| Winner | Summerset Retirement Villages |
| Marketing initiative | The Power of a Simple Customer Funnel |
| Marketing partners | FCB Aotearoa |
| Finalists | 2degrees, ANZ Bank NZ |
| Judges’ comments | “With clarity throughout, this entry has simplified the complex. The team put in the strategic and practical work to make data central to both their strategy and the everyday behaviours of their whole organisation. Their hyper-tailored approach with localised executions makes it particularly powerful. The results at every step speak for themselves.” |
Data brings home the retirees
Retirement village operator Summerset boosted sales with a hyper-local approach to data.
Summerset owns 37 retirement villages across the country, which are home to more than 8,500 residents. CEO Scott Scoullar says 2024 was one of the most challenging years they’ve ever seen.
The NZX-listed company faced rising construction and operating costs, high interest rates and a slow property market, which meant fewer customers if they couldn’t sell their existing homes.
With flat marketing budgets, Summerset anticipated a similar number of customer enquiries as the previous year, so to boost settlements they needed to improve their enquiry-to-settlement rate. This was the start of their data journey.
Each of Summerset’s 37 villages has its own economic microclimate – while Summerset is a national player with a similar proposition wherever it operates, the barriers and opportunities for growth vary by region and village.
To improve conversion, Summerset had to understand and quantify these differences. They broke their enquiry-to-settlement target into smaller measurable steps.
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Summerset used five years of data to benchmark overall performance and generate 2024 conversion targets, while identifying ‘blockages’ for each village that had to be overcome.
This data-driven approach helped Summerset sell a record 1238 occupation rights agreements in
2024, up 12% annually, while revenue rose 18%.
This story comes from NZ Marketing magazine issue 84, Sept-Nov 2025. Why not subscribe? Get four issues a year for just $50 (including delivery) if you autorenew.
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