People will argue that technology trends have shifted because attention spans have steadily decreased. Whether that’s true or not, there is at least fatigue experienced by the barrage of messaging that most people are recipients of – whether it’s asked for or not. Don’t let your messaging fall into the junk category. Get permission and be sure what you’re delivering is useful information for borrowers in need of your authority and guidance. Don’t overwhelm; deliver what’s needed and, ideally, at those milestone points when it is justified.
Adept marketers set campaigns or workflows along process lines and use triggers to deliver status and the “here’s what you can expect next” kind of information that keeps nervous or inquisitive borrowers in the know and satisfied that you’re on top of the process and next task at hand.
Video
Video is one of the most popular technology trends, particularly influenced by the recent throws of a pandemic, when face to face — or mask to mask — meetings were rendered more difficult than usual. There’s nothing better by which to create facial recognition or to display your mannerisms and personality than by short videos.
Ideally, videos will be short enough to be sent via SMS and play as such in the text vs. having to click out and wait for a video to load and play. Even in that instance, if the purpose is to effectively educate and/or appease a borrower’s or prospect’s concerns, a longer video recorded in a conversational format just as you would address the viewer if they were sitting in front of you can go a long way to both save you time and make your clients happy campers.
Getting the opportunity for them to feel like they get to know you can go a long way towards their desire to work with you versus someone who’s only communicated with them via phone or email. That leg up can make a big difference when it comes down to a decision being made by someone who’s shopped around and is otherwise unsure who will get their business.
Dynamic Print
A new twist on an old standby. Back in the stone age day of the Yellow Pages, another popular technology trend was direct mail postcards. Like fashion that runs in cycles, everything old becomes new again, but with a modern twist.
For postcards, it’s the advent of single-piece printing customization that can incorporate your recipient’s name or any other pertinent info. And we’re not just talking about the addressbut rather graphic picture-style fonts that put your client’s name in lights, or the sand at the beach, or written in the sky, or on a cake, you name it. Almost anything is possible, and the results are not only impressive but also, since so much of what we used to get in the mail now shows up in our online mailbox, getting a physical piece of mail that’s not a bill is actually welcomed by many – particularly the millennial generation that grew up with digital everything.
Big Data
Dig into this topic, and it’s downright scary what’s out there. So much so that privacy laws are being proposed and amended regularly as technology trends evolve. Yet since we all rather willingly give up those rights in exchange for “free” apps and social media accounts, the amount of personal data available is mind-bending.
Only so much of that has relevance for the mortgage industry, though, as we’re concerned with who might be ready to become a homeowner or want to refinance their existing loan. Nonetheless, getting to know someone has never been easier if you want to spend a little time online. Subsequently, catering our marketing efforts to appeal to what interests a prospect then becomes viable and, hopefully, more appealing.
Prospects may be guarded at times, especially if they’re shopping around and don’t want to give away too much before making their decisions. Yet, if you can strike a common chord and engage in conversation that’s not exclusively centered on credit, income and assets, you may just manage to differentiate yourself enough to be the provider of the first choice.
Robotic Process Automation
Here’s the real key and where all of the technology trends mentioned above really come to a grand finale. With mortgage marketing automation, you can use each of these methods to communicate, educate, appeal to and nurture prospects without ever doing any heavy lifting. When the time then comes that you meet face-to-face or even have that first phone call, your prospects may already feel like they know you just as much as you may already have learned so much about them.
Beyond the basics of qualification and process, you can already play the role of the trusted advisor, as that’s the kind of service you’ve been delivering right up to that point. Automation efficiencies that follow these technology trends mean you’re putting far more people into the warm zone of your lead and prospect funnels that will more readily convert to applicants without much real time spent by you.
More leads, more prospects, more business. And, perhaps more importantly, it’s more of the better kind of business – not the strains and drains that eat up your valuable time and make life difficult for your team. Rather, it’s the happy and well-qualified prospects that are vetted and have made it to the point of application only after knowing the details that matter to them and their deal.
Putting technology trends to work for you in ways that just a few years back didn’t exist in easy to manage ways is possible today and readily available. In fact, these technology trends can even exist all in one system. That means it’s even easier than you might have imagined implementing while also enhancing the customer experience. The simplicity of utilizing your own custom or pre-made workflows and campaigns to nurture a steady inflow of well-qualified prospects is how successful, and highly profitable practices can now be yours.
Invest in digital mortgage software that keeps up with technology trends so you don’t have to.
Want to see exactly how that can happen with a mortgage CRM? Click here to let a Surefire demo show you. Your marketing can be brought up to date, and you’ll have more time to do what you do best!