You Can Download This Article as A PDF HERE
Roller coaster interest rates … expanding rules and regulations … heightened competition for borrowers … declining origination volumes … rising costs to meet compliance demands … fewer internal resources to grow your business … extreme pressure to produce results …
How will your company continue to thrive in such a demanding environment? How are you going to reach the diminished pool of potential borrowers more quickly and efficiently than other mortgage lenders (compliantly too)?
Many lenders are turning to CRM solutions for the answer. A CRM provides valuable functionality for individual loan officers which, if they use it, helps them be more effective — setting their priorities, organizing their time, scheduling follow-up actions, etc. — and it serves as a repository for all activity related to each prospect and customer.
However, this leaves the company’s overall performance and profitability in the hands of busy loan officers who are by necessity focused on the deals they have in hand rather than consistently marketing to fill their pipeline with qualified new leads. These days it also means relying on the loan officers to do everything they do compliantly.
What’s needed is game-changing technology that raises the productivity of all loan officers across the entire enterprise: a “set it and forget it” solution that drives high-quality business to the point-of-sale and accelerates corporate profitability. This technology is here and it’s called Marketing Automation.
Identifying and acting on business opportunities via an intelligent full-function Marketing Automation platform has become essential in today’s highly competitive, highly regulated environment. It enables quick and efficient lead generation, conversion of the leads to customers, plus customer retention and lifetime value maximization through repeat business and referrals. Importantly, in a purchase market, Marketing Automation also supports the nourishment of strong relationships with referral partners.
Marketing Automation changes the game
According to Gartner, Marketing Automation will be the highest growth sales and marketing software sector through 2016, outpacing the growth of CRM and reaching just under $4.7 billion market value.
Why this upsurge of interest in Marketing Automation? It’s because, for the first time, there’s robust technology that frees loan officers to focus on what they do best: originating and closing loans.
Forrester defines Marketing Automation as software that provides “tools and process that help generate new business opportunities, improve potential buyers’ propensity to purchase, manage customer loyalty and increase alignment between marketing activity and revenue.”
In other words, Marketing Automation is the efficient, scalable and measurable way to enhance the productivity of all loan originators. It’s impractical to take a sales-centric CRM and cause it to deliver Marketing Automation’s unique and comprehensive capabilities — including enterprise-wide execution of compliant marketing, mission-critical analytics and management oversight.
How does Marketing Automation work?
Marketing Automation is an enterprise-wide application. Driven by central marketing, the system does the work so that loan officers don’t have to. Outbound communications addressed to leads, applicants in-process, closed customers and referral partners are precisely targeted, highly personalized and compliantly fulfilled via multiple media.
So what should lenders be looking for in a Marketing Automation solution? With the explosive growth of this segment there are dozens of options.
First, it’s important to select a platform that has been specifically created for the mortgage industry. The system’s rules engine will incorporate the many nuances and idiosyncrasies of the industry, including the burgeoning compliance requirements.
Second, even as it provides corporate oversight and performance measurement, the platform needs to support the work of loan officers without inhibiting their autonomy. Their unique capabilities as sales people will be enhanced by Marketing Automation.
Robust content library
In the Marketing Automation platform’s content library you should find hundreds (even thousands) of professionally prepared ready-to-go mortgage-specific marketing materials. Choose from postcards, letters, greeting cards, newsletters, emails, and much more. The materials should be categorized by format, purpose and audience for easy access to exactly what you need. Content must be constantly refreshed to target current business opportunities and market conditions. In addition there will be holiday greetings, home maintenance tips, recipe cards … something for every occasion.
In addition to having easy access to professionally created materials, there is also the need to modify these materials to your specific needs. That’s why you should find a “copy” button against each item in the content library. Clicking the button allows you to make a copy of the piece in your company’s private library, where you can edit it at will. Ideally you can even limit access to a specific branch or branches: for example, allowing only reverse mortgage specialists to view reverse mortgage content.
Not only do you want professionally created materials with the ability to edit and modify at will, but you also need the ability to create your own materials if you choose to. You should expect to find a simple wizard in your company library that enables you to design content from scratch, quickly turning your marketing ideas into actionable content.
Automated activity series
Your Marketing Automation platform should make it easy to create fully automated “set it and forget it” marketing for all contact types: prospects (leads), applicants (in-process), borrowers (closed customers) and business partners. An activity series setup wizard will guide you through the following simple steps:
- Make the series available to all or any subset of loan officers
- Define target audience criteria for the series
- Select the marketing materials you want from the content library
- Specify the trigger event or date for generating each activity
- Set the series to run for as many years as you want
- Implement an optional pause following activity fulfillment
- Enable system-generated e-mail notification to loan officers
On-demand campaigns
The ability to execute on-demand campaigns is another key element when selecting the right Marketing Automation solution. You should be able to run a campaign quickly and easily on demand to any mix of contact databases: prospects, applicants, borrowers and partners. You’ll want to run a campaign whenever you spot a tactical sales opportunity – for example, a change in interest rates or other market conditions. On-demand campaigns are also an effective way of just staying in touch with your database – for example, making announcements about significant changes at your company.
Your Marketing Automation solution should empower central marketing to set up campaigns for all or any subset of loan officers, choose the marketing activity and specify the target audience. The system then needs to provide a range of execution options to satisfy all cultural and operational preferences:
- Run the campaign from the center
- Run the campaign from the center, but first allow loan officers to opt out
- Set up individual campaigns for loan officers to run if and when they wish
- Make the campaign available for loan officers to run from their Home page
Participating loan officers should be notified of the campaign details by system-generated e-mail and a follow-up report provided containing each recipient’s contact details.
Compliance. Compliance. Compliance.
Regulation is everywhere these days. And on the marketing side of every mortgage company’s operations, as much as any other, it means that management has to take an active role in ensuring its brand and its products are correctly and compliantly represented in the marketplace. Communications with prospects, customers and referral partners – whether driven from corporate or by loan originators – must be controlled, but without inhibiting genuine creativity and individual initiative.
Your Marketing Automation solution must understand the mortgage market by providing a controlled environment in which ingenuity and enterprise are encouraged and rewarded. For example, users at any level in the corporate hierarchy might be permitted to create or modify marketing content. The system needs a built-in authorization loop to ensure this content is approved by your nominated managers – for example: compliance officer, brand supervisor – before it’s made available for use in activity series and on-demand campaigns. The managers will be notified by system-generated e-mail and, if necessary, will amend or even delete the item in order to minimize compliance risk.
In addition, leading Marketing Automation solutions should provide management with levels of control over the players in the marketing process. All you have to do is decide what degree of control you want to exercise in relation to each of the system’s key functions. For example, you can make sure that loan officers are unable to edit company information or upload unacceptable graphics or run on-demand campaigns that breach corporate guidelines.
The levels of management control could include, working down from the most to the least restrictive:
- Prohibition: Different types of users can be prevented from accessing a system function, or even an entire page, by means of the system’s “permissions” capability.
- Authorization: Marketing materials created by users at lower levels in the corporate hierarchy cannot be implemented until approved at the center.
- Alerts: A defined set of fields is monitored and changes are reported via an online feed to management, enabling quick action to remedy any departure from company policy.
- Oversight: Users at higher levels in the corporate hierarchy can “impersonate” users at lower levels, giving management an instant window on the activities of loan officers.
- Reporting: Management is presented with a range of indicators that allow users at lower levels to be held accountable for their performance.
In conclusion …
CRM products alone no longer allow you to fully capitalize on market conditions and stay competitive and compliant in today’s complex mortgage market. The right Marketing Automation solution will deliver end-to-end automated and on-demand marketing that incubates leads, supports applicants in-process, builds customer loyalty and nurtures referral partner relationships – ensuring an efficient flow of profitable business to the point-of-sale.
About The Author