When it comes to marketing and staying in contact with your current or prospect customers and referral partners, there is no magic bullet that will perfectly reach out to each person in your database at exactly the moment they need help with a loan transaction. Considering the value of your time and money compared to the reward, one of the most effective sales/marketing methods currently available is drip marketing.
Drip marketing began shortly after email technology became prevalent around the world. Drip marketing should not be confused with spam. Drip marketing is a system that is designed to send relevant and interactive content that informs your clients and associates based on where they are in the sales process.
Ask yourself this question: do you have the time to create and provide customized client-specific articles to each and every contact regarding specific lending opportunities or items of interest? Do you have time to create and send out customized Realtor articles to each of your current and prospect Realtors in your database on a one-on-one basis?
The fact is no one has time for this type of high-touch sales nurturing, especially considering every single person that visits your website sends you an email, has done business with you in the past, finds you via Google, LinkedIn, ActiveRain, property search, loan program search or met you at a conference or networking event.
This is where drip marketing takes the crown as the top marketing and sales technique used by mortgage lenders and myriad other business models — because it gives you the ability to stay on the minds of your contacts and customers, and keeps them on your business radar.
Here are some of the most important factors that support the decision to implement a drip marketing campaign for your business.
It is critical to stay in touch with your prospects, customers and referral partners.
There is a huge marketplace for just about every service and product in existence. If you do not consistently stay in touch with your contacts, there is an incredibly high probability that you will lose them. This is true not only because they are likely being constantly contacted by competitors, but also because if you let these contacts fall off your communication radar, it sends a message that they are not important to you and your business.
Consistency is key.
Imagine a desert — it is an intensely hot and arid terrain. Rain showers are few and far between, but when they come they flood the landscape, plants begin to grow and life is abundant. This spark of growth is very short lived as the intense sun begins to beat down on the terrain again and the vegetation immediately dries up and dies. Does this scenario sound like your current marketing efforts? Do you remember you should be "doing something" to market your services, so you get an article or two sent out to hundreds of people, and then over the next weeks or months or years nothing is sent out?
The contact that is not ready to do business with you today may be ready next month, or in 2 years, or at "XX" time in the future. If they do not hear from you consistently, they will forget about you. The best approach is steady, thoughtful "stay in touch" contact with your customers, not a flood every once in a while in between long periods of drought.
It is impossible to stay in touch with your customers by phone or ad hoc individual emails and remain competitive.
The time that it takes to make a single thoughtful phone call or write an email to a client seems like no big deal. But multiply that single person by the number of people you have in your entire business database and we begin to see some serious work hours. Hours that no business model can spare when there are so many sales to lock in, active pipeline issues, as well as real estate agents and referral partners to develop sales strategies with.
Availability. Thanks to technology, sophisticated drip email marketing systems are available to everyone with an internet connection.
Not too long ago, only large corporations were able to spend the incredible amounts of money necessary to constantly reach out to customers. This was mostly done through mailings, radio and TV commercials. Small businesses and sole proprietors were very limited in their revenue growth potential because without the proper funds to invest in mailings, TV or radio marketing, their reach into the market was confined and restricted — never mind the quality of their product or service.
Boy, have times changed! There are many database and marketing solutions available to take you from a flood/drought marketing method to a sensible, effective and consistent "stay in touch" technique without requiring lots of ongoing time, effort or expense.
Internet and email is pervasive in Western culture: Shouldn't your business be, too?
The internet is everywhere. It's free at restaurants and coffee shops, and cheap and available to the masses. And with the net-neutrality win with the Federal Communication Commission it will only become more so. With these changes coming fast, email (and social media) marketing remains the lowest-cost and highest-yield method for communication and marketing. Since some email marketing tools on the market include an option to automatically post email drip campaign content to your social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, you are able to market your business through two major channels at no extra time or cost.
In any economic climate drip marketing is a proven method for helping to drive in new business, as well as providing ongoing nurturing of your relationship with prospects, current customers, past customers and referral partners.
If you still aren't quite convinced you should implement drip marketing, all you have to do is ask yourself one question.
What am I doing to keep in touch with the 85% of my prospects who aren't ready to move forward with a purchase or refinance today, but will likely be ready at some point in the future?
Donna Quisenberry is the principal of Q2 Database Consulting Services.
