Oh, the lessons we’ve learned in 2020!
The fact that “unprecedented” has become a trite description of a year is unprecedented. Many memes and common laments look to 2021 in positive anticipation. Others are afraid that 2021 may give this “unprecedented” year the side-eye and do it one better.
Whatever is in store for the world at large, mortgage industry veterans look at 2021 with the understanding that it’s not likely to live up to 2020’s record-breaking (should we say unprecedented?) levels.
If interest rates start to climb and we move into a purchase market, mortgage marketing messages will shift. However, mortgage email campaigns will remain a top ROI-getter and an important part of the marketing mix.
Here are three tips based on the lessons of 2020.
Mortgage Email Campaign Tip #1: Keep It Clean
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Don’t you wish you’d bought stock in hand sanitizer back in the good old days of 2019? In 2020, we washed our hands more frequently, avoided touching our faces and constantly wiped down surfaces.
Before deploying your next mortgage email campaign, apply the same meticulous attention to your email list’s cleanliness.
Remove obvious fake names and email addresses.
Replace or delete placeholder data, such as N/A or TBD.
Apply contact types to all. At a minimum, you’ll want to have contact types for leads/prospects, in-process borrowers, clients, family/friends and referral partners.
Note changes brought by the pandemic. If you’re aware a contact has lost employment, for example, you might want to move the prospect from a warm lead to a cold lead.
Remove duplicate contact records. Mortgage CRM software should help you manage current duplications and prevent them in the future.
Group contacts with bad email addresses (unsubscribes, bounces or spam reports) into their own category/contact type. Otherwise, continued sends to bad addresses can make it harder for your emails to pass spam filters. If you use mortgage CRM software, the system likely drops these emails before attempting a send, so there’s no need for you to take this step.
Mortgage Email Campaign Tip #2: Keep It Relevant
While many of us had time to bake bread and work on jigsaw puzzles in 2020, we were still too busy to read extra emails.
In a survey of marketers taken shortly after the pandemic started, almost 90% planned to keep the number of emails they sent the same or increase them. That means our inboxes only got busier as the year progressed.
Don’t get lost in the noise. Segment your lists so you don’t send refi emails to purchase prospects or referral partner emails to the client whose loan just closed.
Mortgage Email Campaign Tip #3: Keep It Real
We all got a glimpse of real life in 2020. Kids cried and dogs barked during our Zoom meetings. We wore nice shirts with pajama pants during video calls. We shared laughs and recipes and worries.
It was real. And we liked it.
In your 2021 mortgage email marketing campaigns and all that follow, keep it real.
Intersperse a couple of brief “checking in” emails with no images or fancy formatting into your automated mortgage marketing workflows.
Remember people on their birthdays and on holidays. You can automate this with mortgage CRM software. In analyses Top of Mind conducts for mortgage clients, birthday and holiday communications consistently rank in the top 10 of those that triggered an engagement and led to an application.
If you’re using content from your mortgage CRM provider, edit the emails to fit your personal style or to reflect the language people in your region use in conversation. (But y’all don’t overdo this, okay?)
Bonus Mortgage Email Campaign Tip: Use a Mortgage Industry-Specific CRM
Top of Mind’s Surefire CRM has always and only focused on the mortgage industry. Its set it and forget it marketing for mortgages and mortgage CRM content were built on the team’s 450+ years of industry experience.
Take a tour and see how we can help you get unprecedented results in 2021.