lead at Optix and Kelly Karn, Marketing Manager at Optix, we walked through why lead management matters for coworking spaces, how to map out your lead funnel, and how to manage and nurture leads directly in Optix coworking software.

Why lead management matters for coworking spaces

A strong lead pipeline ensures consistent revenue and sustainable growth for your coworking space. The better you are at managing your leads, the more effective you’ll be at converting them into paying members. 

Coworking software like Optix can help the lead management process by consolidating lead data and automating responses in a single platform.This reduces manual effort while ensuring that every potential member receives the right message at the right time.

Common challenges coworking spaces face with managing leads

As important as lead management is, it often slips through the cracks for busy coworking space operators. Many operators struggle with: 

• Inconsistent follow-ups
• Lack of centralized data
• Difficulty in identifying high-intent leads

Without a system in place, leads can quickly get ignored resulting in less than optimum conversion rates (and less revenue). 

Therefore, the first step in effectively managing your leads is to understand the journey someone takes to become a lead so you can build out an effective lead management system.

Understanding the lead journey in your coworking space

When someone first visits your website, what is the action you are trying to get them to take? Do you want them to sign-up for your space? Do you want them to book a tour? Is the action you want them to take the first action they could take or is it further down the funnel? 

These questions all come back to understanding the different stages of your lead funnel. Knowing the journey leads go through to become a member can help you:

• Automate key parts of the funnel like follow-up emails and reminders
• Understand where people are dropping off and if you have a “leaky funnel”

For coworking spaces with an application process for members, your lead funnel may look something like this:

1. Someone first becomes a lead when they request more information through your inquiry form
2. They then book a tour for your space
3. After the complete the tour, your team marks them as a qualified lead
4. If they’re qualified and interested, they then sign up for a free trial of your space
5. After the free trial day, if they choose to purchase a plan, they have officially exited the lead funnel and are now a paying member!

Using Optix to manage your lead funnel

In Optix, each one of these stages can be mapped directly into the platform and managed by your team. You are then able to create automated sequences to nurture leads, that is, move them from one stage of the funnel to the next.

Best practices for lead nurturing in coworking spaces

Now that you have your lead funnel mapped out, the next step is to begin to nurture those leads. Here are some best practices to keep in mind when nurturing leads for your coworking space.

1. Have a well-defined ideal customer profile (ICP)

Every conversation we have in marketing comes back to understanding your audience and who it is that you’re targeting. We call this your ideal customer profile (ICP).

In the context of managing and nurturing leads, having a clear understanding of your ideal member will help you tailor your messaging and the website journey to guide leads toward conversion.

Make sure you know:

• Who your members are
• What challenges they face
• What motivates them

2. Capture leads on your website with clear call-to-actions (CTAs)

Your website is your storefront. Make it as easy as possible for someone to take an action with clear call-to-actions (CTAs) placed strategically throughout your website.

Here are a few tips for structuring your CTAs:

• Primary CTA: this is the most important action you want visitors to take. It should be prominently displayed in the header and repeated throughout key sections. For some spaces, this could be “Join now”
• Secondary CTA: not all visitors are ready to convert immediately. Offer a lower-commitment option, such as “Book a tour” or “Learn more” to get people into your funnel

3. Follow up strategically with automated sequences

When it comes to moving members through your funnel, following-up in a timely and consistent fashion is one of the most important tools you have at your disposal. The best part is, much of this can be automated.

Use technology to set timely and behavior-based triggers for email follow-ups. For example, you may want to create an automation so that an email is sent one day, seven days, or fifteen days after a tour is completed.

Use delays and conditions to ensure the right people are getting the right information at the right time.

4. Offer value with every outreach

So you’re reaching out to members on a consistent, regular basis…but what exactly are you saying? Focus on offering value with every outreach to keep members engaged without feeling intrusive or spammy.

Providing trial days, exclusive promotions, or personalized incentives at different points of the funnel can help increase the likelihood of conversion. You could also follow up with helpful content like available membership options, perks and amenities, or testimonials.

5. Track key performance indicators (KPIs)

How do you know if your lead nurturing efforts are working? The best way to do this is by tracking a select number of key performance indicators or KPIs. 

The KPIs you track in your coworking space will depend on your funnel. We most commonly see tours booked, tours completed, trial sign-ups, and member conversions being used amongst coworking space owners and operators, but the exact KPIs you track will depend on your business model and sales funnel.

Using Optix to optimize and automate lead management for your coworking space

Like we’ve discussed throughout the article, Optix provides several features that make lead management and nurturing more efficient by automating follow-ups, tracking engagement, and ensuring no lead is lost. Here’s how you can use Optix to optimize and automate lead management for your coworking space.

Lead capture with Web Widgets

Optix offers four main lead capture widgets that can be embedded onto your website without using any code.

1. Inquiry Widget: collects basic details from potential members that you set and define
2. Tour Widget: allows leads to book a tour directly from your website
3. Drop-in Widget: lets visitors book a day pass or meeting room instantly. Those who do not complete this process are saved in Optix as a “Lead”
4. Sign-up Widget: enables new members to purchase a membership plan or pass directly. Those who do not complete this process are saved in Optix as a “Lead”

These widgets are fully customizable and can integrate into your website with ease.

Automations for lead nurturing

One of the unique features of Optix is Automations, a workflow builder that brings Zapier-like capabilities directly into your coworking software. This allows you to create customized automation sequences for different lead types.

Automations can be triggered by specific actions, such as booking a tour or failing to complete a sign-up, giving you the ability to create complex nurture sequences for every stage of the lead funnel, directly in Optix.

Task assignments for manual follow-ups

If you’d like to connect with a lead in a channel outside of the digital realm, you can use Tasks in Optix to assign follow-up tasks to team members if a lead remains unresponsive. For example, you may want to create a task for your community manager to call a lead a week after they completed their tour if their email has gone unresponsive.

Any tasks that are assigned to admin appear in the Optix dashboard and can be sent via email notifications to help your team easily track their growing list of to-dos.

Optimize your lead funnel and start growing your coworking space today!

Learning how to effectively manage your leads is the first step in growing your coworking space this year and beyond. Start by mapping out your lead funnel. Then build a system using your coworking software to automate as many parts of the process as possible. 

Curious to see how Optix can support you in growing your coworking space? Connect with a member of our team today…we’d love to chat!