There are any number of ways mortgage originators today can be more proactive and take control of their own lead generation process.
St. Louis-based Mortgage Returns provides a customer relationship management and automated marketing solution to originators. Company founder and recently appointed chief executive Jim Blatt comes from a retail marketing background.
It wants to help loan officers “capitalize on relationships with their past customers, their prospects and their referral partners. Our goal is pretty straightforward.
“These guys are working harder than they ever have trying to get their next loan closed. They are also, by nature, pretty transaction focused,” he said.
So, at the heart of Mortgage Returns' services is database management. “By tracking the details of a borrower's loan and by customizing marketing pieces to include relevant information, we can make the marketing results more effective,” Blatt said.
He cited a study from the direct mail industry that looked at response rates when marketing pieces are customized to individual consumers. He said they found a tenfold increase in response rates.
“Our loan officers know an awful lot about their customers and their prospects and their referral partners. The key is, can you leverage that information into your marketing piece to really demonstrate it,” Blatt said. Mortgage Returns takes that information and puts it into a marketing piece.
One truism in the mortgage originations business is that most LOs are not good at regaining business from those who already closed a loan with them.
Blatt noted that typically mortgage borrowers are entering into a new transaction approximately every five years. And many of them are going elsewhere to get their next loan.
“So the easiest place to go to try to really drive your business is improving the marketing to your best customer,” he said, continuing with the well-publicized fact that it cost more to get a new customer in to do a loan than to do a loan with a prior client.
Typical mass marketing campaigns do work, Blatt said, but when campaigns are made relevant to the individual client, they are much more effective.
Included in the system is management reporting, to help measure the effectiveness of campaigns. Blatt noted that clients who sent out the typical mass mail holiday postcards got new loans from 4% of their customers in 2010. Those who sent out customized mailings got new loans from 17% of their past customers.
“The cost is the same to do the marketing, the difference is the results. So my mission in life is to make these guys more productive and more profitable, not by making them work harder at executing marketing but just improving the quality of their marketing based on the data they already have, by using it more effectively,” Blatt said.
Mortgage Returns provides database management, where it handles some 250 details of every borrower's loan. The company is “multimedia,” with both direct mail and customized email marketing.
Meanwhile, LendingTree, Charlotte, N.C., has made it easier for smaller lenders to use its system to generate leads, through the new QuickConnect program.
Sarah Rogers, a client development manager for LendingTree, said QuickConnect accelerates the onboarding process by bringing it down to four steps, including background checks and license validation. Lenders will be able to buy leads as they please, without having a lead management system. That is big shift, she noted, as until now, most participating lenders had to have a lead management system in place.
There is no minimum budget, an easy payment structure (including accepting credit cards) and no security deposit is required. In the past, it took 48 hours for a lender to start receiving leads; with QuickConnect it can be as soon as 15 minutes.
Furthermore, LendingTree had required lenders to take leads seven days a week. Now, with this option, lenders can buy leads one day a week, Rogers said, adding it allows companies with smaller budgets for buying leads to use LendingTree's product. It lets the smaller lenders participate on the same field as their larger competitors.
Craig Doriot, the founder and chief technology officer of LoanSifter, Appleton, Wis., believes it is important for the small and midsized lenders to source new clients online, as there is a “constant drive to get faster, more relevant information.”
Borrowers are getting savvier, as they realize they can get accurate quotes on line and in real time, he said. Consumers are learning how to shop smarter, getting quotes from multiple sources and making decisions before they get deep into the process.
Being online allows the smaller lenders to compete; they no longer have to “spend a fortune in technology.”
LoanSifter allows loan officers to provide rates to third-party sources, such as the online lead generation systems. Loan officers can also use rates provided by the LoanSifter pricing engine on their websites and email marketing campaigns. A lot of companies of all sizes depend on loan officers to distribute rate information, but Doriot said it really depends on how that company is structured.
As for the size of the market, he noted that LoanSifter has seen 6 million requests for its service related to online inquiries.
It is not just the traditional lead aggregators that loan officers are turning to these days to get new business. Ray Eickhoff, who is an originator and a regional vice president with Fairway Independent Mortgage in the Seattle area, says he has a “fascination with social media and the marketing arm of that and how to utilize that correctly.”
Last year, he closed eight transactions that were sourced through his Facebook fan page. This year, there have been four leads generated from that source, with three loans (two refis, one purchase) moving towards closing.
It was a strategy he started pursing approximately 18 months ago, when fan pages started to be used by businesses. “I saw the opportunity to differentiate myself from my personal Facebook page and create a business presence for networking,” he said.
The page, Ray Eickhoff Mortgage Coach, has surveys, polling and video on the mortgage and real estate business. He said he was still learning about Facebook and finding what most people are viewing and adding content that creates value. Eickhoff is looking to capture through the site, not just for himself, but for his referral partners and loan officers as well.
As part of his responsibilities at Fairway, he recruits and social media helps in that area as well.
Eickhoff has been in the mortgage business since 1985. He said he has been an early adopter of technology unlike many of his peers, who might have a fear factor. But he said he found that he needed to use these newer methods to stay in contact with younger borrowers and first-time homebuyers in particular.
“I have found all generations are enjoying what I am putting out there. I am getting typically 35 to 50 reads on each of the things I post on my fan page,” Eickhoff said.
He was not expecting the fan page to be the place to make their first connection to him. The original aim was to stay in front of consumers and remind them he was in the mortgage business.
But he was hoping, and it has come true, that the page would generate business.
