Mortgages have been around for centuries, but modern tools have revitalized the ways that mortgage brokers operate. From electronic signatures to automatic status updates. Loan officers are better equipped than ever before to perform their duties.

Modern CRM software has also given loan officers access to advanced analytics tools that can improve the entire mortgage experience. By leveraging analytics, you can reduce lead times, increase conversion rates, and boost total revenue.

What Are Analytics?

Analytics is a broad term that refers to a systematic means of computing statistics or data. Analytics are utilized to communicate and interpret meaningful patterns in data. However, interpreting data patterns is only half of the process.

The true benefit of analytics comes into play when the data patterns are applied to making meaningful changes within an organization. For loan officers, this means assessing the effectiveness of current strategies and making improvements to those practices. After all, when they are used correctly, analytics can dramatically improve the performance of your brokerage team.

Metrics vs. Analytics

During your journey to improve your business strategies, you have undoubtedly encountered the term “metrics.” While some business owners believe that analytics and metrics are the same, this is not precisely accurate.

As the name implies, analytics focuses on the analysis of data. On the other hand, metrics are the hard numbers that are being tracked. These numbers are used to gauge the progress or performance of your loan officers and your company as a whole.

In the mortgage industry, the most important metrics are referred to as KPIs (key performance indicators). While most analytical data is useful, you should focus the majority of your attention on KPIs.

Which Metrics Are Most Important for My Mortgage Brokerage?

Some metrics are more important than others. By paying particular attention to these KPIs, you can help your loan officers improve their performance while creating a better experience for consumers. 

Some of the most important KPIs for loan officers include:

Conversion Rate

As a loan officer, the conversion rate is one of the most important metrics you can use to gauge your overall success. The conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of loans funded by the amount of applications submitted within a specific time frame.

By analyzing conversion rates, you can identify potential pitfalls in your company’s processes. Low conversion rates are typically the result of inefficient communication with clients, a lack of competitive offerings, or poor time management.

Regardless of the cause of a low conversion rate, the first step in improving your practices is to identify that there is a problem. You can then make necessary adjustments and periodically reassess until your conversion rates hit acceptable thresholds.

Cost Per Loan

Your brokerage’s average cost per loan is another essential KPI. This metric measures the general efficiency of your company. It also accounts for a variety of factors like:

• Cycle times
• Conversion rates
• Overhead expenditures
• Staffing

You must ensure that your cost per loan remains high if you want to maintain profitability. This KPI is of particular importance when you are scaling up your mortgage office.

If your cost per loan is low, it is important to remedy this issue before scaling your business. Otherwise, you may be pushing your profitability past the tipping point. Generally, poor cost per loan metrics are the result of inappropriate allocation of staffing, low conversion rates, and inefficient loan processing.

Approval Rate

While your brokerage’s approval rate is a relatively simple metric, it is also a telling one. Approval rate is calculated by dividing the number of approved applications by the amount of submitted applications.

A low approval rate is indicative of an issue with your loan processing practices. If your loan officers are taking too long to review loans, then unqualified applications will slip through. This results in wasted resources and will diminish the experience of qualified borrowers.

Revenue Per Loan

In addition to the cost per loan KPI, revenue per loan is essential in generating good profit margins. Your revenue per loan is calculated by subtracting the total business revenue from your expenses. This figure is then divided by the number of funded mortgages within the same time frame.

The revenue per loan KPI allows you to assess the overall health of your mortgage brokerage. It provides a more accurate representation of your business’ profitability than the number of loans that are being processed.

If your revenue per loan is low, then you should implement digital CRM tools, like the ones offered by BNTouch. These tools will streamline your mortgage services and improve your overall customer experience. In turn, you will improve per-loan revenue and make your business more profitable.

Benefits of Using Analytics

As you can see, analytics can impact every aspect of your mortgage company’s day-to-day operations. 

When you begin assessing the performance of your team in terms of measurable KPIs, you will be able to optimize the quality of your mortgage services. 

The primary benefits of implementing analytics into your business operations include:

Enhanced Efficiency

Incorporating analytics can dramatically improve the efficiency of your daily operations. By having access to hard data, you will no longer have to rely on guesswork or hunches to make key business decisions.

Analytics will help you to more efficiently distribute leads amongst your team of loan officers. In fact, our CRM software can even automatically distribute these leads based on employee performance and other factors. This allows you to focus on serving your clients and growing your business.

Analytical data will also improve the way your team communicates. You can customize your CRM’s functionality to address specific challenges faced by your team. By facilitating seamless communication amongst loan officers, clients, and real estate agents, you can vastly improve your conversion rates.

A Personalized Approach to CRM

Analytics can help you to take a more personalized approach to customer relationship management. You can have access to incredibly accurate data, which can be used to create a tailor-made experience for your consumers.

For instance, if you find that your brokerage is having great success by advertising on a particular social media platform, you can shift your attention to this medium. You can also discover which types of content are sparking the greatest amount of client engagement. In turn, this can create the opportunity to pursue additional leads in an effective way, improving your return on investment for advertising.

Analytics can also reveal which types of loans that you are having the most success with. While you may not want to limit your company to a particular type of loan, it is important to make the most of the opportunities that are presented to you. Highlight your team’s experience with that specific loan type and make sure to mention it in your ads and social media posts.

Faster Decision-Making Processes

When you have access to advanced metrics, you can make decisions with confidence. You will no longer have to spend hours or days second-guessing a particular course of action.

Instead, you can trust the analytics and follow through on bold ideas that will help you grow your business. By continually reviewing this data, you will also have the ability to improve upon current practices as your business grows. You will be fully prepared to overcome any unforeseen hurdles that arise as you scale your brokerage.

Improved Consumer Experience

At the end of the day, the mortgage industry is all about the client. Leveraging analytics is an excellent way to improve the consumer experience throughout the loan buying process.

KPIs can help you to identify shortcomings in your current loan processing practices. Once you have corrected these issues, you can expedite loan processing, which will give your clients a more streamlined buying experience. This will boost your brokerage’s reputation and generate more leads.

Optimized Loan Officer Performance

When you effectively implement analytics into your business practices, you can optimize the performance of your loan officers. In addition, you will obtain a better understanding of which tools they need to carry out their daily responsibilities.

By monitoring loan officer performance, you will also have the opportunity to address issues directly through training programs and one-on-one coaching. This personalized approach will improve employee morale and performance, which can impact the long-term success of your business.

Implementing Analytics with BNTouch

Are you ready to optimize your mortgage services through the power of analytics? Ready to revolutionize your current business practices with cutting-edge CRM software? If so, then BNTouch is here to help.

Our innovative CRM software has helped hundreds of loan officers to grow their businesses. With our programs, you will have the ability to:

• Automate your marketing
• Convert more leads
• Stay connected with borrowers
• Recruit new partners
• Streamline communication
• Receive detailed analytics reports

All of these great features are included in a single, user-friendly CRM solution. No matter what the size of your mortgage brokerage may be, we have a solution for you. Currently, BNTouch offers CRM packages for individuals, teams, and multi-location enterprises.

If you would like to learn more, contact our team and schedule a free demo. Once you see our program in action, you will never want to process a mortgage without it. 

The post Measuring Results: Using Analytics to Improve Your Mortgage Services appeared first on .

The life of a mortgage broker often involves finding the ideal balance between providing a great customer experience and optimizing efficiency. With that being said, loan officers are also tasked with generating new leads that will set the stage for future deals. Managing all of these tasks can be challenging, to say the least.

That is why many mortgage brokers are turning to customer relationship management (CRM) software for help. This software provides various tools that will allow a business to streamline advertising and generate new leads.

When it comes to choosing CRM software, you can have your pick between pre-built and custom content. Below, we explain why the BNTouch pre-built content is the ideal solution for

, facilitating communication amongst loan officers, and streamlining the mortgage process.  

What is Pre-Built Content? 

Put simply, pre-built content includes the framework for various functions and capabilities. It may include simple things like pre-written birthday messages or updates about the local real estate market stats. 

These tools can be implemented rapidly. They have been tested thoroughly and are an extremely cost-effective way to connect with leads, clients, and partners.

While the mortgage industry continues to evolve, the core responsibilities of a loan officer remain very similar. Your team is responsible for communicating with clients, generating new leads, converting these leads into deals, and closing loans.

Pre-built content is a great option for mortgage brokers. They have clearly defined needs. The CRM software is curated specifically for the industry and uses a tried-and-true approach to connect with potential clients.

Pre-Built vs. Custom Content 

The alternative to pre-built content is to write out marketing materials one at a time. A custom system allows you to tailor your messages and marketing, building them from the ground up.

Custom management systems can be a great option for unique industries, and have not been in existence for very long. However, there are several downsides to generating your own content. Custom campaigns can be:

• Costly to develop
• Time-consuming to create
• Difficult to do without the right graphic design tools

Want To See How BNTouch’s Mortgage CRM Software Can Help You Generate New Leads?

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As any mortgage broker can attest, so no two loans are the same. Each borrower has a unique background, needs, and credit history. However, your loan officers should not have to start the mortgage process from scratch every time, so they partner with a new client. Fortunately, they do not have to, because of the help from the modern CRM software. This is done because your mortgage brokers can implement templates in the loan process, and make life much easier.

Templates cut down on unnecessary delays, save time, and improve the client experience. Want an easy application form that you can use with every client? There is a template for that. Want a uniform document that can help your team generate leads? There is a template for that, too! 

Read on to find out how templates in the loan process can change the way that your firm processes mortgages and interacts with clients.

Online 1003s and Other Loan Application Documents

As you well know, the 1003 mortgage application is the cornerstone of virtually every loan office in the country. This tried-and-true form gives you all of the information you need to assess a client’s eligibility for a mortgage. However, processing old-school paper documents is tedious and inefficient.

Perhaps the best way to improve the client experience is to transition to a 1003 online template. Clients can simply put in the necessary information. That data is automatically transferred to an electronic 1003 form that you can print, attach as an email, or save on your servers.

The 1003 is not the only vital mortgage document that can be replaced by a template. Just about every form that you need to process a mortgage is available in template form (with the right CRM software, that is).

Lead Forms

Mortgage documents are not the only forms that can be replaced with templates. Your loan officers can also rely on templates to generate leads.

Potential clients can fill out an information request online. By inputting some rudimentary information, your team will have everything they need to connect with clients. This prevents mortgage brokers from having to exchange countless voicemails and emails with a prospective client, which can in turn expedite the loan process.

Post-Funded Follow-up Info

Like many mortgage firms, your team likely makes it a priority to stay in touch with past customers. This is a great way to build your brand, strengthen your company’s reputation, and keep the door open for repeat business. With that being said, keeping track of birthdays and refinancing opportunities can be a challenge.

With the use of templates and high-end CRM software, you won’t have to. All you need to do is input a few commands in your management system and select the desired follow-up interval. The system will then send out birthday messages, home anniversary congratulations, or refinance alerts to past clients for five, ten, or even fifteen years.

If you want to take advantage of the benefits of templates, then you will need the right CRM software. That’s where we come in!

BNTouch provides our clients with cutting-edge CRM software that offers an extensive library of templates and much more. To see our product in action, simply fill out a contact form and request a live demo. You’ll be glad you did!

Use BNTouch Mortgage CRM Software to Implement Templates in the Loan Process

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At Google I/O, the company announced new ways for Google to understand how to timestamp your videos for key moments in Google Search. Today, Google said that SeekToAction markup is now out of beta and can be used for any site with videos.

What are key moments? Key moments are displayed in Google Search for videos where Google can determine the sections of timestamps of the video. Google lets searchers jump to sections of the video (key moments), directly from the search results.

Key moments look like this:

SeekToAction markup. Previously, Google used the YouTube description and timestamps in the description for creating these key moment timestamps. This SeekToAction markup (developer documents over here) tells Google how your URL structure works so that Google can display key moments that are automatically identified for your video. While SeekToAction properties aren’t required, you must add the potentialAction, potentialAction.startOffset-input and potentialAction.target properties if you want Google to understand how your URL structure works, so it can link users to a point within the video, Google said.

“All you have to do is tell Google the URL pattern for skipping to a specific timestamp within your video. Google will then use AI to identify key moments in the video, and display links directly to those moments in Search results,” Google said.

Tips for SeekToAction. Google has listed these tips for using SeekToAction markup for your videos:

• Your URLs must have the ability to deep link into some point other than the start point in the video. For example, http://www.example.com/example?t=30 starts 30 seconds into a video.
• Use SeekToAction markup on every video page where you’d like Google to automatically identify key moments, and follow our additional guidelines. Here’s a detailed example.
• To automatically identify key moments in your video, Google must be able to fetch your video content files.

Google explained that SeekToAction markup applies only to videos embedded on your own site.

Why we care. With more and more videos showing in Google Search, you will want to take efforts to make your videos stand out from the rest. Using SeekToAction markup can help enrich your video results in Google Search to help improve click-through rates from Google Search to your videos.

The post Google officially launches SeekToAction for key moments for videos in search appeared first on Search Engine Land.