You’ll get organized someday. At least, that’s what you’ve been telling yourself since your lending practice first opened. But the longer you wait, the harder it becomes. It may be time to leverage the power of a customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Mortgage CRM systems can help you get organized and stay on top of your most important tasks.

What can you expect from a mortgage CRM system? The following are some of the ways that CRM software can transform your lending practice — and even reduce your stress level.

Manage Your Borrower Pipeline

The mortgage process is very much a journey. Customers may begin by seeking out information about the borrowing process, and their journey concludes with final approval. It’s your job as a lender to capture the attention of potential borrowers and lead them through every phase of their journey.

This is what’s known as a borrower pipeline. It allows you to segment your customer base into various groups. For example, new leads might fall under the broad heading of “interested parties.” Applicants will face their own challenges as they navigate the lending process. The point is that each of these customer segments will need unique attention. How will you meet the needs of these groups?

Your mortgage CRM system can help. You’ll gain the tools you need to manage the customers in your pipeline. Deliver prompt communication and informative content that speaks to their needs. That way, you’ll keep them engaged as they move through the pipeline toward application and approval.

Store More Customer Data

How well do you know your customers? Mortgage CRM systems can improve customer relationships by helping you get to know your clients on a deeper level.

For example, a CRM platform can store a customer’s information such as:

• Full name
• Contact information
• Social media accounts
• Job title
• Any relationship with your other contacts/clients
• Birthday

Most importantly, your CRM system can store information about their mortgage needs. Are they a first-time borrower? Are they looking to refinance? This data works in tandem with your mortgage pipeline, helping you to identify and manage your most critical customer segments.

Create Customized Workflows

Mortgage CRM systems allow you to create customized workflows. Think of this feature as almost a virtual assistant. You can break down your responsibilities into constituent elements and tackle them one at a time.

These workflows offer a surefire way to boost your efficiency. But they’re also great for those who fall victim to procrastination. Why? Because a customized workflow is designed to move you toward a goal. And you can also use your CRM to establish deadlines and benchmarks to track your progress.

This feature can also be great for smaller lending practices where employees have to juggle multiple business areas. You can create a unique workflow for things like:

• Marketing
• Lead generation
• Application processing
• Business networking

With the time you save, thanks to these custom workflows, you can invest more in your valued clients.

Track Your Client Communication

Mortgage customers expect fast, regular communication from their lenders. That’s especially true for first-time borrowers looking for guidance and information. Don’t let any questions or emails slip through the cracks.

A mortgage CRM platform offers customers a unique way of staying in touch. An online portal allows your clients to self-manage their accounts. The portal also allows them to contact you and your team with any questions. Lenders can even access the portal from their phones, so they’re never out of reach of their customers.

Additionally, mortgage CRM systems offer customer tracking functionality. This allows you to organize and store your client communications. Teams can even work together, ensuring that you deliver a consistent message to borrowers and potential applicants.

Digitize the Application Process

Make paper forms a thing of the past. A mortgage CRM platform can help you devise a digital application process. You’ll start with a basic template, but you can customize and revise the fields to reflect your specific business offerings. Customers can even fill these applications out on their mobile devices. They can also sign documents electronically using e-signature features.

This makes the entire process easy and painless — something your clients are sure to love. But it also makes it easier for you to keep track of the borrower’s journey. And if clients get stuck, your CRM will allow you to reach out and provide guidance to ensure a frictionless customer experience.

Document Storage

Chances are that you ditched the file cabinets years ago. But now, you and your team members have to spend time searching through your hard drives and servers to find the right forms. A mortgage CRM platform eliminates this frustration.

Your CRM system can keep your most important documents organized and stored in a convenient, cloud-based system. That makes it easier for you to easily find the documents you need and share them with employees and clients.

Once again, a cloud-based system adds a layer of convenience. Forms and documents aren’t localized to any one system — or even an email account. Instead, they’re stored online so that they’re always at your fingertips, even on a mobile device.

Team Collaboration

Multiple features ensure that your team stays together — even if they physically aren’t. Team collaboration tools include things like:

• A marketing control center
• A docs library (see above)
• A borrower tracking system

These features make it easier for your office staff to collaborate on shared projects. Additionally, these tools enable you to offer hybrid or even remote work options — benefits that might help you attract and retain top talent.

Automate Your Marketing Campaigns

Maintaining an online presence is a full-time job in itself. Thankfully, mortgage CRM systems make this a bit easier with marketing automation.

First, your CRM platform will offer social media integration. This makes it easier to keep the content flowing through your social media channels. But your CRM software can also help you automate your email communications.

With this feature, your customer segments will automatically receive notifications about loan programs or offers that fit their unique needs. And because the whole thing is automated, you’ll never have to lift a finger to stay in touch.

Access Pre-Built Marketing Content

Ordinarily, building a marketing campaign takes careful research and a designer’s touch. But mortgage CRM platforms make this easier, too.

A quality CRM system will offer pre-built content that includes:

• Website templates
• Social media content
• Email templates
• Video content

You can further tailor this content to reflect your unique brand. The main advantage is that you’ll have something that works right out of the box. That saves you time and gives you access to industry-leading marketing tools.

Partner with Other Industry Professionals

Did you know that a mortgage CRM system also helps you network? Many lenders rely on a broad network of other professionals, ranging from real estate agents to divorce attorneys.

Here is where your borrower pipeline comes in. Your local partners can access a separate online portal. This allows them to drop any potential leads straight into your borrower pipeline.

For example, if a local realtor is at a conference and meets a possible homebuyer, they can drop the contact details right into your pipeline. You can then follow up with that client based on which customer segment they fall into.

Use Third-Party Integrations

Mortgage CRM providers boast of their feature-rich platforms. But most lending practices already rely on a small variety of other business tools. Not all of these tools can easily be replaced with a CRM solution.

But you can continue using your favorite programs and apps alongside your mortgage CRM software. That’s because the best mortgage CRM systems offer third-party integration. This feature allows you to use more than one program and link them together for maximum benefit.

For instance, you can integrate your CRM system with your Google Calendar. As a result, you can sync your calendar to your CRM program. You can also sync tasks between your CRM and Outlook Calendar, giving more flexibility to the way you organize your schedule.

Hone Your Strategy with Data and Analytics

One of the best features of any CRM system is the feedback it provides. Through an intuitive dashboard, you’ll gain total visibility over your entire organization. A CRM can provide feedback about things like:

• Lead generation
• Conversion rates on marketing content
• Application processing time/time to approval
• Employee productivity
• Progress toward your business goals and KPIs

Together, this data will enable you to reflect on your core processes and think about what’s working — and what’s not. And by reflecting on this data, you can revise your current systems to align with your business objectives.

Get Organized with Mortgage CRM Systems

Ready to integrate a CRM system into your lending practice? The BNTouch platform can help. Our feature-rich system provides everything you need to manage your pipeline, network with other professionals, and manage your office operations. To see these features in action, contact BNTouch today to request a demo.

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A marketing plan helps you grow your mortgage business – this is true even for single MLO’s. But let’s face it, creating a plan can be overwhelming and confusing. We understand. Many loan officers find themselves in the same boat.

The great news is that we’ve simplified it for you with this guide.

Our straightforward but thorough loan officer marketing plan template covers everything you need to succeed in your role and ensure business growth. With our help, you can stop stressing about creating a plan and start focusing on reaching your goals toward mortgage business success.

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Identifying Where Your Business Currently Stands

Prospecting likely takes up the majority of your day, but you don’t want to overlook analyzing your business as a whole. For example, are you keenly aware of which marketing activities are bringing in business or whether there were any significant changes to your lead generation avenues?

Start by focusing on where your leads are currently coming from and where they drop off. For example, if you see that you’re getting traffic from social media, but you struggle to move them further down the path to closing, you know that there’s work to be done there.  

Note that little to no leads from a particular source doesn’t mean you should abandon it altogether. For example, you may have heard that email marketing is dead, but that’s simply not true.

Email marketing has some of the highest ROI’s as well as decent conversion rates in marketing. So if one of your lead generation tactics isn’t quite panning out, it may just mean you need to alter your strategy, not can it altogether.

So start by examining the hard data and see where your business currently stands with lead generation and conversion. After that, you’ll have a clearer picture of how to structure your business plan.

Goal-Setting: Essential to Loan Officer Success

Setting goals and objectives isn’t just a marketing ploy. It’s actually scientifically proven that goal-setting helps individuals achieve impressive results in record time. Using goals not only motivates you but also defines what success looks like to measure your progress. 

The best method, by far, is to use the “SMART” goal method, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Here’s an example:

• The first step in working towards your goals is to identify the goal. Let’s say that you want to close more loans. Specify how many loans you want to close.
• Next, identify your closing ratio. This will help you determine whether your goal is attainable. For example, an LO with a current closing rate of five loans per quarter will have a better chance of achieving eight loans per quarter. If you’re a newbie, eight loans might be too lofty to achieve in your first quarter. 
• Closing more loans is an indicator of a successful loan officer, so we know this goal is relevant. But you also want to make sure that any goals you set are in-line with company expectations. If your company has a specific quota, you’ll want to take that into account as well. 
• Next is giving yourself a timeframe in which you’re going to achieve this goal. In our example, we’re giving ourselves a quarter to reach eight closed loans. 

Now that we have a foundation let’s jump into creating your marketing and business plan.

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Mortgage Loan Officer Marketing and Business Plan: How to Structure Your Plan

Now that you know what works, what doesn’t, and what strategies you have yet to test out, you are in a better position to create your loan officer business plan. Since marketing and business plans can get hefty, a good way to stay organized is to divide your plan up by different fields or departments. For example, you want to have a section for the ‘operations plan’ and the ‘marketing plan.’

A good template you can follow is to start off with an Executive Summary followed by some industry and market insights. After that, you can go into the fields.

Executive Summary

Every good plan needs a strong introduction that will give a clear snapshot of the different sections of the business plan. A good loan officer executive summary will include the following:

• Brief information on your business
• Target borrowers
• Local competitors
• Your UVP (Unique Value Proposition)
• Brief description of the plan from different viewpoints, such as lead generation tactics and realtor partnership creation.

As counterintuitive as it might seem, it’s best to write this section of the plan out in the end when you have a solid idea about the details of your marketing plan.

Industry and Market Analysis

Having a detailed analysis of your industry and market landscape is a great way to set a direction for your plan. What this does is give you valuable insight into how big your target market is, how much it is expected to grow in coming years, what’s trending in your industry, what trends are here to stay, etc. 

Your industry analysis should answer questions such as:

• Who are your main local competitors?
• What is the TAM (total addressable market)?
• What is the SAM (serviceable addressable market)?
• What is the SOM (serviceable obtainable market)?

Marketing Plan

As for the ‘Marketing’ section of your plan, you must cover the four P’s: product, place, price, and promotion. Explain the product(s) and or services you are offering. Since your loan officer business is likely local, explain how the location of your business impacts its growth. Address the following questions: 

• Is there a large serviceable obtainable market in your area? e.g. are you working with a local builder, with a top realtor, etc…
• Who are your local competitors? 
• How are you differentiating yourself from your competitors? (Hint: competing solely on rates or products is unlikely to be effective)
• Are there any local mortgage niches that are being underserved? 
• How will you promote your mortgage business, and what mortgage technology do you need to support your efforts?

Operations Plan

Don’t let the label mislead you. Operations simply refers to how you’ll complete your tasks and how your workflow and tools will help you achieve your goals. The first step is to outline your short and long-term goals and the processes you use in each of those areas.

Some examples of short-term processes would be:

• Managing your document workflows
• Applying tech to improve communication
• Implementing more interactive digital tools to drive engagement
• Allowing borrowers to pay for their own credit report

Some examples of long-term goals would be:

• Streamlining the borrower intake between your mortgage website and application
• Create mortgage content geared around your niche target and implement it in your lead funnel
• Shifting to a personalized self-serve model that automates time-consuming processes without sacrificing service.
• Implement a social media marketing plan that helps build relationships and engages potential clients.

By using this loan officer business plan template, you’ll have a compelling framework to achieve your goals and create a clear path for career longevity. And at LenderHomePage, there’s nothing more important to us than helping mortgage loan originators succeed. That’s why our suite of digital mortgage tools are different.

From mortgage website templates with built-in lead magnets to a co-branded mortgage mobile app that grows your realtor referrals to an intuitive 1003 intake, our mortgage tech is designed to help captivate and create clients for life. Schedule a demo today and take the first step toward your long-term success.

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Want to connect with your real estate clients at the perfect place and time to spur a home sale? Geofencing can make it happen.

Geofencing for Real Estate: 10 Ways to Boost Results with Precision Targeting is just one of many great real estate strategies on The Spark

The mortgage industry thrives on data. Your mortgage marketing strategies should follow suit.

By leveraging the correct data, you can also create a marketing campaign that aligns with your goals. Here are some ways to optimize your marketing strategies using your business data.

Define Your Goals

Start by laying out clear goals. That way, you can narrow the focus and scope of your mortgage marketing strategies.

For example, you might develop a campaign to boost the number of completed applications or leads. Your existing metrics will give you a baseline, and you can then use your analytical tools to track the progress of your campaign.

Develop Customer Segments

Your mortgage pipeline will take the shape of a funnel. At the broadest part, you’ll find those just becoming aware of your company. At the bottom, you’ll find those who complete a mortgage application. In between are customers at various stages of their buying journeys.

You can tailor your marketing strategy based on these various customer segments. For instance, you might use social media marketing to generate brand awareness and targeted email marketing to nurture client relationships.

You’ll adjust your marketing strategy based on the specific stage of the customer journey. The goal is to keep customers moving through your pipeline.

Nurture Quality Leads, Not Just Quantity

Advanced analytics can help you identify quality leads. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, you can determine which charges remain engaged in the lending process.

This ensures that you stay focused on leads more likely to complete an application. Automated emails can keep customers engaged through every step of the process. You can then filter your information and follow up with those who show the most promise.

Adjust Based on Conversion Rates

One of the surest measures of success will be your conversion rate. This rate measures how many leads engage your marketing content and subsequently apply for a loan (or for more information).

Armed with this data, you can determine what content types have the most significant impact. You might need to adjust your social media strategy to generate more engagements. Or you may need quality video content to connect with specific customer segments.

Your conversion rates will help you focus your efforts and invest your energy where needed most.

Look at Your Satisfaction Index

The term “satisfaction index” refers to how happy your clients are with your services. Customer surveys can provide direct, actionable data on client satisfaction, including your clients’ attitudes toward your brand and services.

This can also provide a window into the aspects of your services that are most appreciated. You can adjust your marketing plans based on this data.

Mortgage Marketing Strategies Made Simple

A customer relationship management (CRM) platform can help you build a better marketing strategy. The BNTouch platform is a mortgage CRM centered on nurturing client relationships and empowering businesses to grow.

To schedule a demo, contact our experienced team today!

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