Originators are getting help through technology for their promotional campaigns.
To help them get the most out of their marketing dollars, mortgage originators are being presented with new tools that let them have better information about prospects as well as new ways to reach them.
For example, Tranzact Information Services, Boca Raton, Fla., launched a centralized marketing solution for Home Savings of America.
Forrest Young, HSOA vice president of marketing, said the company has 100 branches that do their own marketing. A centralized solution helps the company to maximize its direct marketing return on income. It also ensures that its prescreen direct marketing campaigns are in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
“Understanding the importance of HSOA’s objectives, we created a custom, private-labeled online data access and delivery system that fully integrated with their technology platform,” explained Ben Waldshan, president of Tranzact Information Services.
“The system provides branch managers with access to a variety of marketing data sets, including prescreen credit lists from all three leading bureaus. Leveraging hundreds of attributes hand-selected by Young and his team, managers can build highly targeted marketing lists to reach a number of mortgage prospects, including conventional, reverse mortgage, FHA, VA and more.”
Waldshan added that Tranzact has assigned a client manager to support the HSOA branch network, which frees up the client’s corporate marketing team to focus on higher-level initiatives.
From his perspective, Young said the client manager gives branch managers “invaluable advice regarding the criteria they should select when building their lists and is committed to ensuring the success of their direct marketing campaigns.”
This type of central marketing solution, Waldshan said, will meet a need in the marketplace as branch network origination platforms continue to add new offices.
Among the uses for Melissa Data’s GeoCoder Object product is for sales clustering, new markets, marketing segmentation and demographic purposes.
The company said the product now provides accurate location-based information on 95% of all rooftops in the United States.
This data is available as a multiplatform API or as part of the company’s WebSmart Services. To reach the large amount of coverage it has, Melissa Data has partnered with NAVTEQ and TomTom.
GeoCoder Object assigns latitude and longitude coordinates with precision, based on the ZIP + 4 (the 9-digit postal code) or the ZIP + 4 + Point of Delivery (the 11-digit code for the exact rooftop of the street address) when available.
“GeoCoder Object provides customers with highly accurate address-level geocoding to make more intelligent business decisions,” said Greg Brown, director of marketing for Melissa Data.
Other uses for the product include allowing organizations to make decisions regarding their risk exposure, tax jurisdictions and logistics.
“For instance, the expanded coverage can help an organization map how far an insured policy is from a flood plain or coastline for risk assessment or determine the correct tax jurisdiction for a property,” he said.
Seroka, a public relations firm based in Waukesha, Wis., has come out with its re:ignite marketing program.
As part of the program, the company is offering website rehabilitation or update, creation of a direct mail piece and a company brochure, as well as social media counseling on how to use such sites as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook as effective marketing tools.
Scott Seroka, vice president, said, “In tough economic times, many businesses’ marketing efforts have been stuck in neutral and financial pressures may have compromised their marketing budget forcing them to scale back.
“However, one can only run on fumes for so long. The most effective way to stay competitive, retain current customers and win new customers is to create a strategic, multifaceted marketing campaign.”
Earlier this year, Blueberry Systems LLC, Greenwood Village, Colo., integrated its loan production platform, which is called Relay, with Mortgage iQ customer management technology developed by CRMnow, Aliso Viejo, Calif. CRMnow’s product lets originators streamline sales, marketing and customer relationship management tasks.
With the combination users can manage both their customer relationships and their loan production from one system.
CRMnow president Chris King said that with Relay, “our users now have uniform business rules in place from application through production. This allows them to be more efficient, have tighter control over loan data, and be of greater assistance to borrowers than ever before.”
David Lereah, the former chief economist of the Mortgage Bankers Association and the National Association of Realtors, has formed the Altitude Alliance to help real estate agents stand out from the competition.
Although Altitude Alliance is a membership program, there are free offerings on the company’s website. These include a guide for real estate agents on becoming a trusted advisor and how to get media coverage, among other marketing tools.
“Our support services are for agents who want to serve clients, not customers, and for agents who want to become trusted advisors and experts in their communities. This approach is more in line with today’s challenging, new market realities, providing member agents with decisive competitive advantages in their markets,” said Lereah.
Another principal in the company is Steve Cook, former vice president of public relations at NAR.
Looking to link CRM and social media is San Jose, Calif.-based planetRE. The company has created a software-as-a-service platform called planetRE CM which consists of planetRE RealFace, an agent-branded Facebook property search engine as well as a next generation CRM interface that integrates leading social media networks with predictive modeling and analytics.
The company declared CRM is a one-dimensional tool, featuring e-mail for direct agent-client relationship management and that it should include new network channels made possible through the proliferation of social networking with high consumer engagement.
“Social media has forced its way into the world of marketing, and it’s here to stay,” said Subrao Shenoy, chief executive. “PlanetRE CM opens up the idea to salespeople that relationships with clients are developed across multiple platforms through multiple channels. Having an agent branded property search page in Facebook gives great exposure to agent listing and services.”
Users can run multichannel marketing campaigns via e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and instant messaging. It lets the user determine which campaigns will give it a better ROI.
