As mortgage companies grow, their marketing teams increasingly rely on automation tools to centralize the management of marketing efforts and ensure brand consistency. But marketing automation doesn’t just create efficiencies for the marketing department. In fact, marketing automation platforms built for the mortgage industry can have a huge positive impact on productivity for the entire origination team. Here are just a few productivity pain points solved by mortgage marketing automation:
- Not enough business (or too much to handle)
As salespeople, mortgage loan officers are always looking for the next deal — except maybe in the current red-hot refi market, where record-high volumes have some LOs feeling overwhelmed. For those blessed with an overabundance of loan applicants, marketing automation can keep prospects on the hook with regular follow-up communication until the pipeline clears. For everyone else, Surefire CRM’s marketing automation makes it effortless to target contacts who may be ready to make their next financial move, whether that’s refinancing, taking out a home-equity line of credit, buying a second home or relocating to a new primary residence. After the deals are done, automated post-closing workflows make it possible to sustain relationships — even across a big book of business — for years to come. For instance, Top of Mind’s set-it-and-forget-it “Client for Life” Workflow creates more than 100 opportunities to earn referrals or repeat business from a past customer over a 5-year period.
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- Loan delays and related side effects
Managing dozens of loans, each progressing at its own pace through the different stages of the mortgage sales and production cycles, can be daunting. It can be hard to complete all the essential steps — ordering an appraisal for one borrower, locking in a rate for another, sending disclosures for the next, and so on — while simultaneously educating first-time borrowers as they embark on an unfamiliar financial journey. Marketing automation can help. For instance, during the pre-application phase, marketing automation rules can be set to automatically follow up with consumers who abandon the 1003 application form before completion. Once the 1003 is complete, in-process communications can be automatically deployed as applicants reach certain milestones in the loan process. These timely messages help borrowers understand what to expect at each step, reducing unnecessary delays and minimizing fallout. This year in particular, our lender customers have found in-process communications an invaluable tool for keeping customers informed of changing credit requirements that could impact their loans.
- Juggling contacts across multiple systems
The average mortgage lender relies on a dozen (or more) different software systems. Too often, these systems are unable to “talk” to one another or share data, resulting in task repetition, manual data entry and lots of bouncing around between different screens and accounts. Because of Top of Mind’s native integrations with top mortgage loan origination systems (LOS), point of sale (POS) platforms and third-party service providers, Surefire CRM gives lenders a single point of productivity (SPOP) that greatly enhances team productivity.
- Staying connected with referral partners
With coronavirus limiting non-essential travel, many open houses, pre-qualification meetings and mortgage closings that once took place in person have gone virtual. That not only means fewer face-to-face interactions with borrowers — it also means fewer opportunities to build rapport with referral partners. That’s why, now more than ever, a marketing automation platform that facilitates co-branding with referral partners is a must. While we have long supported co-branding of Surefire CRM campaigns, we are especially proud to have introduced PartnerNetwork earlier this year. PartnerNetwork is a RESPA solution that makes it easy for lenders and referral partners to co-brand marketing collateral with control and confidence.
Note that automated doesn’t mean robotic! Top of Mind’s award-winning creative content builds on the human connections between LOs and borrowers with generous doses of humor, creativity and educational info geared toward reinforcing the role of the LO as a trusted advisor.
Author: Jonas Kruckeberg
Executive Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Industry Relationships