Josh Friend
CEO | Insellerate
It’s essential now more than ever to figure out how to create customers for life.
To highlight how important it is to be virtually available, MIT studied online leads. It found that if you call a lead in the first five minutes versus one hour, you’re one hundred times more likely to get a hold of them. Call a lead in five minutes versus thirty minutes. You’re going to be twenty-one times more likely to connect with them. Simply understanding that consumers are digitally engaged and mobile-forward demonstrates the importance of empowering loan officers with mobile solutions.
Let’s look at a typical journey of a borrower and highlight the power of mobile (whether they go to your website or they were referred to you by your referral partner). Maybe your marketing automation system sends out an email or text message about a refinance, or your loan officer meets them face to face. You might have sent them a traditional direct mail piece that sparked an interest. No matter what marketing channel enticed the potential borrower to engage, your loan officer must be able to respond immediately if you want to convert. If they don’t, they will move on to another lender.
If you don’t call a lead right away, you’re in trouble.
And then how many times are you going to call a lead? Lenders out there don’t understand they need a system that can actually automatically distribute a lead, make a phone call, if it doesn’t get called, report and track the lead , and give it to someone else to call, then automate messaging around that. If you’re going to get more business, lenders have to automate lead management.
The next evolution came with email marketing, which some have extended into marketing automation. The engagement channels of how you interact with people are very different today.
People want to do business with people and brands they trust. When you see someone in the marketplace over and over again, guess what? It seems like you trust them because there’s something, why, they’re still here, they must be doing something right. The key is to reach people where they’re at, whether they’re on social media, whether it’s through email, whether it’s direct mail, or whether it’s tied to their lead management, and they can pick up the phone. Therefore, lenders are quickly realizing that they need more than just an email system.
In addition, lenders don’t often know what to send, and they don’t know when to send it. When I was a lender, even though I like to say I was very good at marketing and very systematic, we didn’t have nearly the amount of outreach to our past customers, referral partners or prospects. And the reason was it’s a lot of work to know what to send, when to send, who to send it to, especially, if you want to do something relevant.
It’s not just an email that says, “We do great purchases and refinances VA loans and FHA loans, and we’re your lender for whatever you need.” That’s not engaging a customer because that doesn’t speak to them.
It starts with having data. Something of value that borrowers want to look at. Something about the value of their home. Something about the value of the houses in the neighborhood.
So that’s going to engage customers. And then it’s, what’s the frequency of what lenders send to people? How often do they send them to people? What’s the message? And then how do you manage consistent messages across all platforms?
How do you have a Facebook ad that resonates with the same email ad, that resonates with the same text message, which resonates with the same sales pitch that your loan officer gave?
Having all these channels now that interact is critical. And the challenge is that there are many decision trees, there are many touchpoints, and for lenders to sit there and go through it’s a costly process. It’s challenging work. So having that pre-built content and strategy within your platform puts you on top of your competitors quickly because now you’re communicating to your customers at a rate that your competitors aren’t. So, there’s enormous value in being able to use a mortgage specific content library that’s already been created.
One of the essential things that we have to realize is that some systems have just stuck with what they do during this evolution. We’re a CRM, we’re marketing automation, we’re an email platform, but really where things are evolving is it’s combining all of these into one platform that is going to be able to have the most significant impact for lenders.
A CRM doesn’t handle all those functions. It doesn’t coordinate all that. So, lenders need a platform that can manage all of that.
The whole evolution of a CRM is to a Customer Experience Platform (CEP). Today’s modern CEP should deliver CRM & Lead Management, Sales Enablement, Engagement, a Robust Content Library, and Data Intelligence all in one comprehensive platform.
The solution should seamlessly fit into your tech stack and allow you to communicate through multiple channels: text, social media, email, Direct mail, phone, ringless voicemail, and retargeting. Providing you with the ability to give your customers and referral partners timely, relevant information based off of data intelligence to build repeatable outcomes at each stage of the customer’s journey. This will allow lenders to, Close More Business, Improve Conversions and Enhance Retention.
Lenders need a comprehensive platform that’s going to route a lead-based off of state licensing and availability of loan officers.
When a lead comes in you either have to find out whom it belongs to, the original loan officer, or if no one’s available, the original loan officer is not there, you have to distribute that lead, send it to someone, alert them, and automate phone call. That’s the power of one platform that can handle all of this outreach.
In addition, the CEP needs to provide a robust mobile application, not just a web application. Lenders need a dynamic mobile application to access their information to become more valuable.
Lenders, I can tell you if you want to get higher user adoption from your technology, it starts with a dynamic mobile app, you’re going to get a lot more adoption amongst your loan officers because they will instant access to their borrower and referral partner data.
Many of these outdated systems that claim to be experts in engagement say that you can text, but you can only text from their desktop system. Well, who the hell, if I’m a loan officer is texting from their desktop? They’re not. If they can’t do it from their cell phone compliantly , if they can’t do it from their tablet when they’re at their kid’s soccer game, or running to the store, or doing something, they’re not responsive, and at the end of the day, your loan officer loses if they can’t compliantly respond quickly to any of these borrowers inquires.
It’s the most effective form of communication, but if they can’t access it, how can it be effective.
It’s not easy to be a lender these days. Margins are down, rates are fluctuating, and new competition is right around the corner. Acquiring a customer is getting more costly, and keeping a customer engaged is key. As a lender, how you engage prospective borrowers can determine your success in today’s digital mortgage environment.
Grow Your Business, Nurture Every Opportunity to The Close and Beyond
Transform your customer’s journey by serving up relevant, timely, content through multiple channels to maximize engagement. Partner with Insellerate to transform the customer journey from transaction to relationship with the industry most innovative Customer Experience Platform.
Insellerate is a highly scalable, configurable, and modern CEP platform that accelerates the sales process and generates repeat business. Built by mortgage professionals, the Insellerate platform has full CRM functionality with built-in lead management , sales enablement, a robust content library and data intelligence with automated marketing. Lenders can improve the borrower, loan officer and referral partner experience with multi-channel communication, leveraging tools such as phone, SMS text messaging, email, direct mail, and retargeting.
The Insellerate Customer Experience Platform CEP draws new prospects, boosts customer loyalty, and helps you grow revenue.
