One thing I notice as I work with mortgage bankers is that over the years, they have accumulated thousands (in some cases tens or hundreds of thousands) of email addresses.
While many mortgage bankers understand the importance of an email address for marketing purposes, most of them don’t know how to extract the maximum value out of those email addresses.
What does extracting value mean?
It means that you use that email address to re-capture that borrower as a potential refinance (cash out or rate/term) target.
It means that you use that email address to make it easy to share information about your company with that borrower’s friends/family (i.e. referrals).
It means that after that customer funds their loan, you keep consistent contact with them via their email address months (and years) after their funding.
I’m going to give you a few use cases for how you can use email automation to re-engage and re-target previous borrowers, but I do want to caveat this by saying that this strategy may not be suitable for all mortgage companies.
Most mortgage companies sell their loans to investors and many of the master purchase agreements preclude the originator from being able to actively market to the original borrower. This strategy tends to work best for mortgage companies who retain their own servicing (i.e. you have a Freddie/Fannie ticket and have the capital to actively retain servicing) and have the ability to market to their own portfolio.
So please, be careful with how you decide to use previous borrower email addresses for marketing purposes, there could be potential compliance landmines you need to avoid.
The process we're going to go over looks a little something like the one below. Keep in mind I've put in notional dates in both this diagram and the detail you're going to read below, but you're welcome to space out the timing of these emails as you see fit.
This is an example email automation process and timeline.
Seem like an interesting strategy to keep your mortgage company in front of your borrower? Read on to get more details on how to execute it.
Idea #1: Automate a Thank You & Please Review Email (5) Days After Closing
Many MLOs have manual processes set up to thank their borrowers and ask for referrals after funding. Rather than set this up as a manual process, we recommend that you set up an automated email campaign so that once a borrower has funded their loan, their email address gets added to an automated email campaign.
That email campaign will send out an email 5 days after the borrower closes to not only thank them, but to kindly ask them to leave a review for your company (on Yelp, Bankrate, or wherever you think you need to generate the most social equity).
You can also remind the borrower to follow you on your social profiles as well. Automating this email, not only results in the MLO having to remember to do one last thing (follow up with the borrower after closing), but it also automates requesting social feedback from your borrower.
Idea #2: Automate an Email With Helpful Information to Borrowers (45 Days After Closing)
Usually, 1-2 months after closing, your borrower has had a chance to settle into their home and make their second mortgage payment. This is a great opportunity to keep your brand in front of your borrower, but it's important to not get too “salesy” in this email touch.
This is a great opportunity to provide useful information to the borrower, which only helps elevate your brand. In this email, you should provide information like how to potentially increase monthly cash flow by adjusting withholdings (since they’re now hopefully getting a mortgage deduction).
The email could also contain other useful information, like remembering to check their credit report. You can even provide recommendations for businesses you partner with tax accountants, lawyers, financial planners, etc.
The point here is that this email is there to inform your borrower, while also presenting your brand in a helpful way.
Idea #3: Automate a Re-Finance Focused Email (90 Days After Closing)
If you’re a mortgage banker who doesn’t retain your own servicing, be very careful with this strategy and please be sure to check your loan purchase agreements to ensure you can continue marketing to your borrowers after you have sold off your loan.
Assuming that you can market to these email addresses 90 days after closing, this is a great opportunity to check in to see if they might be interested in a cash-out refi or perhaps a rate/term refi if rates have gotten better.
The email can contain a link to your website, where they can get a custom rate quote (many mortgage companies have this great feature setup) and if they see a favorable rate, they can submit their information via your website to start the application process.
In this email, you should also provide case studies on why/how people use cash-out refi or how much money they could potentially save monthly or over the life of the loan with a rate/term refi.
This email is one of the best ways for you to capture additional business from your previous borrowers. It's important to note that the two previous emails (focusing on the Thank You/Reviews & the helpful content) set you up well to send this email. If you had just sent this email 90 days after they closed, it would have come across as too hard of a sale.
And there you go! You’ve just set up a way to re-touch your previous borrowers 3 times over 90 days, with the end goal of converting them into potential refinance customers. Best yet? This is all completely AUTOMATED.
You don’t need to hire a marketing person to do it. You don’t need to sap productivity from your MLOs or Ops team. All you need to do is design the automation, draft the email copy, and integrate the process into your sales teams!
Are you using email automation in your mortgage company to increase touches on previous borrowers? What strategies are you using and what conversions are you trying to achieve? Drop us a line, we’d love to hear from some forward-thinking mortgage companies!
.png)
