Understanding content strategy is key to customer retention
Many mortgage originators are small shops, and when it comes to doing business, it’s hard to know what companies have their particular needs in mind.
Insellerate may deserve a closer look in that department. Insellerate is a CRM with built-in lead management and automated marketing, created by mortgage professionals for mortgage professionals. Since its inception in 2013, their product has really only existed for their enterprise-type customers, but that’s about the change.
“We did great there, but there’s a huge demand in the independent broker side of smaller lenders for our product so we’ve come up with a new version or a standard version of our platform that is actually going to be ready here for 4th quarter so we can start serving smaller lenders,” says Josh Friend, CEO and founder of Insellerate.
This move falls in line with Insellerate’s new No Lender Left Behind campaign. They’re going to their clients and fine-tuning their current approach and process to make sure that they’re maximizing Insellerate’s features and functionality. This will position their clients to gain even more business in 2019, and to be the most technology-forward option for borrowers.
“I think we’re unique in that, that we have a lot of high level conversations and then in-depth conversations of work flows, sales strategies, scripts, marketing approaches, in this multichannel market itself,” Friend said. “I was a lender and I know when the market contracts like this, I used to actually grow in the marketplace, so we have . . . this overall commitment to try to help our lenders compete and win and gain market share, because I think there’s a lot of disruption right now and now’s a really good time to do it.”
Automation is one of those buzzwords that’s been flying about the industry and really has the potential to be much more efficient at keeping clients with a particular originator throughout their mortgage years. Insellerate has a lot of automation and engagement tools, including a text bot, which is unique.
At any point in the process, a text bot can be deployed, which will begin a text conversation with a customer, with the goal of driving them back to call their loan originator.
Automation exists in other ways as well. Friend mentions their Customer for Life program, in which a branded closing gift gets sent to the client upon closing; the In the Market feature, where an originator’s database is monitored and they can be alerted if, for example, their house is listed for sale, or there’s an equity increase. What follows then could be a piece of direct mail, an email, a text, a call, “the whole nine yards.”
There are plenty of programs offer these products, but Insellerate has been able to bring many pieces of the puzzle together; a CRM that has lead management and automated marketing capabilities cann really simplify the lives of originators. Insellerate is also able to manage complex workflows, so different groups within an organization can utilize separate workflows and processes for each one.
“That’s the big differentiator, is that we’ve been able to bring all these different pieces of the puzzle and really simplify the lenders’ life and give the loan officer a really easy way to interact with their customers. Whether they’re retail or consumer direct, they’re now able to easily get access to new tools and things that they haven’t been able to probably previously do,” Friend said.
Friend says that in any given year, there’s a lot of money left on the table by originators whose customers would’ve work with them again if they had stayed in touch—but didn’t, so they went to another lender. Rather than getting more leads and starting over, it’s much more effective to put strategies in place to recapture those clients. From the initial enquiry, to the prospecting phase, to the processing phase, to the post-close phase, Friend says there’s no reason why originators can’t connect and stay connected with their borrowers through all available channels.
“There’s no reason why, in today’s market, you don’t have a CRM that automates that entire process. So that if a loan officer forgets a call, that’s okay. Email goes out, chat bot goes out, direct mail goes out, it alerts the loan officer to make the call . . . All that stuff can be automated now. Lenders have to do that because you don’t get incremental lift, you’re going to be out of business,” Friend said.
Another thing that Friend is working on for the upcoming year is to create additional tools to drive and encourage loan officers to stay within their CRM and eliminate the need for the LOS as much as possible. Friend said that their customers would “give us their first born” if they were to be able to use that, and it would simplify life tremendously for mortgage originators.
In addition to constantly working on their engagement tools, Insellerate is also looking for ways to incorporate AI into the platform, and that may be possible sooner than later. In fact, Friend says, their goal is that by Q1 2019, they’ll be able to bring some more AI into the marketplace.
The technology exists for originators to prevent anyone from slipping through the cracks. The best originators are the ones who will use it to complement the services that they already offer.
