Amazing Personal Touch
Just to be clear – the intended primary audience for this post is younger mortgage professionals in Canada
As mortgage brokers, our entire livelihood depends on communication. To be successful, we must keep open lines of communication with clients during and after the mortgage transaction. Although this doesn’t sound very difficult, it is a sobering fact that according to CAAMPs 2011 Fall Report - 79% of consumers stayed with their existing lender at renewal. This means that as a whole, the broker channel is pretty lousy at making a lasting impression with clients (now granted a mortgage is not something you need everyday – but still, we should be a little hotter than that don’t you think?). So you ask yourself…
and rightfully so, you have an ever growing database, why not market to it? why not stay top of mind and hope to renew better than the industry average? But the problem is, it is pretty tough to keep in touch with everyone individually, I mean, that would take A LOT of time? At this point most brokers decide to automate (I did). Here are a couple questions to think about and a story from my experience if you happen to be rethinking your client touch methods.
1. RE: The dreaded bulk email newsletter: What do you have to say that is so important that all your clients need to hear it at the same time? Lets face it, mortgages are not attractive - once someone is locked into their typical 5 yr mortgage, there is really nothing mortgage related that they are just dying to get from you delivered via a silky smooth constant contact. I am not saying that email isn’t a good medium – its just that after the mortgage is closed, you might consider trying to keep in touch with something besides mortgage information. Side note, please don’t ever create a distribution list without asking permission from your clients, it makes you look really bad.
2. RE: The bulk mailer: Regardless of who its from, do YOU actually read any bulk mail you get? Have you ever said to yourself, “Wow, I am so happy that my REALTOR personally sent me a calendar <again>, I am going to hang that on my fridge right away!” NO – you look at it, and almost disregard it immediately. Is this really the message you want to be sending to your client? “You mean so little to me that I hired a company to mail a crappy non-personalized postcard stating that I was “just thinking of you” in hopes that it would cause you to feel all fuzzy inside about me”. Why not try a handwritten note? ”Thank You for trusting me with your business, I appreciate it” – follow it up in 6 months asking how the new house is, with a $5 gift card to a coffee shop – My guess is that 2 handwritten notes in 5 years (with a timely phone call 4 months before renewal) would go considerably further than a monthly regiment of non-personalized touches over the course of the term. Try it. What do you have to lose?
My Story: I have been a broker since 2007 and I have tried to implement several strategies to manage my client database – and have failed to find value with any of them. After one of these ventures where I paid a company for a scheduled CRM combining emails with mail outs, I had some doubts about its effectiveness. I decided it wasn’t working for me so I backed out. Easy enough, they sent me a form letter indicating that they were sad to see me go, and that I would be unsubscribed immediately. A week later I get another bulk email from them addressed to <<Enter Name Here>>, almost laughable, it was so automated that they couldn’t even unsubscribe me properly. However this did get me thinking…
I started this post by saying that our entire livelihood depends on communication. Take a step back and ask yourself – “Is my relationship with my clients something I should automate or is this where I should be spending the majority of my time?”
